Viddler isn't great

I've been linked to several video's recently where it's been hosted on Viddler. I'd just like to say now that I'm all in favour of people supporting new video services but they shouldn't expect everybody to get the same service from the small start-up

I've been linked to several video's recently where it's been hosted on Viddler. I'd just like to say now that I'm all in favour of people supporting new video services but they shouldn't expect everybody to get the same service from the small start-up

I recorded a Viddler video trying to play:

It's quite clear to me that they need to completely rework their buffering code so it works like other FLV players.

1. Start downloading into memory (buffering)
2. Measure the speed the download is coming in at
3. Determine when you have enough video to play without having to buffer again plus some leeway for inconsistent download rates
4. Start playing
5. Keep the memory copy until the player is unloaded

The current system seems to work more like some uses of Windows Media video files. Some will let you skip but as soon as you do, the player just forgets everything.

Moreover the current system plays too soon and also takes an age to do so... If you look in the browser's status bar, you can see "downloading data from www.viddler.com"

You're using your main server to serve the videos as well?! No wonder the damn thing is crawling along here!

If you're going to be successful in the online video market, you NEED massive bandwidth and even more servers to cope with the load otherwise as soon as you get popular, people will drop you faster than you can say "YouTube is a lot faster".

No offence meant, guys... I'm just telling it like it is.

Written by Oli on Thursday, 15 February 2007. Tagged with video, technology. Read 4386 times. If you liked it, please give it a digg.

#1 /* 2 years, 9 months ago */

PCSpy, where are you located? We are scaled on the largest CDN (content delivery network) in the world so hardware is certainly not our issue.

I ask where you are located because our CDN was having outages last week and what server you were connecting to could have been the issue.

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RobertSandie Normal User

#2 — Author comment /* 2 years, 9 months ago */

That's quite possible that that was the issue. I'm in the UK.

Well playing a video from your blog now seems to work without issue but I'd still look at the buffering code again.

Why should it stream every play and every time you change the position? Why can't it just buffer it all into local cache (ala YouTube) and allow the user to play it until their cache sweeps it out.

Your player is awesome though... With better caching, it'd be the best.

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Oli Numero Uno

#3 /* 2 years, 9 months ago */

The difference between Progressive Download (Youtube) and Streaming (Viddler) is a very deep question that Adobe could explain technically very well in more detail.

The biggest reasons we are using it because we have no limits on File Size and Duration so naturally we want to be able to give good feedback and feel to people that wish to view all points in the video at any given time.

One of the biggest downfalls with progressive download is that on typical connections you have to wait 8 minutes to watch the 10th minute.

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RobertSandie Normal User

#4 — Author comment /* 2 years, 9 months ago */

Sorry. The blog ate the link (a bug in my HTML parser, I'm sure).

But yes I'm quite familiar with both methods. What I really imagined was something that could progressively download from wherever you start it off from... A hybrid of the two methods.

Say the video can be split into 10 equal chunks.

When the player loads and I press play, it starts downloading chunks logically from where the tracker is and whamming them into memory/cache.

If I skip to segment 8, it starts downloading that segment onwards but (and this is the important part) keeps the earlier parts.

If I then went back to segment 1, it would check to see which segments following #1 had not downloaded (if any) starts to get those in advance.

That's how I would do it anyway. I'm not sure if flash player gives you that power though. Even if it didn't, I'm sure there would be workarounds.

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Oli Numero Uno

#5 /* 2 years, 8 months ago */

i agree with what Oli pointing to that

"they need to completely rework their buffering code so it works like other FLV players."

it should not stream again when other part of video already played, its very frustrating to watch a video that is always buffering every 3 secs of play. as a normal vid fanatics work more on how you improved the buffering technique. no offense but this is how i look on the problem.

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bakti Anonymous User

#6 /* 16 months, 11 days ago */

Well we have reworked the code. please try playing now. No more buffering :).

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Rob Sandie Anonymous User

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