Paysite Owners / Hosting Companies / Networking Experts inside :P

[tblocker]

Hey guys, i'm about to launch a couple of paysites, i already configured Wowza Media Server and is working fine ... but when i'm actually streaming my movies to my home computer in Argentina, connection is way too slow

I'm hosting my server in Choopa, i have plenty of bandwidth to burn in my package, have plenty of RAM free and 80% of my server cpu is idle ... So i'm not sure if this is something Choopa related and maybe i should try another hosting company?

The funny thing is that when trying to stream movies from big companies members area ( Brazzers, BBO ) to my home computer in Argentina they also loaded really slow or at least slow as my content .... But when streaming from big tube sites such as tube8 ( Which i think are owned by Brazzers! LOL ) or pornhub they loaded fucking fast!!!

So here is my question, what fucking technology are these tube sites using that their content gets streamed way faster than actually the biggest companies in the biz which actually CHARGE for viewing their content ? I WANT THAT FOR MY PAYSITES!!!

1. Do someone really know what are these tube sites using and where are they hosted?

2. Could someone recommend me a good hosting company for streaming my media content?

3. What are you currently using to stream your content ( Hosting Company/Streaming Technology/ETC ) ?

Knowing these stuff would be really helpful for me and probably a lot of new paysite owners :P

[TidalWave]

its not about technology. its about where they are hosted.
they are hosting their shit illegal content in Netherlands and you probably have a faster link to NL then to the USA hosting where they have their paysites and "legit" content.

[tblocker]

Originally Posted by TidalWave

its not about technology. its about where they are hosted.
they are hosting their shit illegal content in Netherlands and you probably have a faster link to NL then to the USA hosting where they have their paysites and "legit" content.

Nice answer, that could explain why i get big companies streams slower than tube sites ones .... still, there are some paysites that have VERY FAST CONNECTIONS, for example xmovies.com, when i download a movie from them it downloads fucking fast, and i tried several movies, i guess they are not all cached in my ISP transparent proxy ... What hosting company are they using?

I insist with my previous questions still, any paysite owner / hosting expert which is not trying to sell me their hosting solution willing to answer them ?

[Spudstr]

Originally Posted by tblocker

Nice answer, that could explain why i get big companies streams slower than tube sites ones .... still, there are some paysites that have VERY FAST CONNECTIONS, for example xmovies.com, when i download a movie from them it downloads fucking fast, and i tried several movies, i guess they are not all cached in my ISP transparent proxy ... What hosting company are they using?

I insist with my previous questions still, any paysite owner / hosting expert which is not trying to sell me their hosting solution willing to answer them ?

Heres a great question, what bit rate are your videos encoded and your trying to stream. Lets go there. Steaming doesn't give much "buffer" for slow networks. Most of the time when people have problem viewing a stream its due to A. a crappy connection somewhere between the host and the end user. or b. the end user doesn't have enough bandwidth to watch the stream without running into play/pause/run situations.

Stream is that, it plays at the rate that you view it. when you download it sucks it down as fast as it can to the end user unless its throttled on the server.

[tblocker]

Originally Posted by Spudstr

Heres a great question, what bit rate are your videos encoded and your trying to stream. Lets go there. Steaming doesn't give much "buffer" for slow networks. Most of the time when people have problem viewing a stream its due to A. a crappy connection somewhere between the host and the end user. or b. the end user doesn't have enough bandwidth to watch the stream without running into play/pause/run situations.

Stream is that, it plays at the rate that you view it. when you download it sucks it down as fast as it can to the end user unless its throttled on the server.

About that i have another question you could maybe answer me :P Stream is what you say, but for example, on some tube sites, when you play a clip, it starts streamming, if the connection is too slow, you could go back to part of the already streamed and keep playing from there while the rest of the stream keeps download forward where you are watching .... After configuring my streaming server ( Wowza ), if i go back on a playing stream ( seek ), it starts downloading again from where i seeked even when it was already downloaded!

How can i cache the already downloaded streamed content ? This feature should be configured on server or player? it sounds more likely that it would be on player, which players support this feature ?

[Spudstr]

Originally Posted by tblocker

About that i have another question you could maybe answer me :P Stream is what you say, but for example, on some tube sites, when you play a clip, it starts streamming, if the connection is too slow, you could go back to part of the already streamed and keep playing from there while the rest of the stream keeps download forward where you are watching .... After configuring my streaming server ( Wowza ), if i go back on a playing stream ( seek ), it starts downloading again from where i seeked even when it was already downloaded!

How can i cache the already downloaded streamed content ? This feature should be configured on server or player? it sounds more likely that it would be on player, which players support this feature ?

That is not streaming, most sites use lighttpd with the flv plugin/module and just throttle/rate limit the download to look like its streaming. We've used wowza and adobe FMS neither cache/save to the desktop. This would defeat the purpose of streaming. Streaming is meant to stream and never leave the "whole" thing on the clients computer.

99% of our tube customers use wowza/fms few use lighttpd still.

[tblocker]

Originally Posted by Spudstr

That is not streaming, most sites use lighttpd with the flv plugin/module and just throttle/rate limit the download to look like its streaming. We've used wowza and adobe FMS neither cache/save to the desktop. This would defeat the purpose of streaming. Streaming is meant to stream and never leave the "whole" thing on the clients computer.

99% of our tube customers use wowza/fms few use lighttpd still.

So in terms of user satisfaction ( and if we understand that as playing the movies as fast as posible and in "real time" [ again, meaning real time that he feels it that way even when its not technically real time :P ] ), what would be the best solution?

Would you still recommend a real streaming solution such as adobes or Wowzas, or you would go with lighttpd and their flv streaming plugin which gives the player the capability of caching the http stream ( I guess it uses the Content-Range headers ) ?

Ps: Thanks a lot for the answers You really seem to know real life cases and the technologies they use thats what i was hoping to find here

[Spudstr]

Originally Posted by tblocker

So in terms of user satisfaction ( and if we understand that as playing the movies as fast as posible and in "real time" [ again, meaning real time that he feels it that way even when its not technically real time :P ] ), what would be the best solution?

Would you still recommend a real streaming solution such as adobes or Wowzas, or you would go with lighttpd and their flv streaming plug in which gives the player the capability of caching the http stream ( I guess it uses the Content-Range headers ) ?

Ps: Thanks a lot for the answers You really seem to know real life cases and the technologies they use thats what i was hoping to find here

Everyone is different... our customers go for fms/wowza because of the bandwidth savings they have book markers and they keep coming back and streaming helps keeps the cost lower, even if you throttle. I have no idea what lighttpd uses. Its means to be passed a timestamps to it and it starts playing the flv at that point in time in the file.

Thanks we might not be the biggest host but we are very competitive and do a pretty good job at what we do and streaming is one of them.

[AdultEUhost]

hit me up !

[raymor]

I think the point about the bit rate of the videos is worth repeating.
Take two videos that are each ten minutes long. One is 100MB
and the other is 50MB. The 50MB one is going to take half as
long to download, of course, so it may well download fast enough
to play continuously, while the 100 MB one would be buffering half
the time.

Originally Posted by tblocker

After configuring my streaming server ( Wowza ), if i go back
on a playing stream ( seek ), it starts downloading again from where i seeked even when
it was already downloaded!

Of course it does stupid things, it's used WINDOWS. ;)

How can i cache the already downloaded streamed content ? This feature should be configured on server or player? it sounds more likely that it would be on player, which players support this feature ?

Both server and client. The server can suggest that the client cache it, suggest that the
client not cache it, make it easy to cache, etc., but in the end it's up to the client. The client
CAN cache anything it can display, and it can decide NOT to cache anything, regardless
of what the server suggests.

You'll notice that even the simplest the simplest set up, just serving the video files
straight from the same Apache server as the rest of your site, will generally allow
them to cache and work pretty well overall. The main thing that a specialized
streaming server buys you is the ability to fast forward, something that Apache
can't always do. Contrary to popular misconception, a seperate streaming server
doesn't get you better performance, lower load, etc. Yes, it's possible to load up
Apache with 100 different modules that you aren't using and therefore increase
memory usage and add a touch of CPU usage, and many people do that because
they don't know any better. However, a reasonably configured Apache will perform
as good or often better than a separate streaming server and you get all of the
advantages of keeping your whole site together, such as having videos displayed
in your regular server stats, being able to secure them the same way you secure
the rest of your site, and generally treating them as just another file. So for a great
many sites, a separate streaming server may be completely unnecessary and
really only adds extra hassle and expense. Consider therefore what you plan
to gain from streaming server. If you're answer is just "performance" or "load"
give me ten minutes to fix your Apache config and save you a lot of hassle.

PS - Yeah some sites use a streaming server for "advanced" DRM options.
Several huge companies have spent tens of millions trying to get DRM to
work and all eventually gave up on DRM, so I don't consider that a good
thing to do at all, much less a god reason to run extra servers.

[tblocker]

Originally Posted by raymor

I think the point about the bit rate of the videos is worth repeating.
Take two videos that are each ten minutes long. One is 100MB
and the other is 50MB. The 50MB one is going to take half as
long to download, of course, so it may well download fast enough
to play continuously, while the 100 MB one would be buffering half
the time.





Of course it does stupid things, it's used WINDOWS. ;)



Both server and client. The server can suggest that the client cache it, suggest that the
client not cache it, make it easy to cache, etc., but in the end it's up to the client. The client
CAN cache anything it can display, and it can decide NOT to cache anything, regardless
of what the server suggests.

You'll notice that even the simplest the simplest set up, just serving the video files
straight from the same Apache server as the rest of your site, will generally allow
them to cache and work pretty well overall. The main thing that a specialized
streaming server buys you is the ability to fast forward, something that Apache
can't always do. Contrary to popular misconception, a seperate streaming server
doesn't get you better performance, lower load, etc. Yes, it's possible to load up
Apache with 100 different modules that you aren't using and therefore increase
memory usage and add a touch of CPU usage, and many people do that because
they don't know any better. However, a reasonably configured Apache will perform
as good or often better than a separate streaming server and you get all of the
advantages of keeping your whole site together, such as having videos displayed
in your regular server stats, being able to secure them the same way you secure
the rest of your site, and generally treating them as just another file. So for a great
many sites, a separate streaming server may be completely unnecessary and
really only adds extra hassle and expense. Consider therefore what you plan
to gain from streaming server. If you're answer is just "performance" or "load"
give me ten minutes to fix your Apache config and save you a lot of hassle.

PS - Yeah some sites use a streaming server for "advanced" DRM options.
Several huge companies have spent tens of millions trying to get DRM to
work and all eventually gave up on DRM, so I don't consider that a good
thing to do at all, much less a god reason to run extra servers.

Thanks for the answer bro, i already found my way, i'm hiring a new server and will be using lighttpd, i'm not concerned about security tokens and all that shit, and at the end, if the movie is played on the clients machine, then there is some space where you can hook to capture the unencrypted video stream ;P For how you talk you probably understand what i'm talking about :P So i still dont get why people use Media Servers instead of using http streaming which lets you cache the stream which will help you with those surfers which have a slow peer to your network and are not able to watch it real time without buffering each second .... Using http streaming with lighttpd will let you in the worst case for slow connection clients maybe "try to detect their connection speed" and in the worst case make the player buffer a big chunk of video each time it seeks and then the stream will continue downloading while they watch the previous big downloaded chunk ....

Anyway, in resume for those interested on this subject, for what i could research, big sites such as metacafe/youtube are using lighttpd ... using mods for streaming h264/flv, this gives the players out of the box the ability to cache already played stream which will help you save bandwidth if user seeks back a lot which i guess they use to do ... we also avoid the proxys troubles you sometimes have using RTMP, plain http connections which are supported by any ISP transparent proxy or firewall .... On the other hand i dont need to install/maintein/pay a different streaming solution and PLUS i take down the huge apache guy and use a small solution which is claimed to be way waster and burn less server performance to serve just what i need lightttpd+mod264+modrewrite+php using fastcgi+mysql and i think i'm done ....

So in resume, UNLESS YOU ARE INSTERESTED IN DRM/CONTENT PROTECTION ( And Again, If Client is watching content, you are never safe about this .... ), the best way to go is using http streaming, FMS have no sense at all .... unless you really know what you are doing and are trying to develop some strange/elite application which probably no one in this forum is :P

So hope this help new guys trying to figure out the best solution for their streaming content :P

[tblocker]

btw :P just in case it was not clear, i'm talking this from the point of view of someone trying to stream their paysite movies only!

If you are running a camssite, willing to stream a live feed, etc, thats another story, on those cases Media Servers are your way to go probably .... I was talking just for the sake of streaming my paysite movies in the best interest of my surfers :P

[SpeakEasy]

Another reason could be that choopa uses low ebd nlayer bw which is slower than many other bw carriers.

[StaceyJo]

Good luck on your launch soon.