Streaming HD Videos - Solutions?
 

I am currently upgrading my Members Areas to handle streaming video. This should make my Members happier and also be better for viewing on mobile devices.

BUT...each video is HUGE in size. We're talking 25+ minutes per video with a file size of 600mb - 2.4gb! On my NYC-based home computer with a 100mb download speed the vids look fine. But I asked others with less Internet speed to check them out and they take forever to load, they buffer and the entire experience sucks ass. :(

On mobile it takes even longer (loading, buffering, etc) so I am wondering if there is a software solution for this problem? With videos getting bigger every day (HD, 4K, UHD, etc) this is a real problem, no? Any help would be appreciated. :)

Thanks in advance!

sounds like you need a wowza server?

what kind of plan do you have at exmasters.com?

wordpress.

Wow (pun intended)! Thanks for the link. I am checking out the lifetime license. :)

I actually just sent them an email asking what their suggestions might be to solve this issue. Right now I have a dedi with them (mirrored).

Most likely they just arent encoded correctly, depending on your encoder it may not be placing the MOOV Atoms to make it streamable requiring the whole file to download before it will play...thats actually common in older H.264 encoders use something like mp4faststart or something to make them streamable...thatd be the first thing to try

Good call! That may be the case. I will check out your suggestions.

:thumbsup

OMG! They are still in business? I had to move away there in 2003-2004 when they couldn't handle the amount of visitors on my mgp back then.
I moved to Swiftwill/Reflected and never looked back. :thumbsup

Maybe you should look into mechbunny as CMS... :pimp

I am working on a custom CMS as mechbunny has features I don't need, etc.
I hope ExMasters have upgraded since then! :)

LMK if it worked if not email me or something I can get ya through it

it's not the server it's the file size and connection your clients have, 1gb will load slow no matter what if the clients connection isn't fast.

not sure what the issue is, but we had a similar issue a few weeks ago... we had multiple full hd mp4 videos, which refused to start, but the player started buffering it..I forgot about a video once, and when the buffering finished, the video started without any problem... how i understand, mp4 videos have their meta data written to the end of the file and most players can't read that without loading the whole file in the memory... after we processed the mp4 files with this little handy tool rupedoszuuqmn6pq.onion/pedochan/ (requires adobe air), they are working fine and they are even loading faster since... again, I'm not sure if this helps you or not, but it worth a try...

That is a great solution thank you - but the vids are already done so re-encoding them using Adobe....what a nightmare. LOL

But for videos moving forward this would be great so thanks again!! :)

For the files on your server you can use qt-faststart, I think they have windows and unix versions. That will reset the meta data to the front of the file.

The second part of your issue might be file size. What is the bit-rate that your encoding your files as ?? We use 6Mb/sec for HD and 3Mb/sec for SD, we also make a 1Mb/sec mobile version which is the one we use for streaming.

Sample file would be 5 min 22 seconds, is 237Mb. That is a 1920x1080 @ 6Mb/sec. The mobile version is 44Mb 720 x 404 @ 1Mb/sec.

You don't really want to stream a HD video to phones, no reason to blow thru that much bandwidth, even if they have a good connection the higher res wont improve the user experience.


:2 cents:

You could also use a player that supports auto bitrate detection and for the visitors that have the speed you serve them the 1080p version, for the rest lower...

You might want to consider ffmpeg moving forward.

You could also benefit from a fast host with a large CDN, we offer our CDN for free to our customers. Let me know if you want to discuss pricing.