New feature: Streaming Video

[derobert]

So not fair! I feel so obliged to donate!

The final week of the donation drive still has a few days left.

[Otohiko]

For all the complaints regarding the viewing time/feedback issue:

Yes, but how is this different from the regular op/QC system? You can easily leave feedback on any video, without so much as watching it at all. You can leave star ratings after starting a download of the video and then cancelling it a second later.

Sure it's a deficiency, but it's not new or unique to the streaming option. If anything, out of all the viewing options, the streaming one is the one that ensures most accurately that the viewer even so much as begins watching before rating a video.

[Nya-chan Production]

Awsmsauce!

[JCD]

About freaking time I'd say. Now we can only hope to get the massive amount of users back we lost to streaming sites.

I already watched more videos today than over the past couple of weeks. It was such a chore for me before: I had to overcome myself to download something, like category, song/anime, format, filesize, rating stars... and then not forget the download when its finished. When I finally got to watch the video and didn't like it, delete it...
All that is a thing of the past now. And the random video option is kickass.

The quality is also pretty decent, alot better than most streaming sites. What I'd like to see though is an option for us to encode and upload the streaming version ourselves - this can take some load off the server and improve the quality even further since we can do it from uncompressed exports.
I'm sure you're already evaluating the costs of this, but I think there should be a broader range of streamable videos for the users and maybe even non-users in the future if possible. It's still kind of a hassle to show videos to someone not registered here.

But yeah, kickass job. This is propably the biggest improve to the .org since the Donut and I can finally see the community here getting some good growth in the future again.

[Otohiko]

And I said thanks before this was officially rolled out, but I'll say it again: thanks a lot for this!

I'm proud to admit that this feature will drastically change my AMV viewing habits, and I guess anything that makes me watch more AMVs is definitely a change for better.

[derobert]

The quality is also pretty decent, alot better than most streaming sites. What I'd like to see though is an option for us to encode and upload the streaming version ourselves - this can take some load off the server and improve the quality even further since we can do it from uncompressed exports.

I doubt we'll have an option to do that in general. There are a few editors who could do a competent job of it, but most... well, look at how many videos we get with uncompressed PCM audio.

If you notice any videos which look particularly bad (compared to the LOCAL version), please bug me, I have a process that can make them look better (but takes 10x as much CPU time).

And I suppose that if your streaming vid looks bad, and you can produce much better version with an average bit rate of 402/600 kbit/s for the video, 48 kbit/s for the audio, in the correct codecs and format, then we can talk — I can manage to install it on the server.

I'm sure you're already evaluating the costs of this, but I think there should be a broader range of streamable videos for the users and maybe even non-users in the future if possible. It's still kind of a hassle to show videos to someone not registered here.

Yeah, Phade and Corran came up with the policy — it may change once we get some idea of how much bandwidth streaming uses.

But yeah, kickass job. This is propably the biggest improve to the .org since the Donut and I can finally see the community here getting some good growth in the future again.

Definitely. I've watched more AMVs in the past few days than the rest of the year (all us mods and admins have been playing with streaming for a week ).

Now I just need to come up with something to one-up Corran, because Netflix refuses to send me Stellvia.

[Corran]

Sorry for double post... but I just sort of thought... is it possible to have some sort of playlist or queue feature for this streaming? Actually more specifically what I had in mind was to be able to continue the whole random video playing except when it reaches the end of a video, it moves on to another one.

This is something we would like to do but I'm not sure how long it would be before we can do so. This initial release of the streaming system was not built with a playlist system in mind. it will take a significant amount of work to make it that way. So, it is on the todo list but currently low priority so don't expect this soon...

The quality is also pretty decent, alot better than most streaming sites. What I'd like to see though is an option for us to encode and upload the streaming version ourselves - this can take some load off the server and improve the quality even further since we can do it from uncompressed exports.

Looks like Derobert beat me to this. We plan on implementing a "report this video" feature to allow users to identify videos that did not encode well. Currently the system will perform a 2 pass encode if the first pass has a low ssim. Derobert has also made a script that we can manually run that encodes videos with settings that are way too time consuming for the mass encoding process. Some of the first videos we encoded did not have the automated 2 pass thing available at the time. For those it might be as simply as re-encoding them using the existing process.

I'm sure you're already evaluating the costs of this, but I think there should be a broader range of streamable videos for the users and maybe even non-users in the future if possible. It's still kind of a hassle to show videos to someone not registered here.

I'm open to suggestions but I have a feeling that it is too early to judge the accessibility of general users. There is an option that we provided in the user profile edit page that will allow donators to enable streaming of their videos to non-donators. This is an "unlockable" setting meaning that once you've donated a total of $12 ever the option is always available for you to toggle. Currently only 11 people have the feature enabled, and I expect that the number of donators giving access to non-donators will increase significantly over time.

For non-users, we do plan on allowing embedding eventually. We've also allowed non-donators to stream their own videos which might seem unnecessary, but it will give users the chance to log in on their account at a friend's house and show off their videos without having to download them.

[LittleAtari]

When streaming random videos was still in the feedback thread, I would sit for long time just refreshing the page to watch more videos. I even came across a video that had 0 stars that I liked. I rated it and left a QC for the person. I'm addicted to Org Streaming it says so on my MSN .

I'm open to suggestions but I have a feeling that it is too early to judge the accessibility of general users. There is an option that we provided in the user profile edit page that will allow donators to enable streaming of their videos to non-donators. This is an "unlockable" setting meaning that once you've donated a total of $12 ever the option is always available for you to toggle. Currently only 11 people have the feature enabled, and I expect that the number of donators giving access to non-donators will increase significantly over time.

I actually didn't notice that option until you mentioned it. Although donators tend to be more aware of how the site works, wouldn't it have been more effective to set the videos to stream to non-donators automatically and then just have donators opt out? I still think it's weird to have this option because I dont see how many people could have an issue with whether or not the person streaming their video is a donator, especially when they can already opt-out of streaming in general.

[Corran]

I actually didn't notice that option until you mentioned it. Although donators tend to be more aware of how the site works, wouldn't it have been more effective to set the videos to stream to non-donators automatically and then just have donators opt out? I still think it's weird to have this option because I dont see how many people could have an issue with whether or not the person streaming their video is a donator, especially when they can already opt-out of streaming in general.

While I expect a lot of users to enable the feature, this site lives on the donations of its members and we wanted to make sure there was a conscious decision on part of the donator to enable it. Back when Phade first added external promotions to the site, he gave donators the same option to disable them for non-donators viewing their video profiles.

[mexicanjunior]

For non-users, we do plan on allowing embedding eventually. We've also allowed non-donators to stream their own videos which might seem unnecessary, but it will give users the chance to log in on their account at a friend's house and show off their videos without having to download them.

I know it is off-topic but...we could use this kind of streaming option on our RDS site profiles.