Previews / Indirect downloads (Just some thoughts)

[EvaFan]

Eh... this has been bugging me for a while:

Option #1:
Don't get me wrong I like streaming but I think donators should have the option to force a "Download Only" option cause in all honesty some videos with particularly high motion and lots of sync just don't look good in previews or offer the same viewing experience downloads do (effects comments). I figured since the main point of streaming was to save bandwidth and we’re paying to keep the site alive, we should have this option regardless but option 2 would be alot more beneficial.

Option #2:
I haven't seen any videos that are preview-able having only indirect links available, so I’m guessing that these don't ever receive a preview link? Anyway that's fine but people can't leave QC's for these so If possible maybe allow QC's for indirect links? I don't give a shit about the star ratings but QC's are good for quick critique/feedback/general thoughts.

Option #3:
Ignore this post. (In before asshats!) No really If its too much work or can't be done, thats fine.

Honestly I like #2 cause that should of been done a while ago anyway, I've often wanted to leave a QC from indirect downloads but didn't have enough to say for a legitimate opinion. I don't know if that would be hard to do or not but I'd appreciate it alot. Thanks to everyone involved in working on the streaming though, musta been a lot of work, worthy of a thanks at the very least .

[Corran]

#1
Users can opt out of streaming. The option to do this in in the user profile edit page. We will not disable streaming on a per video basis with rare exception. Currently when videos are encoded, we automatically perform a second pass with a higher bitrate if the quality is objectively lower than a set threshold. We have a script that we can manually run that will use even higher encode setting if the quality still looks poor. If the video still looks bad ("bad" not being the same thing as "not crystal clear"), then we can disable the preview assuming this is requested by the editor and not another user. Videos have to look fairly bad before this happens. Previews are not meant to look like a master copy though we do want them to look good.

The mechanism for reporting problems with encodes is not yet in place.

I figured since the main point of streaming was to save bandwidth and we’re paying to keep the site alive, we should have this option regardless

Don't forget no one is getting paid. Features tend to be implemented either out of necessity or programmer interest. I probably won't be releasing any new features for a while as I'd prefer to re-write the org code base first which could take a long time.

#2
a) We can't encode previews for off-site videos. We do not control direct and indirect links and can not ensure the availability of these sources. Even if these links were always available there are significant technical hurdles. This is especially the case for for indirect links. (Since they are not links to the video itself.)
b) Quick comments and stars are for videos hosted on the org only, this mechanism is tied into the local download system. Sorry, this isn't something likely to change... At least users can leave opinions in this case. (There is also the forum PM system if you really just want to leave the editor a short note.)