Staff Blog / Better uploading and lots of API improvements

Hi Han,

I'm fixing this now, as indicated by Andrew above please post any help related issues to the help center. There are probably just a few calibrations we need to make in order to get this Vimeo roaring like a smooth muscle car hybrid electric Veyron.

Thx for the quick response/fix.

You seem to be a magician ;-)

We came up with it in '05. We just thought it was a stupid name and alternative to "player.swf," which everyone uses.

Really good. Love this idea :)

It's coming, and it's going to kick ass.

And again ;-)

Can you tell us what your target date for release of the statistics is?

When it's done =)

^
straight up

Sorry if that comment seems brash, but we prefer to work on things until we feel they are complete, rather than rush to push them out based on a specific date.

Word.

i agree...

Dalas,
Don't give a specific delivery date then. Just give us a rough idea. A couple of days, weeks, months?

Thanks, Ted!

We're still sticking with progressive loading (for now), but you can specify jump points in the description by just putting in times eg "5:15"

If I understand the question, yes, they are.

This is obviously a useful feature, and we will keep it in mind.

The drawback of progressive is if you jump to a point, you lose all the data before it and can't scrub back. In the past when we switched to non-progressive (there's no standard term for this), people complained they couldn't scrub back and we switched back. For most content on Vimeo I think progressive is the better presentation.

What about supporting both, with the option to choose in the video settings?

The uploader uses the new API, so you can guess it won't be too long now...

I guess it is an easy mistake, considering the name is almost the same ;)

As we mentioned in the blog post, if you have issues, please use the help system - vimeo.com/help

Huh? HD has supported 30fps for about 6 months now...

Call it what you will but Im not happy with the playback of my stuff shot at 30fps. Take a look and see for yourself! It's chuggy, like it doesn't understand 30fps and is looking for 24fps and is dropping frames. Any suggestions?

Other that taking another look at our compression guidelines I'm not sure what to tell you. Output is 30fps.

A nice flippant answer from Vimeo staff Yaaayyyyy!

I am so glad I pay for this crappy service!

If you download my original mov, you will find it plays just fine before being converted into your flash player. Everyones videos are chuggy. I have uploaded both HD and DV with the same results. I wouldn't be that upset about it if I didn't have my videos from Vimeo connected to my official website for industry professionals to view in order to hire me for work. See here stephencoghill.com

Honestly, you might think your supporting 30fps, however it doesn't play back smoothly like the same videos I uploaded to youtube.

Fix it!

stephen. i am sure you know this already but comparing the playback performance of the original source file on your desktop vs. transcoded videos via flash player that is downloading over http connection isn't going to be the same. there are many variables that affects the playback performance particularly when it comes to HD videos. have you tried some of these? these tips have helped a lot of users noticing choppy playback on HD videos. vimeo.com/help/faq/video/stuttering

I read the faq and yes, I have a fiber optic super high-speed connection and a $3000 Macbook Pro. More than enough to run 1080p movies with 5.1 surround and anything else you can throw at it. It's my experience watching these and others through my setup and everyone is reporting the same experience. Choppy playback. Youtube has better flash playback of 720p files, but I don't like their interface and the fact that it's a free service. Sometimes I will use Vimeo for a delivery service for my clients, so that they can playback the video and download it straight from here, however they report to me why the playback is studdery and I have to tell them I don't know why that is. Originally you guys said it was because you didn't support 30fps at that time. But I couldn't tell you why it's doing it now. Looks the same to me.

If you are saying that this is all i can expect, well then there it is...

well, the main point behind the faq entry i linked to was to explain that often it's actually *not* about how fast your connection or your computer is. that's what i was trying to point out because even from my own personal experience simple things like restarting my browser or not running other apps or tabs helped me with playback more than anything else and i hoped they might help you in your situation as well.

as for the comparison with youtube/google, i cannot intelligently comment on their infrastructure or the delivery but it's no secret they are different from us both in the scale that they operate in or even in terms of how they serve the videos (technically it's the difference between streaming vs. progressive download).

we're constantly trying to optimize our performance and delivery side of the equation and that will continue to be one of our priorities.

Stephen, you pay a very little price for something you normally pay a LOT of money. You should get an account with a commercial streaming company paying hundreds of dollars monthly. Then you can complain as much as you like. I can give you some addresses if you like.

Not a very positive nor productive comment Rudolf.

Ok, so this discussion seemed kind of interesting to me so I tried watching one of Stephen Coghill's videos:

vimeo.com/3958666

On my Macbook Air at work (top o' the line Air, 2 months old), the audio was so stuttery it was almost unintelligible.

Then I came home to my personal MacBook Pro 15", which has twice the memory and a lot more processing power than the Air. On this system there were almost no glitches in playback.

This seems to lend credence to the FAQ's notion that the end system has a lot to do with the experience, but more testing seems needed.

(It can't be the network as at work I have 100mb ethernet all the way in and and home it's DSL.)

Stephen, can I get a copy of the source file for the video above (Gamemaster...)? If my Macbook Air can play it without problem then that might indicate it's Vimeo's encoding.

Cheers,
Cliff

Sometimes laptops don't use full CPU to conserve power and you have to go in and adjust the energy settings to make sure you're getting max performance. My laptop is way less powered than a top of the line Air and it plays smooth as butter. Actually, that's not entirely true. It's 95% smooth... the video/audio will jerk about once every 30 seconds. But I've got about 4 Adobe apps open right now, too.

Cliff,

Thanks for your positive interest man! I appreciate it. I have unlocked the download for Gamemaster so you can view the file I uploaded which is a 1280x720p H.264 mov.

And I just want to be clear about what I am not happy about so that we are all on the same page. I understand that different connection speeds are going to determine the amount of instant playback, but that's not what I mean when I say the videos playback 'chuggy'. What I mean is when the video does load all the way, the video itself chugs along, not smooth, and you can see a pulse in the video playback like it's dropping frames to keep up. Most people might not even notice what I am talking about. But when there is camera movement, you start to see it more clearly.

Hope this helps.

Ok, I downloaded the .mov at work and it plays really well on my Mac Air, even with a zillion windows and apps open.

So then I killed all the apps, restarted a browser (and mail and Activity Monitor) and then played from vimeo. This time it was much better than before, the audio was intelligible, and the picture was good to my eyes. I tried both Safari and Firefox and it seemed slightly better in Firefox than Safari. CPU usage went to 90% and it used over 1GB of memory, which isn't going to play well with other apps...

So the Vimeo playback seems pretty cpu and memory intensive but reasonable to the untrained eye when given enough resources. ("Untrained eye" is important here--I know I don't see things the way real pros or afficianados do.)

Aaron: I have done all my Mac Air testing with the system plugged into the wall for power and network, and using a big Apple display (22"). I checked and in this config it is supposed to give max performance.

I don't know if this helps or not, Stephen. I hope so. If your clients can understand the vimeo is a preview and not the full experience they might be happier.

Let me know if you'd like me to try other tests.

Cheers,
Cliff

Hopefully there will a breakthrough in HD video delivery, but until then it's gonna be a frustrating road me thinks...

Thanks for all your help Cliff.

Bravo!

word, brother! it seems simple enough - vimeo would process your original file, convert a copy to the iPhone's supported h.264 format and make that available via a mobile version of the site...

i'm no programmer, but it has to be possible. come on guys... please?

2x that suggestion is all sorts of awesome! can we add that to the xmas wish list?

I don't get this: who wants to show his work on a tiny screen? It's really beyond me.

I get 90% of my clients by showing them my work on my iphone. Captive audience when you hand them something worth $400 and they are obliged to hold it.

Ok, I understand where you come from. But I think that showing video on a laptop will have a better impact.

And I'm seriously trying to find a better replacement site than this one!

why?! this seems like promising thing...

See above conversation...

maybe you'll need plus super sega mega package for your crystal 30fps movies:) i bet that will be the solution from the vimeo:)
haha.
is there any other HQ web video hosting service???

I've had this service going on I guess 7 or 8 months now and at the time I could not find another service like this that would allow me to embed HD video players in my website so that I didn't have to host them myself. Which wasn't too bad, however the load times for my clients was not fun. I really like Vimeo, it's only that when i joined they did not support 30fps and now apparently they do support it now. However that's the excuse they gave back then when my videos were chuggy when they didn't support 30fps. Now that they support it, the videos still playback the same. That's all I am saying.

If there were a super duper HD package from Vimeo, I would try it!

cool. you seem like HD polished guy:)
here in Serbia i have somekinda $200 sony DV cam, and I can manage to pull out 720p widescreen in 25fps videos that look pretty cool. cheers.

Thanks! I hope I have made some videos that please you...

gross.

Lol

when girls say "gross" that's good news

Please, without iPhone support, being a 'Plus' still feels like a minus.