OT: Vimeo no longer stuttering, buffering?

LReavis wrote on 5/7/2011, 2:22 PM

Last night I posted my first video on Vimeo. After it uploaded, I opened it and was shocked to see that it played from the beginning with NO stuttering or buffering!

As often noted on this forum, Vimeo has been notorious for interrupted playback - so much buffering that some have recommended pressing the Pause button immediately after pressing Play and letting the entire video download before trying to watch.

I speculated that maybe Vimeo had left a cookie or something within my (Linus/Ubuntu) Firefox browser in order to make it play smoothly. It was too late to experiment, but this morning I installed Opera in order to test that video - knowing that this newly-installed browser would be free from any Vimeo cookies.

Once again, it played smoothly. So I tried a few minutes of a couple of other videos. They, too, played smoothly.

What's going on? Have the web links that bring Vimeo to my corner of the world (Encinitas, California) gotten faster? Or has vimeo changed their settings to remedy the buffering problems? Or do videos always play smoother when uploaded with settings similar to Vimeo's renders (2500 kbps H.264 with AAC audio - the Handbrake settings that I chose)?

If you'd like to see if Vimeo now behaves for you too, click http://vimeo.com/23393588.

Edit: Incidentally, it is my understanding that Vimeo - in contrast with YouTube - allows substitution of videos without changing the URL; so I'd appreciate suggestions for improvements that I could incorporate in later revisions.

Comments

musicvid10 wrote on 5/7/2011, 2:25 PM

Vimeo seems to have improved with latest Flash Player versions that employ hardware acceleration.

If there is something else that has changed in their delivery, I'll compare new downloads with old ones to find out.

LReavis wrote on 5/7/2011, 2:29 PM

I'm still using the old Flash in my Linux OS Firefox that I installed a couple of years ago. Must be something else, for just a few days ago I still was having buffering problems in Linux

bsuratt wrote on 5/7/2011, 8:05 PM

Check to see if Vimeo is defaulting to SD unless you tell it to default to HD.

musicvid10 wrote on 5/8/2011, 9:47 AM

LReavis,

How does this newly-uploaded HD clip look to you on Vimeo? It's reasonably smooth in the small player, but quite stuttery in fullscreen mode on my notebook.

http://vimeo.com/23424571

MUTTLEY wrote on 5/8/2011, 10:18 AM

All of em played back fine here but I haven't had any of the playback issues for awhile now. Larry are you sure your ISP didn't do an upgrade? Or maybe you updated your browser/os/hardware or something else?

It's quite possible Vimeo did something under the radar but by and large they're usually pretty transparent about improvement and usually write about it to let people know. It's been awhile since they've done anything and posted about it that might explain why it may seem to be loading faster for you.

- Ray
Underground Planet

john_dennis wrote on 5/8/2011, 11:04 AM

"How does this newly-uploaded HD clip look to you on Vimeo?"

Fits and starts with a 1.5 mbps DSL connection while it was downloading and playing. After it completed downloading, it played smoothly the second time through.

musicvid10 wrote on 5/8/2011, 11:08 AM

That's encouraging, thanks John!

LReavis wrote on 5/8/2011, 2:19 PM

@musicvid:

Opera browser in Win7-64 bits: Played full-screen, with brief hitches at the couple walking, white pickup truck, etc., normal playback; perfect in SloMo.

Chrome in Win7-64 bits: Smooth as silk, start to finish, full-screen.

Linux Firefox: Same as Chrome in Win7-64 bits - flawless, full-screen.
----------------
My own upload still plays just as smoothly in Vimeo in all browsers, full-screen, as it does from my local hard disk.

I don't get it. When I see Opera's brief hitches (even playing it again) in the musicvid upload, the gray portion in the progress line is far ahead of the red portion - indicating (I presume) that the downloaded portion already has gone way past the point in the video that is currently playing. Why the hitches?

But at least now my other browsers still seem to be playing Vimeo movies smoothly . . .

amendegw wrote on 5/8/2011, 3:04 PM

Bummer! Just when I thought this problem was nearly solved, I see stutter in this Video. I have a 20Mbps download and an i7 laptop, so that's not a problem. Interestingly, the second play was better but still not perfect.

Sigh!!
...Jerry

Strange thing is I put up a webpage (not Vimeo) to test the stutter problem and it looks a lot better to me now (I attributed this to newer Flash Player releases). See: http://www.jazzythedog.com/testing/eagles.aspx

LReavis wrote on 5/8/2011, 9:59 PM

@amendegw:
My Lunux Firefox browser won't stream .WMV or Silverlight. Here's the scoop on the others:
The JW Player works great with the first Flash (x.264) - it plays smoothest of all. The others show very slight hiccups - about the same for each.

The FlowPlayer also is pretty smooth, but not as silky smooth as the x.264 Flash.
------------
Two people on another forum make a pretty good case that the Vimeo problem is the internet connection:

http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/flash-web-video/495571-vimeo-video-stuttering-buffering-gone.html

But it's strange that my video plays so smoothly on all of my browsers, but the musicvid video does not. Exact same internet connection - just the browser is different (Opera stumbles on the musicvid posting - as mentioned above).

It is true that I spent a lot of time in Vegas getting rid of noise and otherwise editing with the goal of low bandwidth, but on the other hand, the musicvid shot is almost entirely static with very little motion. Seems to me that it should play better than mine if it were an issue with the internet connection. Maybe his scene with leaves, etc., really is more demanding in regard to bandwidth, despite relatively little motion.

And, as I mentioned before, the gray extension of the red playback indicator goes far beyond the current playback point almost from the start on his video. Nothing seems to add up.

The image quality on Vimeo is so good and playback starts so quickly that I wish this remaining quirk could be nailed down. At present, I'm not entirely satisfied either with YT or with Vimeo - and I'm not aware of any remaining video-sharing website that looks promising.

But, hope blooms eternally . . .

amendegw wrote on 5/9/2011, 2:41 AM

Larry,

First, I forgot to say that I didn't see any stuttering in the Vimeo video you posted, but I also didn't see the horizontal movement that exhibited the stutter in musicvid's posting. Also, I must fess-up, I didn't watch your video to conclusion.

Next, I don't buy the theory that low bandwidth is the cause of this problem. Three reasons:

1) I've got 20Mbps download, and some show stutter, others don't
2) As long as your download cursor outpaces your play cursor, you shouldn't have a problem. And if it doesn't, the jerky playback will be accompanied by a spinning icon in the center of your media player. Before someone jumps in with "what about dropped frames?", I've tested this with a statisics plugin and a "Throttle settings" browser addon (i.e. limits bandwidth) and don't see dropped frames. (must admit this was with the Silverlight player - maybe I'll try to recreate this with the JW Player statistics plugin, but I'm not sure it's worth the effort).
3) If you let the video download completely prior to play, some still show stutter.

So, the question remains... "Why do some web delivered videos show stutter while others don't?" I wish I knew the answer.

Double sigh!
...Jerry

amendegw wrote on 5/9/2011, 3:45 AM

Okay, just to satisfy my own curiousity, I added the statistics plugin to JW Player and throttled my download to dialup speed (it was painful!!) - no dropped frames were observed:

...Jerry