FileShare Video Playback Performance

I totally agree. However especially for media files it is nice if you can stream them instead of having to download them. Also, if you show a player, then you create expectations. :wink:
And it seems that with Videocoin there exists a partner that makes exactly this possible.
So why not use it?

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Yes I totally agree. This is about expectations. The player working poorly in my example isnā€™t going to be unusual. I think the player option should be removed with videos over xMB so that the user experience isnā€™t negative. @jocelyn

I think its the video that isnt made to stream, If you were to render it to be able to stream over the internet which would make more sense, If it were possible for storj to convert the video on the fly to be able to stream at a decent bitrate that would be awesome.

Its not the size that is the problem its the bitrate of the video that it just cant buffer fast enough to stream. I can try to re render the video so you can actually stream it easier.

It is not only the file extension but the video format is HEVC (H265) with variable frame-rate that is not suitable for streaming, the file needs to be downloaded first before playing.
You may want to use a free editor, such as Shotcut, to encode it to suitable format. Then it will play like this https://link.us1.storjshare.io/juwbutyn6mdjxableczjpa2jeigq/temp%2Fpocoyo.mp4

Thing is, if a 5GB video is over 60 minutes and has a streaming optimized format, it wonā€™t be a problem for the player at all. I donā€™t think there is a quick and easy way to make that determination though.

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No, there is not. Generally, videos produced by phones and videocameras are not streaming-friendly. Whereas when you export your video from your video editor, you may choose suitable format and settings.
In Shotcut you may use movflags=+faststart

Moves some data to the beginning of the file, allowing the video to be played before it is completely downloaded.

image

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hey there! @will.topping, curious to see if this would also happenwith a file like
https://link.us1.storjshare.io/jx2u5sqzo2he3degj4jhjxzam4va/video%2FBig%20Buck%20Bunny%20Demo.mp4 ?

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Played flawlessly for me, including reasonably quick forward and back scrubbing :slight_smile:

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worked fine for meā€¦ including scrubbing, not instant but a couple of seconds which is fine

generally i think @will.topping 's problem is related to the codec just like @xsys suggests.
the web player only supports a limited number of codecs and using others either doesnā€™t work, throws errors or results in poor performance.

been a few years while since i tinkered with those webplayers, but playing HEVC / H265 /X265 or whatever they are called is a must.
tho one should also keep in mind when using them that this class of codecs require a much larger amount of processing due to their 4D compression.
so often one is better of simply running the H264 class for interoperability.

you guys will have a ton of different video types uploaded, either the webplayer needs to support them all or you will need to offer conversion or transcoding or such.

H265 is an amazing encoding class thoā€¦ compared to H264, then H265 offers basically better quality and at half the required space which is very impressive, from what iā€™ve been able to get tinkering with it, iā€™m sure one could get better.

Thatā€™s what I think. They should make a deal with Videocoin.

What more do they need to do?

Yer this plays perfectly, so does seem to be the .mov native video format from iPhone.

Iā€™d still suggest doing something to improve the user experience tho. Eg remove video playback for this type of file over a few MB and only offer a download link or something more technical like others have suggested.

At the moment it just offers a bad user experience.

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well thats the problem with new products, can fix problems before one knows they existā€¦
iā€™m sure this is a very easy fix when they are aware of the problemā€¦
i mean itā€™s basically just a question of which webplayer is called to run the fileā€¦

Everyone except BrightSilence is completely missing the point. The file is on average 79 Mbps, this is significantly higher than a 1080p bluray movie. This is very likely to touch all of the limits. First of all, the format, like people have mentioned, but even then, it is a huge bitrate, any seeks needs significant buffering and bandwidth, and also the player would need to work with all this. Probably optimizations needed for these insane bitrates and/or different codec. It would need a couple of hundred Mbps bandwidth to be comfortably playable.

This is a mistake for me ā€¦:
FileShare is not the same as VideoShare ā€¦

Storj has to decide whether he wants to store files or deal with streaming media ā€¦

I think DCS was developed for storing files and that is the most important task

This is not about the web player. Itā€™s about how streaming video files are accessed and how the file is laid out. A file format optimized for streaming has video and audio tracks mixed in. So basically the file stores a bit of video, a bit of audio, the second bit of video, the second bit of audio etc. Traditional video files store audio tracks completely separate from video tracks. Then there is an informational area with media offsets information that functions as a sort of index. So a player would need to constantly jump from reading from one place in the file to another. This works perfectly fine on a local HDD or even network protocols like SMB, but it doesnā€™t work on the web at all. This is because it needs to basically download the entire file before it can start playing. Additionally, variable bitrate files are efficient for local storage, but very inefficient for streaming. The reason for this is that with a fixed bitrate, you donā€™t need to bother looking up the offset of a certain timestamp at all, you can just jump to the place in the file based on a relative byte offset.

Using a different player is not going to fix the problems with such a file. Thatā€™s not how it works.

And yeahā€¦ there is also the file size to think ofā€¦ which is ridiculous for the file discussed here. But I would bet that a much smaller file with similar layout would still not work until itā€™s almost completely downloaded and even then would probably break if you try to skip to a different part of the file. At the same time, a proper file format for streaming would probably work just fine even at this size, as long as the bandwidth is there to keep up with the bitrate.

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And here is the question - is a failed attempt to stream video for DCS a ā€œshot in the footā€?
Maybe Storj/DCS has to make restrictions? (like ā€¦ 0Printers.MOV?view)?:

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From a customers perspective Iā€™d say: If you cannot stream it, donā€™t offer a player to stream it.
Or transcode it and then stream it.

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Just use an appropriate format and a reasonable bitrate, although nothingā€™s stopping you from using an insane quality if it can play itā€¦
Additionally, I would put this as playerā€™s fault for the reason that if it cannot play the video, it should just say itā€™s unsupported instead of playing incorrectly. If it can play, then it should deal with multiple dislocated streams - assuming thereā€™s enough bandwidth.