Fan Network - The New Platform

[year1buick]

The up/down numbers a speed test site gives you won't necessarily indicate if your ISP is throttling or if something else is causing the player to go for a lower definition file (which is what that screen grab definitely looks like).

if you want to know which file you're getting (the higher resolution or lower one),

Run the FN player with the Brightcove Debugger open in another window of your browser.

http://admin.brightcove.com/viewer/BrightcoveDebugger.html

Then sift through what the Debugger file says and see if you notice it buffering then loading a different resolution file for playback.

This is what did to trouble shoot with the FN tech when I did what I was talking about in my previous post because my player was often getting stuck going back and forth between thinking "hey this bandwidth can do the high resolution file" then "whoops no, fishing up the low definition file so you can at least see something" ... "Hey this bandwidth can do the high..." and so forth and I'd end up with endless buffering.

Thanks for the info, I'll have to try that out.

[Pete Freedman]

I wouldn't assume that the archives get little use just because DCI doesn't promote it. I can't imagine most people paying $70, watching a few shows during the summer, but not watching older material. Drum corps fans are fans of drum corps performances, so they probably watch them a lot. I'm not saying they don't care about the current season, but everyone talks about the old shows, so they probably watch them.

DCI, on the other hand, probably thinks in terms of what's happening now, and what they are actually doing; they are arranging the logistics, judges, and selling tickets for shows coming up. For DCI, drum corps is a series of events they are responsible for selling and making work. So that's what they promote. I doubt they are basing the marketing balance on what the fans actually watch. They are a bureaucracy after all,

What would they say anyway? "Oh, and don't forget the archive that you, um, already know about..."

I totally agree they should promote the archive. But then again, they should promote drum corps.

[KVG_DC]

So can you confirm that the lower file is use more recently?

I use a iPhone 3GS which wouldn't notice the difference. Still, I aspire to view it on hi resolution again one day. Someday ...

1. I've not had the issue I had before crop up in some time.

2. Just ran Phantom 2010, Bluecoats 2014, and BAC 2014 through with the debugger running. The gobbledygook coming up seems a bit different than before so they might have tweaked some things between then and now.

3. It does seem to pull up a high resolution file. You'll see something like this crop up when its trying to switch. (it was switching around as I fiddled with window size and flipped tabs to type this and other malarky to attempt to annoy it into doing something for me.)

lc0.20059111388400197	QoS Blacklist Violation: Possible future blacklisting of rendition due to frame drops: (encodingRate) 3627.798; (video dim) 1248 x 700; (player dim) 640 x 360	23:23:11	unknown	DEBUG	MEDIA

lc0.20059111388400197	Attempting to change rendition that the player expects to play from (3627798b/s, 1248x700) to (2627798b/s, 1248x700)	23:23:12	unknown	DEBUG	MEDIA

4. I notice when going full screen, the High Camera seems a bit more grainy, but not to the degree that screen grab was! That might be more a limitation of a camera to capture that many pixels from that far away.

[Jeff Ream]

I wouldn't assume that the archives get little use just because DCI doesn't promote it. I can't imagine most people paying $70, watching a few shows during the summer, but not watching older material. Drum corps fans are fans of drum corps performances, so they probably watch them a lot. I'm not saying they don't care about the current season, but everyone talks about the old shows, so they probably watch them.

DCI, on the other hand, probably thinks in terms of what's happening now, and what they are actually doing; they are arranging the logistics, judges, and selling tickets for shows coming up. For DCI, drum corps is a series of events they are responsible for selling and making work. So that's what they promote. I doubt they are basing the marketing balance on what the fans actually watch. They are a bureaucracy after all,

What would they say anyway? "Oh, and don't forget the archive that you, um, already know about..."

I totally agree they should promote the archive. But then again, they should promote drum corps.

DCI can track what is watched and how much. I'm pretty sure they have an accurate on what is and isn't watched and how much activity is summer vs. offseason.

Remember in 2013 for finals, DCI told the provider to expect a certain number of viewers, and the provider wouldn't believe them, and voila, freezes, skips, you name it all night on finals night.

in 2014, the provider listened and I had not one skip or freeze the whole night. easily the best view I had all summer

[Pete Freedman]

DCI can track what is watched and how much. I'm pretty sure they have an accurate on what is and isn't watched and how much activity is summer vs. offseason.

Remember in 2013 for finals, DCI told the provider to expect a certain number of viewers, and the provider wouldn't believe them, and voila, freezes, skips, you name it all night on finals night.

in 2014, the provider listened and I had not one skip or freeze the whole night. easily the best view I had all summer

I have no doubt they record that data; I just don't believe they would necessarily market accordingly.

[Pete Freedman]

1. I've not had the issue I had before crop up in some time.

2. Just ran Phantom 2010, Bluecoats 2014, and BAC 2014 through with the debugger running. The gobbledygook coming up seems a bit different than before so they might have tweaked some things between then and now.

3. It does seem to pull up a high resolution file. You'll see something like this crop up when its trying to switch. (it was switching around as I fiddled with window size and flipped tabs to type this and other malarky to attempt to annoy it into doing something for me.)

lc0.20059111388400197	QoS Blacklist Violation: Possible future blacklisting of rendition due to frame drops: (encodingRate) 3627.798; (video dim) 1248 x 700; (player dim) 640 x 360	23:23:11	unknown	DEBUG	MEDIA

lc0.20059111388400197	Attempting to change rendition that the player expects to play from (3627798b/s, 1248x700) to (2627798b/s, 1248x700)	23:23:12	unknown	DEBUG	MEDIA

4. I notice when going full screen, the High Camera seems a bit more grainy, but not to the degree that screen grab was! That might be more a limitation of a camera to capture that many pixels from that far away.

Thanks for the info. I would hope the camera could capture every pixel.

Maybe Brightcove could point people to some free Brightcove sites (or a demo of their own if there are no free ones) to help narrow down where the problem is.

[cixelsyd]

I wouldn't assume that the archives get little use just because DCI doesn't promote it. I can't imagine most people paying $70, watching a few shows during the summer, but not watching older material. Drum corps fans are fans of drum corps performances, so they probably watch them a lot. I'm not saying they don't care about the current season, but everyone talks about the old shows, so they probably watch them.

DCI, on the other hand, probably thinks in terms of what's happening now, and what they are actually doing; they are arranging the logistics, judges, and selling tickets for shows coming up. For DCI, drum corps is a series of events they are responsible for selling and making work. So that's what they promote. I doubt they are basing the marketing balance on what the fans actually watch. They are a bureaucracy after all,

What would they say anyway? "Oh, and don't forget the archive that you, um, already know about..."

There are any number of things DCI could do to stir the pot. They could upgrade the quality of the finals video currently available. They could add high-cam vs. multi-cam in some years. In the 80s, 90s and a few other years, they have many more corps video-recorded that could be made available instead of just the top 12.

There are different ways to add this material. Dump it all online at once in a massive subscription drive. Add a year at a time, to drive traffic to the site over and over. Make material available on-demand for a limited time only, to keep the attention of legacy fans who do not want to miss out on a specific corps. Or instead of on-demand, stream some otherwise unavailable archival videos periodically to keep driving traffic to the site at times of their choosing.

And that is just video. We have not even mentioned audio.

[perc2100]

Yes, yes I do. And I have a shrink-wrapped Sony Betamax that still plays like new.

Several early years were available on BETA. I have 1986 Finals (that's FOUR tapes!), 1987, and 1988 on BETA. I switched to VHS in 1989. I also made BETA recording of many of the PBS broadcasts beginning the first year of broadcast. I bought the Legacy collection just for the ease of not having to set up the tape machines, and the BlueRay quality of the Legacy shows is superb (and the audio is immensely better, too).

Just today I gave all of my old finals vinyl albums to a friend to scrub to CD. Gosh, they go back to the mid-1970's and the USOpen (on vinyl!).

1) I am, for some reason, SHOCKED that DCI has available on Beta! Are they originally sold-by-DCI Beta tapes, or did you convert VHS (or TV?) recordings to Beta? I'm a format junky, and even though I'm relatively young (aged-out in 1998) I've pretty much owned all of the various video formats (I still own/use a Laser Disc player, though now drum corps was released on that format that I'm aware of). I do have several DCI audio recordings on mini-disc, which were duped from tapes or records before the ease of mp3 or CD burning/copying.

2) I will argue with anyone that Beta = the superior format to VHS, but VHS had the financial support and commitment from studios that Beta never enjoyed, and thus was trampled when customers couldn't buy/rent all of the updated movies on Beta that they could on VHS (though it was awesome to go into video rental stores and rent Beta when all the VHS copies were out-of-stock)

3) I don't mean to pick nits, but with the bold above did you meant 'DVD quality of the Legacy shows?' I don't think DCI sells the Legacy recordings on BluRay, unless you mean the 'Essentials' collection (which I 100% agree the audio & video of those discs, at least the 'Champions' volumes I own, are pretty off-the-hook).

I'm an audio snob, and while I'm sure the modern CD's are recorded and mastered MUCH better than the old school records were in the 70s and 80s, I would probably still prefer to listen to the vinyl than duped CD if I had the choice. The vinyl records really made those older shows sound warm, while I think the CD remasters/dupes/whatever (the official CD recordings sold by corps) kind of make the corps sound bright and tinny. No doubt that might have been part of the characteristic sound, but IMO the vinyl helped make those corps' sound probably closer to the live experience than the more sterile CD's or mp3s.

** NOTE **

Yes, I am aware of the goofy way this discussion was turned, as I am bummed about DCI's loss of legacy shows on FN and we're talking about DCI FN moving to an updated platform while I hype the virtues of formats that are long-since dead.

[perc2100]

I wouldn't assume that the archives get little use just because DCI doesn't promote it. I can't imagine most people paying $70, watching a few shows during the summer, but not watching older material. Drum corps fans are fans of drum corps performances, so they probably watch them a lot. I'm not saying they don't care about the current season, but everyone talks about the old shows, so they probably watch them.

DCI, on the other hand, probably thinks in terms of what's happening now, and what they are actually doing; they are arranging the logistics, judges, and selling tickets for shows coming up. For DCI, drum corps is a series of events they are responsible for selling and making work. So that's what they promote. I doubt they are basing the marketing balance on what the fans actually watch. They are a bureaucracy after all,

What would they say anyway? "Oh, and don't forget the archive that you, um, already know about..."

I totally agree they should promote the archive. But then again, they should promote drum corps.

IDK, it depends on who the average customer is. If the average customer are people like you and I, who lived 'Legacy' drum corps as fans and/or members, then the average customer would likely watch maybe as much old streaming shows in the off-season as current and live streaming shows in the summer.

If the average customer is friends/family or casual fans who know someone marching or teaching, or want to stay current on marching trends, then I can see them mostly watching stuff over the summer and not a lot of old school stuff. Or maybe if there are Legacy fans who own plenty of old school stuff on DVD/VHS (or Beta, Garfield) and doesn't need to spend a lot of time watching old shows because they can bust out their own media and not have to deal with lossy, inferior streaming.

[perc2100]

There are any number of things DCI could do to stir the pot. They could upgrade the quality of the finals video currently available. They could add high-cam vs. multi-cam in some years. In the 80s, 90s and a few other years, they have many more corps video-recorded that could be made available instead of just the top 12.

There are different ways to add this material. Dump it all online at once in a massive subscription drive. Add a year at a time, to drive traffic to the site over and over. Make material available on-demand for a limited time only, to keep the attention of legacy fans who do not want to miss out on a specific corps. Or instead of on-demand, stream some otherwise unavailable archival videos periodically to keep driving traffic to the site at times of their choosing.

And that is just video. We have not even mentioned audio.

Interesting ideas. They could play the Netflix Instant/Disney game, where certain years or performances are available for a certain time and then pulled ("put in the vault" as Disney would say). That would be a good way to maybe drive traffic on a regular basis: if they had adds on the pages (not in the video, but maybe a banner ad) that could potential add revenue. It would also make things more interesting for fans, and maybe keep the site relevant year-round instead of customers thinking, "oh yeah: I can watch old drum corps" in March or something.