OT: my new website - help needed

[Larry Reavis]

Feeling guilty about having hijacked the thread on BCC7 (http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/what-hap...7-64bit-3.html). I'm starting this thread to ask for help.

A couple of the participants in that thread noticed that the videos on my new website weren't playing; one in the U.K., and one in Australia.

I still have a few days to cancel the 10 years' payment that I made to GoDaddy if it turns out that I am so dissatisfied that I want out. I thought I'd better see if the GoDaddy servers are not serving up the videos very well elsewhere before my window for cancellation expires.

The website is:

Welcome

Do the videos play in your area? I'm grateful for any feedback you can give.

(edit: please click the "Full Screen" button)

(tech details: JW Player, 500kb/s .MP4 files from Handbrake - created in Vegas 8c, rendered to Cineform in 9e-64bits and from there to .MXF files for Handbrake in 9e-64bits, except for the BCC7 chromakeys which were done in Vegas 10c)

[Jeff Harper]

Larry if this is your first website well done for a first attempt.

You didn't ask, but I suggest ridding your pages of the highlighting, it is the single most amateurish thing on the WWW, other than animated gifs, which thankfully you are not using. It's like using ALL CAPS AND IS A HUGE TURNOFF, also similar to using excessive exclamation points!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

For color change the background, but for your site black on white background is ideal for an informational type thing like yours.

On the videos, on the 1 the Encounter page, there is no video, only a link to a video and a download link.

Your video should be embedded on the 1 The Encounter page.

So when I am on the home page, and click on the link below home page, there should be a video there.

Your navigation and structure leave a bit to be desired.

I strongly suspect it is the navigation that people are having trouble with, not the video playing. Go Daddy is plenty fine, a huge company. Ten years seem excessive, I pay $11 a month on a quarterly basis to Yahoo. I suppose you did ten years for a cost savings, but it still seems like too much.

[Mike Kujbida]

No problems with full screen playback in Windsor Ontario even if I jumped all around the timeline.

[Adam Stanislav]

Larry, I would not be too quick in blaming this on your web host. There is something seriously wrong with whatever software you are using to play your video in your web page. When I click on your video, it tells me there is no disc in drive B (that is my BD/DVD drive). When I click cancel, it starts playing (though the audio is really bad). If I then click on the "full screen" button, once again it says there is no disc in drive B. And this time clicking cancel does not help, it just locks up my browser.

This happened back when you first posted the link to your video, but I did not say anything back then. I just tried it and got the same problem again. Why on Earth would your video player care whether there is a disc in my BD/DVD drive?

[Dale Guthormsen]

good afternoon,

They play here in Canada.

[Larry Reavis]

You guys are the greatest - and fast (I resisted the temptation to make "fast" bold, and add an exclamation point).

Outstanding suggestions all.

My 1-encounter page will have a longer version posted eventually, along with the 7-min version; it requires a second click at the moment so that I will be able to give viewers a choice of which version they want to watch. The 2-visit page already has a pair of videos and eventually will have 4 (a third is about ready for posting), plus options to download the files instead of playing them in the player.
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"When I click on your video, it tells me there is no disc in drive B"
Truly weird. . . I never would have guessed that such a thing would even be possible.
I'm using JW Player, but a new version was posted just day before yesterday. I'll give it a go to see if that helps. If anyone has a clue, I'm all ears. I hope to be able to keep JW Player, for (a) it is free for non-commercial use, and (b) it will automatically switch to HTML5 for players that can't play Flash (or won't - thanks, Apple).
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"I suggest ridding your pages of the highlighting"
Would you keep the highlighting for links?
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"I suppose you did ten years for a cost savings"
Partly - I pay a little less than $7, unlimited space and bandwidth, Terms and Conditions that I was looking for. But the main reason is that, at my age, I may not be here 10 years from now and I wanted my grandkids and others to be able to watch them after I've moved on.
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"I strongly suspect it is the navigation that people are having trouble with, not the video playing"
One of the two who was having problems said it would start but buffer a lot, the other said it would just buffer for a long time. The latter also said that the download option took much longer than it should have for a file of only 63 mb. So it seems that they were able to navigate OK - but the connections was slow for some reason.
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Again, with my sincere respect and gratitude, thanks - Larry

[Jeff Harper]

Larry, regarding highlighting links, the links will be underlined or bolded anyway. People scan pages looking for links automatically, so they'll see them.

I understand about the video now, the problem is either on their end, or GoDaddy has limited speed for downloads with your type of account, I don't know. Don't know of such a thing, but that would be something you should ask them. Tell the problem and see what they say.

[Larry Reavis]

@ Jeff Harper
Good point regarding links. I think I do tend to overuse highlighted text - will fix. Thanks

"the problem is either on their end, or GoDaddy has limited speed for downloads"
One of the respondents on the other thread informed me that he had a very speedy connection and seemed to be having trouble especially with GoDaddy.

Here in CA, GoDaddy seems speedy; and both Dale and Mike in this thread report good performance too.

Even in Bangkok, Thailand, I was told that the videos were playing well (on another forum). Really a puzzle - there seems to be no pattern that I can discern.

So far GoDaddy has been very good in responding to tech support questions. Seeing that there are some new problems identified in this thread, I'll indeed contact them as soon as I get a bit more feedback so that I can assess the scope of all the problems (I hope that those who are getting good playback also respond so that I can get a feel for how widespread the problems are).
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@ Adam Stanislav:
What browser and OS were you using when you got the weird "no disk in Drive B" error message?

[Jeff Harper]

Larry, regarding layout, you need no highlights, but instead a simple easy to read page.

Some basic rules of publishing, web design, of which I'm only marginally familiar with myself, include:

1. Serif style fonts (time new roman, etc) are for text body, never heading or titles.

2. Your text should, for the most part be uniform in font size, with a minimum of bolding, underlining and even more rarely, highlighting. Highlighting is for special situations, none of which are called for here.

Try the layout I've attached, do it with no highlighting, just to see how it looks. Save the page under a name like "experiment" so you can view it without publishing it.

Your fonts, unless embedded in your page, should be fonts that ALL your readers will have. Two classics are Arial and Times New Roman; Arial for your headings, and then you could use Times New Roman for the body.

If you absolutely cannot live without color, use the lightest shade of gray or blue, etc as a background for the page, and keep it consistent throughout.

This will make for an easy to read site that is more appealing.

[Larry Reavis]

I've made changes in the directions that you indicate - will make more.

I don't know why I used a serif font for the heading. My main source of income is from a technical book, and rule #1 for such a book is Helvetica (like Arial) and Times (like TNR; I use these because they are Adobe fonts, demanded by commercial print shops where we get the books printed).

You can see the changes I've made so far only on the portal page:

Welcome

Incidentally, I just noticed you list Columbus as one of your locations. I got my Ph.D. from Ohio State, so hold fond memories of the place. I haven't been back for a couple of decades, so I presume it has changed. I lived at 3370 Trabue Rd., in a little trailer with my wife while I was in grad school. Back then it was very pretty, with so many large evergreen trees that you could hardly see the little aluminum trailers. I presume that trailer park has been swept away with time . . .

[Jeff Harper]

Nice changes, with the headings it will look great.

Out Trabue way there have been many changes, but you were pretty far out there, not completely familiar with that area.

I have lived in Upper Arlington, two different times, right off of King Ave. Grandview, Arlington, OSU, great places. You wouldn't believe OSU, between 9th and High St and Chittenden everything on both sides of high street was razed, and a sophisticated type shopping district with mulitplex theatres and good restauants were built. Papa Joe's is long gone, as is the Southberg, the Travel Agency and all of that. Magnolia Thunderpussy records is now located at fourth and high, still doing great.

Short north, 5th and high to downtown is now completely upscale art houses, great restaurants, and archways that line the streets. It is very nice.

I grew up near osu at 6th and Neil, and OSU was our playground. During the summers circa 1967 we ran around the campus, the buildings were unlocked, and we had total run of the campus. Mirror Lake, Orton Hall, the Museum on high st., good times.

[Adam Stanislav]

Originally Posted by Larry Reavis

What browser and OS were you using when you got the weird "no disk in Drive B" error message?

Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bits. I use the Opera browser. The first time this happened, my browser locked up so hard, I had to press the power-down button of my computer. I tried again after the reboot and had the same result. If I recall correctly, after the second reboot I tried Internet Explorer and had similar problems.

I tried this morning (before I mentioned it here) with Opera with the result I mentioned above. Just now, I decided to try again with Internet Explorer and was able to watch your entire video (in full screen). At one point I needed to take a break, so I clicked the pause button and it brought up something asking me to comment or something like that. After the break, I clicked on the little x in the upper left corner of that. The video then resumed at the place I had interrupted it.

There was no problem with the streaming speed. So, there is nothing wrong with your web host. If at some parts of the world the streaming is slow, it is not caused by your host. If it was, we all would have problems watching your video. Your web host (any of them) is only in charge of streaming it out to whatever network it is connected to. It is the ISP of those receiving your videos (and any other content) that controls the routing between the web browser and your host. The ISP has agreements with other networks (i.e., other ISPs) and if any of those networks has speed problems, the web browser will have speed problems no matter how fast your web host is.

I also happen to know that GoDaddy uses quality servers because one of my businesses is as a reseller for the same people GoDaddy is a reseller for (so we both sell hosting on the same servers) and I have never had any complaints from any of my customers. I am competing with GoDaddy, so I have no financial interest to tell you to stick with them for the next ten years. But that is how the Internet works. The web host has the same speed regardless of the destination. But the ISP and the intervening networks can slow it all down, and they would no matter who you are hosting with. The only way around it is by using a Content Distribution Network (i.e., having servers all over the world), which is much more expensive. Only big players with a lot of content use those (e.g., YouTube).

[Ian Stark]

I tend to agree with Adam.

When I first tried to play your video (through the other thread) it just would not load. When you then mentioned GoDaddy I was surprised. When I subsequently tried to view the video from its second location I still had problems. Adam's logic seems sound when he suggests it isn't an issue with GoDaddy.

[Larry Reavis]

@ Ian and Adam:
Thanks for the invaluable information. I guess if I'm looking for a perfect world I'm on the wrong planet.

@ Jeff:
"During the summers circa 1967 we ran around the campus,"

Really? Could be we crossed paths. I got my degree in '67. Small world.

[Chris Hurd]

No idea why this was posted to Sony Vegas. Moved to TOTEM.