Vimeo Video stuttering, buffering - gone?

[Larry Reavis]

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

The Encounter; and The Visit - Paramahansa Yogananda Teaches Me Kriya Yoga on Vimeo

.

Incidentally, a response a few minutes ago on another forum suggested that perhaps the new version of Adobe Flash Player is responsible for the improvement. But I don't think so - I'm still using an old version in this Linux/Ubuntu Firefox browser, and just a few days ago I still was having problems with Vimeo.

Request: 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 that video.

[Jeff Harper]

Sorry, it stutters for me just like all the rest of the videos I play on Vimeo. I'm thinking of switching places to post videos, just don't know where to go yet.

[Ian Stark]

Opposite for me! Got through first 6 or 7 minutes without a stutter!

[Gerald Webb]

All good here, loads faster than it plays.
I dont really get the issue,
Ive always found Vimeo 360p to be pretty much identical to Youtube 360p in the way it streams.
If you wanted to test, copy the URL and go to keepvid.com,
in your download manager it should say how fast its coming in,
do it for youtube and vimeo and compare results,
if your internet is the weak link, its going to be slow no matter where its coming from,
but,
if your net is fast, you should be able to tell which one, vimeo or youtube, has the slower servers.

[Victor Wilcox]

It's most likely an internet issue. I've been posting 1080p-24Mbps (which Vimeo streams as 720p) videos for over a year. I've had no stuttering a home where I have an at&t U-verse account (10 Mbps), but at work I get stuttering on their T1 line.

[David Rice]

I agree.

At 1.5-3 Mbps I get stutter.

At 5 Mbps or higher I get no stutter.

[Larry Reavis]

On another forum (Sony Creative Software - Forums - Vegas Pro - Video Messages) I floated the idea that maybe the speed of the web connection was the problem. Here's one response (edited):

". . . 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."

Others have suggested that maybe the newest version of Flash 10 gets credit for improved performance on Vimeo. But my Lunux/Firefox browser also shows no stutter on some videos (including mine), but I, too, still get stutter on others - and my Flash is the same that I started with (around 2 years ago - automatic updates don't happen for me in Linux).

Could it be that for some Vimeo viewers, the fact that I uploaded a file to Vimeo that is as close to their settings as possible (2500 kbps, 29.97 fps, x.264 codec - from Handbrake) makes it play smoothly? But if so, then why not for everyone?

@ Jeff Harper:

When the stuttering occurred, was the download cursor indicator ahead of the playback indicator?

I'm really stumped.

[Adam Stanislav]

Originally Posted by Larry Reavis

". . . 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

Low bandwidth is a function of a lot more than one’s download speed. A lot.

The Internet is not like an old-fashioned phone connection, where you used to be connected directly to the other phone over miles and miles of copper wire. The Internet is a packet system. Whatever you are downloading, whether a web page, email, or a video, is chopped up to small packets and sent to the servers of the ISP of whoever is sending it. The ISP then routes the packets through other ISPs. Not necessarily the same ISPs for every packet. Different parts of the video can (and generally do) travel over different paths until they reach your ISP. Some will travel fast, faster than the 20 Mbps (to use the quoted example), some slower. The 20 Mbps is only the local speed from your ISP to you.

Because of the way the packets are routed, they may not even arrive to you in the right order. Your system (Windows, Mac, Unix, etc) uses dedicated code called sockets. It is this code that reassembles the packets into their proper order, takes the data out of the packets, and finally delivers it to your player.

At any point along the many paths the packets take, delays can happen. The slowest of those paths is what determines the actual bandwidth. So, just because you have a high speed connection to your ISP does not mean the bandwidth is always as high as your connection to your ISP. It actually rarely is.

So, whoever it is that is not buying the slow bandwidth argument is only looking at the final leg of the connection and, with all due respect, is wrong about it.

[Larry Reavis]

@ Adam Stanislav

very interesting indeed. Thanks so much for the clarification.

I'd like to post this very informative response back on the Sony forum; do I have your permission? If so, would you prefer that I credit you with this information?

I notice that YouTube never stutters. Is that because they use a different system for distribution over the web?