Vimeo "Adaptive Streaming" ??
 

Is anyone as dissatisfied with the new Vimeo "Adaptive Streaming" as I am? Vimeo states this new "feature" alters the resolution to suit your current bandwidth, supposedly preventing buffering issues. I've found that all of my videos are now streamed at 360p, unless I opt to set it at 720p. However I notice that when I do set playback to 720p I have absolutely no buffering problems, making me think that Vimeo is simply trying to save their own bandwidth. Its unacceptable for me to have my videos viewed at what Vimeo decrees is the optimum resolution. I feel Vimeo is going to have a lot of unhappy paying subscribers who are having their videos viewed in 360p.

Re: Vimeo "Adaptive Streaming" ??
 

Yes, it's super annoying. At least now you can change the resolution, no?

Re: Vimeo "Adaptive Streaming" ??
 

Have they already implemented it? What I notice if vimeo video's are embedded on this forum they play at a low resolution on my pc and I need to go to vimeo to see them at a higher rez, only videos I embed on my own website play at a higher rez and also when I view them on my phone so there at least they seem unaffected.

Re: Vimeo "Adaptive Streaming" ??
 

Well I just noticed my videos default at 360p on my own website, that really suxs, as I understood the videos adapt to the device they are played on but they don't, my desktop pc is plenty fast but during playback they stay at soft 360p. You can change the quality but you need to click on the HD button to select a other resolution but I just had to write that on my website to notify my clients about that. After my vimeo contract has finished I"m looking for another provider.

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Noa
I contacted Vimeo about this and despite a few notes they just kept repeating how I can change resolution by clicking on the HD button. They refused to answer my concern about my friends seeing my videos that, despite my layout in good gear , are being seen by them in iPhone quality. When I insisted on them addressing this they just stopped responding. I think it's going to take a mass migration away from Vimeo to change this. I'm getting out too

Re: Vimeo "Adaptive Streaming" ??
 

I was a 'plus' member with Vimeo for about 5 years and didn't have any qualms about paying the $60/year to be able to upload and display HD videos or whatever it is.

I haven't renewed at the moment (as of November last year) and I'm not sure if I will. I'm just getting 'a bit over it all' with them.

Andrew

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This is getting ridiculous, I have been checking the playbackquality selected by the vimeo player over the past days at random times throughout the day on my business website, I have a fast computer and fast internetaccess, while I"m writing this it's 8 oclock in the evening and the playback quality has gone down to 270p.....making the IQ look like absolute crap, this morning it was 1080p and this afternoon went down to 720p.

Now if I select 1080p myself it is able to play at that quality as well though the buffer is barely keeping up, this is not good at all considering I can playback videos in 4K on youtube without an issue.

Re: Vimeo "Adaptive Streaming" ??
 

Noa,
That, to me anyway, suggests Vimeo is trying to limit bandwidth at peak times. Maybe they have struck a deal with their server people? Either way, Vimeo seems to be ignoring the need of their subscribers to have videos played at HD quality, even if it means a slight buffer delay. And if you can stream 4K from You Tube at the same time then that too suggests throttling.

Re: Vimeo "Adaptive Streaming" ??
 

The automatic playback quality starts getting a hit in the afternoon and it gets really worse during the most important part of the day, the evening. At that same moment youtube videos have no problem streaming up to 4K. I have reported this to vimeo and got a mail back, they wanted to know what pc I used, how fast my internet connection was (I had to perform a online speed test) , my pcscreen size and resolution and a link to my website and would have their technicians look into it. It almost looked they where trying to find a reason to tell me that either my pc and internet connection was too slow and my screen size had too much resolution but unfortunately for them they can't use these as an excuse. I"m curious if I will ever get a response back. In any case, the minimum quality I expect as standard is 720p, nothing less and for pc's and internetconnections that are up to it 1080p.

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I dropped my Vimeo Plus account more than two years ago because of the buffering problems in my area. It seemed HD videos on my website hosted by my Vimeo Plus site had to buffer almost always, but the exact, same HD videos hosted on my YouTube channel never did.

I also noticed that videos from other area videographer's Vimeo sites behaved the same way. Some of the other guys, including one really famous "rock star" wedding guy, went so far as to put instructions on their web sites about clicking and waiting for the videos (hosted on Vimeo) to buffer before hitting play.

I got tired of paying for something that didn't work as well as the free alternative. Ad's at the end of the video were less trouble than people (clients and prospective clients) not watching a video because it wouldn't play right for them. Plus, I learned how to turn the ad's off from YouTube hosted videos on my website.

I think Vimeo really is trying to deal with the buffering problems. They are throttling instead of investing in more and faster servers. It's cheaper, unless they lose too many paying customers, more than they lose due to buffering problem Just my opinion, but it makes sense when you think about it. Adaptive streaming sounds Orwellian NewSpeak for throttling.

Re: Vimeo "Adaptive Streaming" ??
 

My interaction was like talking to a stone wall....


Hi there,
Thanks for reaching out.
1. Our new adaptive streaming technology has been enabled for your account. As a result, is no longer necessary to default videos to HD on a viewer’s behalf. The best video quality will be selected adaptively for your viewers, based on his or her viewing environment. This means that if a viewer’s computer and Internet connection is able to handle HD video, they will receive that automatically (up to 4K!).
We know that this is quite a change from the old system, but we’re very excited about it: adaptive streaming means that all users will receive the best playback experience possible.
2. If the video you’re viewing looks less than stellar and would like to choose a higher quality for playback, you can do so by clicking on the “HD” toggle in the lower right-hand corner of the player. This will reveal a menu of quality options. Choose your preferred quality, and enjoy!
It’s important to note that higher qualities require faster network connections and better graphics processing ability. If you choose a quality beyond what your playback environment can handle, you will experience buffering delays and/or dropped frames.
Please let me know if you have any additional questions!
Sincerely,
Emily G


Message from Steven Davis:


I use smugmug to import my videos from Vimeo, since smugmug is my portfolio, for example, https://droptodesign.smugmug.com/Wed...ire-and-Andrew

What smugmug does though is; it will degrade the video based on connection. It's degraded for me even though I'm on 57/75 fios. I'm writing you because of your adaptive changes. If and I suspect when, the adaptive player is implemented, there will be two chances that the video quality will be degraded.

It's pretty exhausting to have the quality of your product be 'challenged' all the time. I'm trying to make a living for may family and the two video hosting partners I have aren't helping.

I love vimeo, but I can't hang around if vimeo can't help present my videos in the best quality. FYI, there's a lot of anxiety and disappointment in my media production circles, many professionals I know are not happy with the changes to VImeo.

I need some assurance that this adaptive change is not going to hurt my bottom line.

Re: Vimeo "Adaptive Streaming" ??
 

I dropped my web hosting down a notch because I was going to host my videos on Vimeo, plus, my smugmug account only allows Vimeo and Youtube.

What to do. This is crappy..

Re: Vimeo "Adaptive Streaming" ??
 

Well, you could see how well your SmugMug portfolio site works with YouTube. Here's the link to the help page for how to customize YouTube settings: https://support.google.com/youtube/t..._topic=4355169

Hope this helps. Videos play just as fast on my website as they do directly from YouTube. And the price is pretty good. Free!

Re: Vimeo "Adaptive Streaming" ??
 

Could you share how? That's one of the reasons why I have not switched to youtube yet.

Another disadvantage in using vimeo videos is how bad they seem to be in appearing in google. I have some older vimeo videos that are not private and even when entering the full title description in google they are nowhere to be found.

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Same here, Noa. I've noticed that my videos on Vimeo (when I was a paying customer until last November) ranked very poorly - if at all - on Google.

It's as if Vimeo isn't search engine friendly.

Andrew

Re: Vimeo "Adaptive Streaming" ??
 

I guess it's google's way to convince vimeo users to switch to youtube :)

Re: Vimeo "Adaptive Streaming" ??
 

Hi Noa. I really like your work. As for your question, here's a coding example from my site, which is a WordPress template based site. In the Wordpress editor for a given page on my site, I make the switch from the visual view to the text view. It reveals the embed code for the video, and lets me modify it

<iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/hRhQ83Ud7Eo?rel=0" width="640" height="360" frameborder="0"></iframe>

The key command you are interested in is the rel=0 switch right after the name of the video.

I'm not a web site developer, but I did some online searching and found out about the rel=0 switch that turns off playing other related videos when the player finishes playing my video.

I basically kept searching YouTube help topics and WordPress help topics until I found what I thought I needed. Then I did a little experimentation until everything looked the way I like it when the embedded video plays from my site.

Once I got the first video to play like I wanted it, I just cut and pasted multiple copies of that line of code, and changed the video ID (hRhQ83Ud7Eo) to the video ID of whichever video on my site I wanted next.

I haven't updated my site in quite a while, but the Portfolio Page of my little site is basically just several lines like the above example pasted one after the other, with whatever text descriptions I added too.

I hope this helps. Someone who is a lot better at web sites than me can probably explain it better than I can too. I'm just glad I got it working. If I had the finances, I'd hire a web guy to do a site for me. As it is, I have a one person business and do a lot by trial and error myself until things work out.

Re: Vimeo "Adaptive Streaming" ??
 

Thx Roger! Much appreciated. I have been using wordpress since version 2.3 so know my way around it. In 2 weeks time I have a wedding where I am going to try to embed the trailer like you described, then I also can follow up how it ranks in google.

Re: Vimeo "Adaptive Streaming" ??
 

Just ran across this, http://wistia.com/ Not sure how much it would be different since I haven't fully investigated it, but they do offer a free tryout.

Re: Vimeo "Adaptive Streaming" ??
 

I find Wistia pretty expensive but maybe you get what you pay for. Their free option though might be interesting to use as it allows 25 videos which would be sufficient for me.

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If Vimeo goes completely south, (that's bad as we say in America) then I might give youtube a whirl. I've always been leary of youtubes non professional look though. I could be wrong.

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Vimeo is more for the "artistic" people while I associate youtube more with teenagers that like to insult and videos with violent and disturbing content + lets not forget that google gets the rights to your videos as well. Only if you want your videos to get noticed it still is the place to be.

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I have tried videopress by wordpress today, it almost looked like it could become a replacement for vimeo but it had one big shortcoming which even the wordpress helpdesk didn't understand why that was, the thumbnail or the image that appears on your video before you press play is of a very low resolution and it's dimmed as well, basically looks like crap, too bad because everything else was very promising, even helpdesk was very helpful in trying to find a solution.

I have had several email conversations with vimeo about my bad default playback resolution, they said my videos (which are on their servers for months now) where not included yet in their adaptive streaming so they should play in a higher quality yet they don't...

I have another site now where I a few days ago uploaded a new video so that should be included in their adaptive streaming and I just checked and it defaults at 360p on my desktop pc with a fast internet connection, getting so fed up with this. I now included a message on the frame my clients see before they hit play, I mention they need to click the HD button for better playback quality, what a joke.

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Vimeo told me that you can force the video to do HD through a check box, but I guess that's not true. I agree, this is nuts, they are video streaming service. I can only guess that they are struggling financially and can't keep their servers up to date. I have some room on my web host, but man I hate coding anymore.

Re: Vimeo "Adaptive Streaming" ??
 

Vimeo outsources distribution to a Content Delivery Network, near as I can tell. I am thinking that wherever their front-end servers (like the gui, account management, etc.) are, they are also managed by someone else. Performance issues and the like are still a black eye for them, but it shouldn't be due to the age of the infrastructure that they are running on.

I will head on over to their support forum again to see what the buzz is there about this.

thanks,
Chip

Re: Vimeo "Adaptive Streaming" ??
 

Odd, the annual "I'm so gunna leave Vimeo!" thread was started early this year...

Re: Vimeo "Adaptive Streaming" ??
 

I am back to a plus account and don't see that option anymore, not sure how this now is for pro accounts; I"m still looking for a better alternative, I tried Wistia as well recently as they allow a limited amount of video to upload for free and tested it on a free wordpress account to see how the embed videos played, after a few testruns the video locked up and didn't load anymore, not sure what that was but have not found the time yet to do further testing.

Re: Vimeo "Adaptive Streaming" ??
 

In earlier posts in this thread I mentioned how I switched from Vimeo Plus to a free YouTube Channel. There were some issues at first. In one of those threads, I mentioned how to turn off the YouTube nextplay and suggested play stuff when embedding your YouTube videos to your website.

Another issue was the video thumbnails. Once my YouTube channel reached a certain number of views, custom thumbnails became available to me in the free account. So now I usually use a photograph or a graphic I create as the image for the thumbnail.

Another feature I like is the closed captioning. It's not too bad, at least for short videos, but you do need to get in their and edit the test some. But it's better than having to type in a whole transcript. You can also drag and drop, at least on a Windows system, from other applications. I've only used it as a test on one wedding, but it's useful for some of the corporate stuff I shoot also.

Edit: I also like YouTube's unlisted feature. I upload proxies with timecode for my corporate clients to review. These videos are hidden from search. Practically every device plays YouTube videos. Clients view on their tablets and phones. Very convenient for the client.

Finally, there's streaming now available. I get a lot of inquiries about that. My standard answer to the inquiries is you need really high bandwidth (upload, not download speed), and up to now, it's been something for the future for the clients that have asked me. However, 20gb, 50gb, and even 100 gb upload speeds are starting to appear in certain areas here (Lakeland Florida) area. So, digging into the YouTube help a bit more. Don't know why YouTube isn't more popular for pros. It has the tools...

Now, I'm not a YouTube fanboy, but all the stuff I've mentioned hasn't cost me a dime. Vimeo gave me substandard service and I had to pay monthly. And again, no buffering problem for me in this area at least on YouTube. Vimeo almost always had to buffer when I still used them. Maybe they've fixed it, but they've lost me as a customer until they at least match what their biggest competitor gives for free. And there is a lot available for those free YouTube channels.

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I still have youtube on my list but am searching and testing other solutions first, if nothing worth while will come up I will try youtube. The main reason that holds me back right now is that I read somewhere that and this is a quote from a text I found:

"YouTube always allows the owners to retain ownership of their work. But what they require in their terms of service is that you grant to YouTube a non-exclusive, worldwide, perpetual license to freely sub-license, re-distribute, re-publish, monetize, and whatever they may want to do with your video.
(Source: http://www.reelseo.com/youtube-copyright-ownership/#ixzz40Kwx6HbN)"

and this is the part I don't like that much because I would like to have control over where may work may be used and I am not sure in what ways youtube could use someones work.

Re: Vimeo "Adaptive Streaming" ??
 

And yet your YouTube links are streaming for me at 360p, which seems to be the point of contention here, so how exactly is that "better"?

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Forgot to add another point of concern which is advertismement inside your videos on youtube, is that also something you can choose not to appear?

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Hey Noa,

Advertising doesn't appear on the videos embedded on my site. I try to keep people on my site, so that's normally where I want them to watch the videos. I may take away the prominent links to the YouTube Channel itself on my site, at least on some of the pages. I want people to watch the videos on my site, with a few exceptions. The channel itself has many, many more unlisted videos than appear to a visitor. It's a place to host editing proxies (free hosting) for the clients. Also some stuff is hidden because of HIPAA regs and NDA's. My site needs updating. Too busy right now. The channel is a great work site, like the back room of the store where most of the stock is kept. Or a tool shed. The channel is very, very useful for my business. Clients watch the timecode proxies, and email me the editing changes with precise instructions. By the way, I've even tested watching the channel on our new smart tv we bought on Black Friday.

Hey Gary,

The embedded videos on my website play the size I specified in the player windows, which is 640 x 360. There is the settings button that looks like a gear. Only some of the videos were uploaded to YouTube at 1080P. There is a full screen button to play the videos full screen, and this is where I need to give you a big "Thank You!"

After reading your post, I did some checking on my site, and found that on a number of the videos I forgot to cut and paste the code: "allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" in the Wordpress settings for the embed. That's analogous to the cutting and pasting code I mentioned in an earlier post. There are a lot of options available, and I only went as far as I needed to go when I was working on the site to get the look I was wanting. When I get the time, my site badly needs updating, but I'm in a bit of a time crunch right now. Though I have cut back to mostly local clients, one of them has given me several jobs at out of town job sites for his company. So, spending more time than I would like driving back and forth to the jobs.

There have been about a dozen Wordpress updates since I last reworked the website, and thankfully none of the updates seem to have broken anything. YouTube and Wordpress play well with each other. There's a lot of flexibility in the way things can be setup. YouTube does well in my area. Don't know about Texas. Vimeo doesn't do well in my area, lots of stuttering, buffering problems. Plus, search is a big factor. Every single one of my new clients in the past 8 or 10 months found me doing a Google Search. YouTube seems to rank higher for Google (preferential treatment perhaps).

Again, don't know about Texas. I needed to go with the better choice for my situation. That's business.

Re: Vimeo "Adaptive Streaming" ??
 

Which is what adaptive streaming is trying to solve, but that's what bends those who sympathize with Scott Hiddelston out of shape. They'd rather force you to stream 1080 all the time even if it's choking on your bandwidth limitations. And Vimeo is trying to fix that for people like you, which is why they now have adaptive streaming.

I agree that Vimeo's search functionality is downright horrible. And YouTube clips do help you in Google search rankings.

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I agree with you Gary. Bandwidth is a big problem for everyone. Companies with real deep pockets, like Google/YouTube, can throw lots of financial resources at the problem, and build more and more, and bigger and bigger server farms. That's a huge competitive advantage. And I read somewhere that Google has started laying their own fiber too for entire towns.

When I get the time, I'd like to update my site. One photographer who has done a good job integrating his site with his YouTube channel is theslantedlens.com

I like his GIANT THUMBNAILS that link to the YouTube videos. I can do that on my site too, when I get the time. It's not hard. And there is a command to automatically play full screen HD too. Probably one for Wordpress sites like mine too. His might even be Wordpress for all I know.

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The reason why I asked was that the first video under your portfolio site does show an add around 00:15, it's marked with a yellow dot on the timeline when it appears, the rest of you video's don't have that. Is there an option to turn the ads of after you upload?

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I don't see a YouTube ad when I view it. Are you talking about the "ad" I embedded in the video itself for the client: "Happy 4th of July from Lakeland..." ? If so, it was my (lame) attempt to promote the event. But then again, the event did just about sell out. But not as a result of people watching that video. Not enough views. However, on my channel, I have a video from the event itself that has over 15 thousand views so far. (Oops, that's eleven thousand. Sorry. Way more views of that video than I'd ever expected).

Edit: Hey Noa, I do see it if I use FireFox!!! I guess my ad blocker on Chrome, my primary browser, blocked it. I'll take a look at the settings for that video and see if it's missing some code or something.

2nd Edit: Noa, I see what happened. YouTubes DRM manager has screwed up and mismatched my licensed, Smart Sound version of the Liberty Bell March with another music company's version of the same song. It says on the Video Manager page for my site that the copyrighted material has been monetized by the copyright holder. (The wrong copyright holder).

To get rid of the ads, I'll dispute the claim, I've done it before, and YouTube will remove the ad. It happens often with licensed versions of classical music, marching band music, etc. on YouTube. So many groups have copyrights on the same song, but a different performance or different variation...

Usually, it's just easier to leave the ad than to fill out the online form. One time years ago before YouTube had their current dispute process, I had to have SmartSound contact YouTube over Tchaikovski's Swan Lake, that I used in another video, the third one down on that same page. It's not a major issue anymore if you really do have a license for the music, but does take a little time (which can be in short supply during busy spells). Again, I've never had a major problem with this. Just click the link, insert the info about having a license, and YouTube has always taken care of it in a day or two.

3rd Edit: Noa, there is a setting to turn off ads on my YouTube Channel. It's under VIDEO MANAGER/ CHANNEL/ ADVANCED. There is a section of settings for Advertisements. The second choice is "Disable Interest Based Ads" which is a funny way of saying ads the algorithm thinks would interest people viewing your video.

Hope this helps. Sorry for the long post. There are a lot of settings for both my WordPress site and my YouTube site. Stuff just goes into my short term memory. I deal with the issues, figure out what the immediate issues, and move onto something more important that always pops up. Being a one person company, you know. :)

Re: Vimeo "Adaptive Streaming" ??
 

[QUOTE=Gary Huff;1909119]Which is what adaptive streaming is trying to solve, but that's what bends those who sympathize with Scott Hiddelston out of shape. They'd rather force you to stream 1080 all the time even if it's choking on your bandwidth limitations. And Vimeo is trying to fix that for people like you, which is why they now have adaptive streaming.

I'd argue with that. If Vimeo wants the best for their customers they would allow them to select whether their videos are viewed immediately at Vimeo's choice of resolution, or at a resolution the customer chooses with the caveat of buffering delays. That would have been easier to implement in my mind. My feeling is Vimeo is just trying to save bandwidth by duping customers and their clients. Other contributors to this discussion along with myself have clearly stated that our bandwidth is well beyond being capable of HD streaming. The chokepoint is at Vimeo, simple as that.

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So what you're saying is that you want Vimeo to display a message to your potential viewer: "Scott Hiddelston has set the default resolution as 1080, however your bandwidth may not support the bitrate necessary to support this resolution without buffering. Would you like to pick your own resolution?"

I don't want my end viewers seeing something that asinine.

Of course it is, which is options outside of Vimeo are more expensive or come with strings attached (YouTube). Vimeo is doing the best they can with the prices they have set, and you want to complain and compare apples oranges. What I hear is whining over nothing, just to give yourself something to be all rabble rabble over.

It's sad.

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We might not feel this way as much if Vimeo were a little more up-front about it.

Andrew

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Didn't see your edits until now. Don't be sorry for the long post, it's because of people like you that provide this helpful information that makes this forum worthwhile visiting.