Vimeo "Adaptive Streaming" ??

[Scott Hiddelston]

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.

[Dmitri Zigany]

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

[Noa Put]

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.

[Noa Put]

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.

[Scott Hiddelston]

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

[Andrew Smith]

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

[Noa Put]

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.

[Scott Hiddelston]

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.

[Noa Put]

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.

[Roger Van Duyn]

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.

[Steven Davis]

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.

[Steven Davis]

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..

[Roger Van Duyn]

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!

[Noa Put]

Originally Posted by Roger Van Duyn

Plus, I learned how to turn the ad's off from YouTube hosted videos on my website.

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.

[Andrew Smith]

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