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why are my videos so slow?

by perryny
14 replies
I've moved all of my videos to Amazon s3. They're mp4 files and not very big (I think... a 7:21 video is 61MB).

I'm completely new to S3, but as far as I'm aware, download performance is definitely not an issue with them. And my initial google searches trying to troubleshoot this isn't turning up a lot of people experiencing similar issues.

I have no idea how to begin troubleshooting this or where to look first.

Any ideas?

-Rob
#slow #videos
  • Profile picture of the author RGallowitz
    Hi Rob

    Are you using their cloudfront cluster solution? That makes the videos load so much faster than just the normal service.

    Also, you should realise that S3 does not compress your videos at all. So if you have massive file sizes then it's obviously going to lag a bit.

    Reinhardt
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    • Profile picture of the author perryny
      I'm not using their cloudfront cluster solution as far as I'm aware, but I'll check it out.

      But I'm not thinking that's the issue, as several videos are basically just "hanging". If the basic service was this bad, then I'm sure there would be plenty of complaints to be found. And I'm not finding 'em.

      Is a 61MB file size for a 7:21 min. video a "large" file?
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  • Profile picture of the author RGallowitz
    No I don't think it's a large file, BUT all my vids (up to 15 minutes a vid) are below 40mb. Even if S3 is fast, a user with a average connection won't be able to watch it fluidly.

    However, the cloudfront solution makes a massive difference. I saw a difference in like 12hours once everything was set to work with cloud front.

    I use Ezs3 by the way.
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  • Profile picture of the author fthomas137
    61MB for 7 minutes of video is quite large. That works out to 8MBytes per minute or 1.45MBits per second. That would max out a standard high speed dsl connection for sure.

    For 7 minutes, you should be trying to get your video sizes down to about 12MB for your 7 min video.

    Frank
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    • Profile picture of the author perryny
      Oh wow. I had no idea they were so large. Compared to what I rememer my old video sizes being, I thought the mp4 compression got them down pretty good.

      Bummer. I hate to have to go back and reprocess all of these.

      Just signed up with Cloudfront. Trying to figure out now if there's anything I need to do myself, or if it's all kicks in automatically.
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  • Profile picture of the author RGallowitz
    Go through the tutorials. I think there are like only 2 videos on cloudfront.
    You simply have to copy your videos over to cloudfront (everything happens on s3).

    I'll still drop my video file sizes if I where you. You'll have lightning fast speeds then.

    Reinhardt
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  • Profile picture of the author kmonster
    You also have to remember with fast video presentations using a content delivery network or CDN will greatly improve the performance. Not quite sure what your budget is, but CDN is used by most video delivery networks.
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  • Profile picture of the author perryny
    Ugg....

    I setup CloudFront and now I've got no videos. Trying to work with Amazon's support, but they seem slow to respond. I'm trying to find those tutorial videos, but having a hard time with that too.

    This was definitetly not on my agenda for today...
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  • Profile picture of the author perryny
    Found the tutorial. Watching now...
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  • Profile picture of the author Sirago
    I'd look into compressing that video to make it smaller. 61MB isn't small...
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  • Profile picture of the author Josh Anderson
    When you say "slow" what do you mean?

    Are these "streaming" videos delivered in a progressive download player?

    If you are talking about the time it takes your video to load and play in a player...

    There are only two things that effect that... the bit rate of the video and the buffer setting on the player (if it has one).

    In other words... I could have a video that was 10 gigabytes and I could still make it play within seconds of you landing on my site if I have optimized the bit rate and buffer settings on the player ;-)
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    • Profile picture of the author Frank Tocco
      In other words... I could have a video that was 10 gigabytes
      and I could still make it play within seconds of you landing on my site
      if I have optimized the bit rate and buffer settings on the player ;-)
      So how do you optimize the bit rate and buffer settings
      on a player like Windows Media Player?
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      • Profile picture of the author Josh Anderson
        Originally Posted by Frank Tocco View Post

        So how do you optimize the bit rate and buffer settings
        on a player like Windows Media Player?
        Why would you?

        Anyone who publishes windows media for streaming online needs to get their head checked.

        Use a flash based player.

        However, if a windows media based player had a setting for controlling the buffer time, like most professional flash based players do, then you just set your buffer time to as low as you want it and encode your video at a bit rate low enough to target the average speed of your target market.

        The concept is simple... encode your video at a bit rate lower than the average internet speed of your target market and then you can set your buffer time to as little as 3 seconds...

        Heck I even set my buffer times to 1 second because I optimize all my videos.

        File size does not matter if you have a professional video player that gives you a buffer time control and if you optimize the bit rate of your video to be lower than the average speed of your target market's internet connection.

        I teach this stuff in pretty much all my packages and of course we have developed several professional video player solutions which are found in my sig... but there are literally hundreds of players available on the net that provide buffering both free and paid.
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  • Profile picture of the author RentItNow
    You can also bring your frame rate down to get size down especially if it is just a desktop capture vid.
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