video playback conundrum

[digitaldervish]

Hello all... this is an elusive problem I am trying to troubleshoot, and I'm hoping to get a few suggestions to work on as I've come to a dead end.

I have a video that I placed on a website and use a javascript to load the video on the same page and dim the background. The problem is the video has very choppy playback on 2 of the 4 computers I have tested it on. 3 are PC's, 1 is mac. The problems occurred with 2 of the PC's, and on Internet Explorer. Unfortunately, on the 2 computers I had brief access to, alternative browsers were not installed, so I couldn't check if playback was a problem for the video player or the browser.

So, I'm wondering if anyone can check the playback on their system and tell me if they have problems, and if they do, what you think the problem might be. The video is a 30 second commercial. And when I say jittery, I mean taking about 20-30 seconds to buffer when you hit play, then only playing about 1 frame every 10 seconds.

Here is the link: http://www.xaviergonzaleslaw.com/media.php

The link is at the top and reads "Watch English Version". The spanish video has the same problem, but I'm guessing fixing the english version will fix the spanish version as well.

Thanks in advance!!!:)

[Eye for Video]

OK, there are a number of things I noticed. First, yes, it does take a heck of a long time to begin the downloading. Most of the 20 to 30 second delay is NOT buffering but some other delay. Using a firewall like Zone Alarm lets you see when data is being transmitted, if you would like to verify this yourself.
Second, taking a look at the code for the player brings up a couple of questions:
Depending on the version of Media Player installed on the users machine, you may need:
clsid:22D6F312-B0F6-11D0-94AB-0080C74C7E95 for some of the older machines
clsid:6BF52A52-394A-11D3-B153-00C04F79FAA6 is correct for newer versions of player
But run a few test with the older class ID to see the effect.
Also the object type:
<object type="video/x-ms-wmv"
This is describing a Windows Streaming Server. If in fact you are using a streaming server to deliver this, it’s probably overkill and not working properly any way. You want this progressively downloaded from the server, which your’s eventually does. To verify, empty the temp Internet cache, visit the site, play video, check cache. It was downloaded and was not streamed. Removing the above <object type= from code didn’t really seem to help but here is a combination of no <object type= “…” and an older clsid which works fine:

<object classid="CLSID:22d6f312-b0f6-11d0-94ab-0080c74c7e95" codebase="http://www.microsoft.com/Windows/Downloads/Contents/MediaPlayer/" name="win_media_player" width="320" height="310" hspace="0" vspace="0" title="movie">
<param name="fileName" value="http://www.xaviergonzaleslaw.com/videos/criminalenglish.wmv" />
<param name="autostart" value="true" />
<param name="showstatusbar" value="true" />
<param name="PlayCount" value="5" />
<embed src="http://www.xaviergonzaleslaw.com/videos/criminalenglish.wmv" width="320" height="310" hspace="0" vspace="0" autostart="true" filename="http://www.xaviergonzaleslaw.com/videos/criminalenglish.wmv" name="win_media_player" playcount="5"></embed>
</object>
Begins download immediately and buffers for 2 to 4 seconds, then plays.
Something about the server and the code you are using is not working well together.
Now if I may, I’d like to comment on a couple more things. Once the viewer selects a video to play and the pop-up appears, the video should play without me having to press the “Play” button on the control. For some users the wait for buffering and the wait to figure out that they have to press “Play”, not just select a version, will be too much and they will close the window.
Also, the dimension of the video itself is not proportionally correct. While the player is set at a 4:3 ratio, it does not include the extra height needed to also display the controls and status bar. Add on 10 % or so, making the player 480 X 395 or so. Then fit the video into that, or else use a smaller player.
Typically Web video is displayed at 320 X 240, but your video is playing at a pretty high bitrate and could probably be set to play back at 480 X 360. But it looks like the video when created was set to display in wide screen (16:9 ratio) at about 300 X 170. However, not all the video was shot in a 16:9 format, it was shot in 4:3. The result is that the face of the Statue of Liberty and the images of the people are distorted, squished down and made to appear short and squat. Export your video in a size that fills the player screen or shrink the size of the player to fit the video.
If the original video clips come from two different sources, you must use same format sources and not mix them, 16:9 with 4:3.
Hope this has at least been of some help.
Eye for Video
www.cidigitalmedia.com

[digitaldervish]

Wow, thanks EFV!! That is an awesome reply, a tonne of good information in there! Unfortunately for some of your suggestions, I don't have access to the original video to do changes to things like the aspect ratio. The big black border is part of the original video as well and is something I really don't like. I have after effects and premiere, so I was thinking I should be able to fix some of these things, but the last crack I took at it, I couldn't figure out how to do it. And I'm not getting paid for that part, so I gave up on it.

I am trying a change to the classID, but I am also changing the method I was using to present the video. I was using JS to load the video on the same page. You are absolutely right though that when the user clicks to play the video, it should begin right away without having to click play. Unfortunately, if I set the videos to autoplay, they would begin playing right away as they exist on the page as soon as it loads; they just aren't displayed until the user clicks the link.

Won't be able to test if the classID thing worked, oh and I also changed they object type to x-oleobject per another tutorial I read. Maybe that will help too.

Thanks again for the info, you rock!!