New encoding implementation

[Guest_yolise_*]

Hi Pioneers,

We've recently re-implemented encoding.com integration with the community website. This means that when you upload a movie, it first goes through the default local encoding and a holding flv is put in place. Meanwhile, your original file is sent on to encoding.com for conversion to flv using their on2V6 encoding (a higher quality encoding algorithm that should eliminate the sound synch issues you've been seeing as well as providing better quality images and support more codecs).

You'll also find that clicking the "download" link under the player lets you download the original file (rather than the flv).

And finally, you can now go to My Movies->Edit Movie and actually change the uploaded file without losing your views, comments or ratings.

After much toing and froing and a few false starts, we're pretty sure it's all working as it should, but we'd like a little more peace of mind before announcing this to the wider public!

If you could give the new system a go - particularly anyone who previously had sound synch issues - we'd really appreciate it. Let us know if you have any problems and if it actually does improve the quality!

A few things that are not yet implemented:

1. Error reporting. Hopefully you won't get any, but when this is implemented, you will get an email saying exactly what went wrong with the conversion.

2. Notification when movies are finished with their high quality conversion.

3. Progress bar when uploading isn't working. It's possible it never has - I have had bug reports, but not on all browsers!

4. High quality encoding of uploads from within the Moviestorm client isn't working (we don't think!). We're not sure why! It does go through local encoding fine, however...

Good luck and thanks!

Lisa

[lucindamc123]

Great, I have a movie I made a few months ago but somehow didn't upload it to the new website. So I will upload it now. I have a high quality, hi res version of it too. And I redid the music and a lot of the animation.

[lucindamc123]

It has been trying to upload for about 30 minutes now but as you said the progress bar doesn't work. This is only a 76 Mg file so it should upload faster than 30 minutes. Well just checked and it says it uploaded it. So we shall se.

[lucindamc123]

Success!. Words is now playing:

[Guest_yolise_*]

Glad it worked, Lucinda.

Like I said, the progress bar doesn't work - but only the visual aspect of it. You should still see numerical progress (25%, 30%, etc).

[sisch]

I re-uploaded "The Afflicted" - the good news is, the sound is in synch now!
I couldn't see the upload bar either (I'm on FF).

One thing that still isn't working is the aspect-ratio when you try to watch a film full screen - full screen mode cuts off considerable chunks left and right. Or maybe I'm just too blind to find the scaling option??

[Guest_yolise_*]

I re-uploaded "The Afflicted" - the good news is, the sound is in synch now!
I couldn't see the upload bar either (I'm on FF).

Yay for the sound sunching (I watched your movie to see if it was working properly, in fact - very nice!)

yeah - progress bar is broken on all browsers, sadly. Mysteriously.

One thing that still isn't working is the aspect-ratio when you try to watch a film full screen - full screen mode cuts off considerable chunks left and right. Or maybe I'm just too blind to find the scaling option??

Ah yes - that's another bug I need to get fixed. We have to go to the third party suppliers for that though.

[Poulet Noir]

Yay, it's great that we can now update films: I've updated Incarcerated to widescreen

A couple of questions, though: currently (~10 hrs after updating) the movie length is given as 00:00... will that change once the movie goes through its 2nd-stage 'proper' encoding? There are no poster options (yet) either.

Apart from that, though, great steps forward! Keep up the good work!

PN

[Guest_yolise_*]

Yay, it's great that we can now update films: I've updated Incarcerated to widescreen

A couple of questions, though: currently (~10 hrs after updating) the movie length is given as 00:00... will that change once the movie goes through its 2nd-stage 'proper' encoding? There are no poster options (yet) either.

Apart from that, though, great steps forward! Keep up the good work!

PN

Poulet Noir,

Your movie has gone through *only* the second stage encoding. You can tell this because there is no screenshot. What has occurred is that our local encoder could not handle the particular codec you've used. The first pass is the one that generates the screenshots and, presumably, gathers the movie length data.

Fixing this is on our second pass of the implementation. We're hoping (but are not 100% sure) that encoding.com can generate screenshots.

What would be helpful would be to know exactly what codecs you used for Incarcerated.

The only way to resolve the screenshot/poster image in the short term is to do it again, using a different codec. It will still go through the second, high quality conversion, but hopefully will also manage the first!

Lisa

[Guest_yolise_*]

Short update:

Last night (21:53MST), encoding.com's servers went down and videos uploaded between then and now did not make their second encoding. This appears only to have affected one movie which is now re queued for conversion.

We're hoping this won't happen again, but it has indicated that we need to add yet another layer of error handling to the system which, we hope, will notify you if the second pass encoding is unavailable and put the file into a watch folder for re-queuing when the encoding.com servers come back up.

[Poulet Noir]

What would be helpful would be to know exactly what codecs you used for Incarcerated.

Lisa

Hi lisa,

According to Anyvideoconverter, the version I uploaded was wmv3 at 1000fps
I can't remember the suggested software for getting more specific details, but I'll track it down and see what it reckons.

I remember now having all sorts of trouble get the Omega files trailer to upload - took me half-a-dozen attempts in the end. Both, of course, exported by the free'n'moody Windows Movie Maker...


I'll use AVC to generate an flv version - and see how that gets on

PN

*EDIT* I've just downloaded gspot, which has listed a bazillion things which may actually mean something to you tecchie boffins at SFHQ. I used a screen-grab as it seemed the quickest, most accurate way of capturing all the info... lazy, but effective

*EDIT 2* Well, I suppose a movie length of 00:01 is better than 00:00, but still no posters! So the conversion to flv was pretty much a waste of time... see 2nd attachment for details...

Attached File(s)

 Incarcerated.png ( 264.87K ) Number of downloads: 7
 Incarcerated_flv.png ( 322.76K ) Number of downloads: 4

 

[Guest_yolise_*]

No, uploading an FLV won't help with the poster issue. Those are generated at the first pass encoding. If you bypass that, the screenshots won't be generated. Same with codec that the first pass encoder can't handle. If it can't manage to convert on the first pass, there will be no screenshots.

We will be fixing this, but are depending on a third party developer to do the work, so there's no eta at the moment.

[Poulet Noir]

No, uploading an FLV won't help with the poster issue. Those are generated at the first pass encoding. If you bypass that, the screenshots won't be generated...

You mean an uploaded flv movie isn't converted to... err... flv?

I think I'll just go stand in the corner with my pointy hat on. You know, the one with the prominent D-logo

PN

[*Edit*] Hang on a mo', it's just occurred to me that something still can't be right, as the uploaded flv file was only listed as (and only played for) one second long... should I be taking off my pointy hat ...?

[Guest_yolise_*]

Hmm, yes - take off the pointy hat but don't come out of the corner just yet.

I've just looked at Incarcerated and it seems to play for the full 7:41 for me. But yeah, it's listed as 00:01 elsewhere on the site.

You mean an uploaded flv movie isn't converted to... err... flv?

I think I'll just go stand in the corner with my pointy hat on. You know, the one with the prominent D-logo

PN

[*Edit*] Hang on a mo', it's just occurred to me that something still can't be right, as the uploaded flv file was only listed as (and only played for) one second long... should I be taking off my pointy hat ...?

[Poulet Noir]

Ooh, now I'm befuddled

I'm kind of assuming that the now-working version of Incarcerated (from my flv version) was created by the second (off-site) processing thingamajig. When I first uploaded it, however, you only got 1 second's-worth of movie, enough to see "Moviestorm presents", but nothing else.

So I guess I'm arguing that your local transmogrifier didn't deal with AnyVideoConverter's version of flv...

Does that make sense?

PN

[Guest_yolise_*]

Perfect sense and exactly correct (probably!). You can come out of the corner now.