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Excessive Loading Times For Videos Here At ANN




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dtm42



Joined: 05 Feb 2008
Posts: 14084
Location: currently stalking my waifu
PostPosted: Sat Nov 07, 2009 6:26 am Reply with quote
It's funny. All the debates I've seen about legitimate streaming versus fansubs, and I cannot remember a single instance where someone mentioned loading times. I'll be blunt; the videos that ANN hosts take too long to load. And I don't even watch - well, try to watch - the H264 versions.

Look, I know that for legal Anime streaming to work it has to offer episodes in high quality. I know that. But it also has to offer speed. I normally allow fifty minutes to fully buffer a single low-quality (but still tolerable) episode of a streaming fansubbed Anime. Yes, I have a crappy connection; New Zealand isn't exactly known for its amazing speeds. However, fifty minutes is way way faster than the two hours PLUS it takes to buffer an episode that ANN hosts.

Now, I know that I get what I wait for, and the episodes offered on ANN do look very pretty, even in the "lower-quality" streams. But I simply do not have the time to lock up my Internet for literally hours just to watch a single episode for exactly one time. If it was a download, then that would be (mostly) alright, but as a stream it just isn't worth it.

And about the quality; some YouTube videos of Anime offer a quite decent quality for amazingly small files. Sometimes I can load all three parts to an episode in just thirty minutes, and the quality is only marginally worse than what I see here at ANN.

I really want to be able to watch my Anime legally. But there is no point in saying "a legal stream exists" if it is so unworkable and offers only a slight increase in video quality. In those cases I'll just stick to fansubs. I'll have to, as ANN isn't providing me with a reasonable alternative.

Yes yes, ANN doesn't actually make the videos. It just puts up what it can, so I don't hold it responsible. However, it is my hope that ANN can in the future secure smaller videos, either by asking the content providers to give them smaller videos or by reducing the video sizes themselves (if ANN is allowed).

Not everyone has super-fast broadband. I mean, I'm sure I'm not the only one who would willingly trade video quality for a drastically reduced loading time. If the industry would cater for people like me with turtle-like connections then a major advantage of using fansubs would be negated.

So, a propose a bargain. If the industry provides us faster-loading videos, then I'll use legitimate streaming. Until then, I have no choice but to use fansubs.

Thanks for listening.
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Tempest
I Run this place.
ANN Publisher


Joined: 29 Dec 2001
Posts: 10468
Location: Do not message me for support.
PostPosted: Tue Nov 10, 2009 5:25 pm Reply with quote
From our side, we'll try to see to it that our next CDN has a POP in NZ. North Americans, Europeans and Asians get our videos instantly.

YouTube obviously has a POP much closer to you, so their videos stream like they should.

As for the bargain. You should probably address it to Siren and Madman.
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Dan42
Chief Encyclopedist


Joined: 02 Jan 2002
Posts: 3793
Location: Montreal
PostPosted: Tue Nov 10, 2009 7:18 pm Reply with quote
Justin is downright obsessive when it comes to streaming quality Anime smile
I'll see what I can do to talk him into encoding ultra-low-bandwidth streams; it's what h264 is best at, after all.
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jsevakis
Former ANN Editor in Chief


Joined: 28 Jul 2003
Posts: 1685
Location: Los Angeles, CA
PostPosted: Wed Nov 11, 2009 6:54 pm Reply with quote
Our data rates are incredibly low compared to other streaming sites, so the problem is clearly lag to New Zealand. That's between our CDN and your internet provider. We've made similar inquiries in the past, and they've just kind of shrugged their shoulders. I can try anyway though.

You can help us out by doing the following:
- Tell us the name of your ISP
- perform a traceroute to edgecastcdn.net and PM me the results.

I can't promise anything will happen, but we'll do our best.
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