About the New Cathe Player

SNM Videos

Administrator
In just a few moments we will launch our new Cathe Player with the first extended video clip from the new series. Our first clip to be shown on the new Cathe Player will be from Drill Max and is nearly 14 minutes long.

We still have some tweaking to do on the player, but we need to get some feedback from you in order to improve the performance. Please let us know how the player worked on your system on the first play and the second time. Based on your feedback we will try to tweak the players performance.

We’ve spent months developing and designing the new Cathe Player and we hope it greatly improves your viewing experience of our vid clips on our website. Over the next week we will continue to post the rest of the new DVD clips and after they are done we will start redoing all of our older workout clips Here is what you will see and can expect from the new player:

#1 A larger and better quality picture.
#2 We have included a vid clip for every chapter point on each DVD.
#3 On the right side of the player every chapter point is listed. As the vid clip plays a green highlight bar will move over each chapter point.
#4 You may also click on the chapter point and the Cathe Player will almost instantly play that chapter point. (This will only work after the file has downloaded at least once).
#5 Our new player uses progressive download at 700k. This means that after the first play the file will be downloaded onto your computer and you will be able to watch the video without any buffering or stalling that you often see with streaming clips.
#6 The player will launch in its own window and contains ordering info and a button to take you right to our online shopping cart.


As of right now were not sure if we’re going to make a separate player for people with dial up modems, but we would certainly like some feedback on this issue.. So far less than 1% of people that have watched our new DVD promo are using dial up modems. We are very surprised that this number is that low. A dial up modem can still use the Cathe Player, but you will need to wait until the file has downloaded once to be able to view it. Our extended vid clip files are rather large so it will take a long time to download with a dial up modem on the first try.. If you have DSL/Cable the clip will start to play within 10 seconds in most cases. After the first play the vid clip will start very quickly regardless of your connection speed since the file will play from your computer, not over the internet.

Hopefully everything will work, but the Cathe Player is a cutting edge product and we might have to make some adjustments. If you have problems please make sure to first download an updated version of Flask. You need at least Flash 8.0. Here is a link to where you can download Flash – it’s real simple to do:

http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/download.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash
 
First of all, wow, and thank you!!!! I LOVE the new player, and think that the features are amazing and it looks great.

In terms of performance, I'm finding that the first play through is nearly unwatchable - LOTS of jerkiness, and almost in slow motion. However, I'm just letting it play the first time through in the background (and trying not to steal peeks, even though it's killing me!!!), and then I'll just play it again when it's local on my machine. I'm on a very high speed connection (although with the caveat that it can get bogged down on a regular basis), if that helps.

Again, thank you SO much for all of the work you've put into this - this really is amazing.

m.
 
Thanks for all the hard work SNM. I loooove the new player. I noticed some hesitation while watching at work on the compnay network(hmmmm...probably should have been working anyway). However, now that I'm home, the video is a lot smoother. Any number of factors could influnce how the video will play for everyone.

Cathe, I can't wait to try the now workouts. Thanks to you and the crew for all that you do for the love of fitness.
 
I actually didn't have a single problem viewing the clip. Of course I'm responding at 6:30 at night, so all the kinks might have already been worked out, but I had a problem free viewing of the video. Excellent job!

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I LOVE the Cathe Player! It worked beautifully on my computer (we have Verizon Fios). Cathe, you look fantastic and so does the crew. I am so excited to get these workouts...unfortunately I have to wait till Christmasx( . But, now I know what to expect. I loved the music, your enthusiasm, the variety of exercises. You really outdid yourself!!!
-Jen
 
Well, I can't view it at all. The choppiness just doesn't go away.:( I have a high speed cable internet connection, I downloaded the flash player off the link, and no luck.
 
I really enjoyed the new player especially the chapter points on the right. I had no issues watching this evening on my cable modem/wireless router.
 
i had the exact same problem as firmbogie. jerky..i have high speed cable connection. eventhough i downloaded the flash player update, still no go. :(
 
Are you letting the clip play all the way through at least one time? If you are and you're still having problems you need to make sure your computer settings are allowing the file to download to your computer.Also, waht operating system and browser version are you using?
 
Hi, Chris, this is Tim, Amy B's husband.

I met some of you guys on the last road trip. I wanted to give you some feedback on the Flash movies. I own a multimedia business and about 80% of all our work is Flash based. The new player looks attractive, and works well on a high bandwidth connection. My wife mentioned that your feedback from your modem users was that they could not view your clips. Basically they are just way too large for any modem user right now. For example, the 14 minute clip is 70.7 megs or 72,396 K, obviously a large file. A dial up modem user downloads files at the slow speed of 5K a second under perfect conditions. So this would translate into 4 hours of download time before the entire 14 minute clip would load. So, for every minute of your video, a modem user has to download 17.4 minutes.

In order to play well, your current large player clip needs for the user to have a minimum of an 87K a second download speed, which is a little over half T1 speed. This is alright to have a clip at this speed for your high bandwidth users, but offering one or two other options for people with a little slower or less reliable connections would broaden your possibilities.

For example, the top video on this simple video page has two different versions of the same clip.

http://www.worldserve.org/about/about_video.html

The higher quality selection requires a 45K a second download speed, the other requires 28K a second download speed. So for the 28K per second version, a modem user would have to download 5.6 minutes for every minute of video.

In the lower versions, you give up a few things. For instance, the 45K per second clip shows only 15 frames per second (yours shows 30), has mono sound (yours has stereo), and is a little smaller 400x300 (yours is 480x320).

The 28K per second clip on the example site has the same (mono and 15 fps) but has smaller dimensions at 320x240.

Anyway, I hope this helps. You could add a nice-looking toggle switch on your player that allows people to switch to the lower bandwidth versions, providing greater access to a broad range of users.
Good luck!
Tim
 
Hi Tim,

Thank you for your suggestions. We considered making a separate encode for dial up modems, but as of now have decided against it. Here is why… Our green oval player on our home page is a multibit player that is encoded at 40k, 150k and 400k. From looking at the stats of people that have downloaded the promo clip less than 2% have used a dial up modem while 98% have used a cable or DSL to view the file.

The short answer to people having ‘stuttering’ issue is, the 700 kbps encoding rate is too high for some users. The easy solution to this problem is bandwidth detection and multiple files encoded in a range or rates depending on the user’s “pipe”. As of March 2006, 36% of internet homes were still dial-up, 30% DSL, 30% cable.

The reality is, despite what I have read about download data rates for modem, ISDN, DSL & cable connections, advertised data rates are much lower in practice. In my experience, three encoding rates work well to cover the range of mass audience connections; 100kbps, 300kpbs and 700kbps. Were looking at adding 1 or 2 more of the following encode speeds.

- 150 works well for the low end (ISDN & slow DSL) – notice, we’re not even considering dial-ups since the files are progressive download and a 150k file is doable.
- 300 is going to be viewed the most (when you check reports),
- 700 is nice to have for some high-end users on Cable but even if you have cable, depending on time if day used, connection speeds fluctuate greatly.


The other thing that really impacts user experience is the processor speed of the viewer’s system. Many people, me among them, typically have multiple browser windows open simultaneously. Even multiple applications open simultaneously. Even if you have a big pipe, processor ‘overload’ can also cause stuttering. We realize that only offering 700kbps is asking for some stuttering issues, but we want to maintain the quality of our clips as they reflect the image of our products. We’re getting ready to test a 300k version. If it meets our quality standards we will then consider making the player either multibit or offering a “speed” selection. Overall were pretty happy with the number of people that have been able to view our clips without any major problems.
 
I'm currently on an island in the West Indies, so I'm sure you can imagine how slow and spotty my internet connection is. But that didn't keep me from enjoying the clip; you just have to let it buffer long enough before watching (and there's no need to actually play it once through first.) Start the video briefly, pause it, and let the video load in the background while surfing in another window. Once the video has buffered completely (check the status bar that shows your position in the clip; it fills up as the video is loaded) you can watch the clip in all its glory. And it looks amazing!! :D
 
Just an FYI that I'm not too concerned with:
I have DSL and Windows XP. I've watched both clips with very little hesitation. However, when I go back to watch Low Impact Circuit my computer freezes before I even click "play". Out of the 4 times I've tried to view it since the initial time, it has frozen my computer 3 times.

Wendy
 

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