Viddler

We've had several reports from viewers of Viddler videos on our site and those embedded elsewhere about having issues with the video constantly buffering. For some this would happen sporadically and others constantly. The technological reasons for this are vast and many factors play into this situation so I asked for a layman's description from our team and really it just comes down to the speed at which you are connected to the Internet at the time you are watching the videos. Or, the speed at which data can travel between Viddler's servers and your computer.

Viddler actually streams (or slowly trickles) the video to you as you watch it. Instead of forcing you to download the entire video before being able to watch it or slowly loading it from beginning to end - Viddler allows you to "jump around" the video as you wish. We've always felt this to be the best option for Viddlers due to timed tagging and commenting. If you'd like to comment on minute 55 of a video, why force you to download the entire movie first?

However, it became obvious fairly early on that we'd still need to provide some type of solution to those of you connected to the Internet at much lower speeds, those of you at cafés enjoying a coffee, or even those of you that are connected at conferences that always seem to have insanely slow Internet connectivity.

We've been noodling this for a little while and are working on a solution that we think will solve this issue for everyone that would like to enjoy videos on Viddler, through the Viddler player embedded elsewhere, or use the service. We hope to have this solution tested and in your hands with our next update, but I wanted to take a moment to acknowledge this issue with all of you, and make sure that you know we're working really hard to solve it.

If you have any further questions regarding this issue please feel free to ask them here.

Thanks,
Colin

Brilliant. This was my BIGGEST problem I had with Viddler and now it's going to be fixed I am trés happy.

A couple thoughts...

For advanced users, could you enable a debugging mode where stats would show up in the video in a HUD and we could report the stats during buffering times?

I've experienced this intermittently on a 6MB connection, so I can't imagine it's my connection... but as you said, there are lots of causes for the problem.

It seems to happen most on externally embedded video, though my only experience is of course on my own blog.

Finally, I do know that this is an issue that needs to be addressed in order to keep the quality of Viddler's service high and I applaud you guys for attacking this openly.

Appreciate this a lot. Thanks for acknowledging this. Just for comparison, Google Video is a prime example of how it buffers data, yet you can click anywhere in the timeline where it would stop to buffer from that point on. It seems to offer the best of both worlds, buffering it all and from where you click onwards. Thanks again! :D

Hello everyone. I wanted to give an update on the progress of this situation and show that we're nearing completion on this feature. Here is a snippet from episode three of ViddlerTV where we actually demo the beta version of what we're going to do!

Hmmm I'm on a 2mb dsl connection and it constantly buffers. no probs with Google vid or youtube, so it's pulling a long bow to say the problem is download bandwidth. I have a 24mb speed at home - will try later and report.

mikey434: In your case it has less to do with your personal connection to the Internet, and perhaps the connections that are made in between Viddler and your ISP. Having said that, Google and YouTube are not a good "test" to see if Viddler should work - two completely different sets of technologies at work.

Please look for our new player soon.

Update: We've launched our new player which addresses these issues. Please give it a try and let us know how it works for you!