Trouble recently with media stopping / incomplete in some worlds?

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Dale Innis
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Trouble recently with media stopping / incomplete in some worlds?

Post by Dale Innis »

I don't know if this is a viewer issue or a sim issue or what, but...

Does anyone know of any changes to Kitely or anything related to it, that could have caused an m4v movie that had always played fine before (as parcel media) on loop, to suddenly start to stop before it gets to the end, sometimes to start again but almost never gets all the way through, sometimes the picture stops before the sound does, etc.

Seems to happen with both old (6.0.2) and new (6.3.9 I think it is) Firestorms, on both PC and Mac. And happens only on some sims!

In particular, the movie at the end of Gino's Butterfly has become unreliable this way, although it plays fine in external programs, and on for instance the Crown Sea sim. Gino's Butterfly isn't a lightweight sim (although there's no physics, there are a number of scripts, and it's visually rich), but as I understand it the viewer really just hands off the stream address to the media module anyway, so neither the sim server load nor even the rendering pipeline should really make a difference?

But it seems like something is!

Any suggestions are most welcome.
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Re: Trouble recently with media stopping / incomplete in some worlds?

Post by Ilan Tochner »

Hi Dale,

You're correct in stating that the sim just provides the viewer with the media URL and it's the viewer that streams it directly from that address. This means that you experience is very dependent on your own network connection quality and load at that time. A lot more people are using the internet to watch videos since the pandemic started so your ISPs bandwidth capacity may be more stressed than it has been previously.

This may also be due to your own network being more heavily loaded. For example, if your computer or some other device on your network is streaming a YouTube video then the amount of bandwidth available for streaming the m4v file will be reduced and the play quality will be negatively affected as a result.

When connecting to complex worlds or to worlds that have a lot of people inside them the viewer needs to download frequent updates about changes happening to the world. Those updates take network capacity that comes at the expense of bandwidth available for streaming media. When your network isn't heavily loaded then this may not be a problem but when you network doesn't have a lot of free capacity left then this can result in lost media packets while the media is streaming and the playing interruptions you reported.

This is why you may have a bad streaming experience while other people visiting the same world at the same time from a different location may not encounter any problems.
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Re: Trouble recently with media stopping / incomplete in some worlds?

Post by Karima Hoisan »

Thank you Ilan,
the strange thing is..this just started a week ago. When we opened the world and the first month we had no problems, even with visitors there. The other odd thing is that it happens for me too, in Costa Rica, with normally a stable bandwidth of 50MB Fbra Optic which has always been fine for streaming media on all my worlds. The last thing, is it stops for both of us in the same part..exactly the same part, near the end of the movie. I tried streaming it in my Browser with no problems. I use DropBox Pro to host my videos.
Dale is on a PC and I am on Mac and we both have the same experience.
As I said this has just started recently and we have added nothing more to this world.
It is very frustrating and we have tried just about everything to figure it out. I even re-loaded the movie, with a new link and it did the same thing.
Really weird!
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Re: Trouble recently with media stopping / incomplete in some worlds?

Post by Ilan Tochner »

Hi Karima,

Please try clearing your viewer cache and viewer inventory cache, restart the viewer then check again.
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Re: Trouble recently with media stopping / incomplete in some worlds?

Post by Karima Hoisan »

Will try that now. Thanks Ilan:)
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Re: Trouble recently with media stopping / incomplete in some worlds?

Post by Karima Hoisan »

Hi Ilan,
So I cleared all my caches and the video stops playing at the same part, about 8 seconds to the end, but those are the most important last seconds and ties in the whole world. The video is set to loop so it stop on a picture but at least the audio at that point restarts but the picture does not change and the audio starts and stops sputters and is never clear. In order to restart it, you must leave the room and go to the proceeding chair and fly back inland try again. It auto plays fine when an avatar enters the room and the screen appears. It is set up this way. I would be happy to go with you and show you just this part when you have 10 minutes and see if it happens to you.

I was hoping the clearing of my cache would do the trick..but it didn't:(
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Re: Trouble recently with media stopping / incomplete in some worlds?

Post by Karima Hoisan »

Ilan,
I am thinking it has something to do with some simultaneous script events that happen at the end of the video. I tried it above at 1000 meters it glitched for a second, but then played to the end and restarted correctly. We are working on the script idea now..I will let you know
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Re: Trouble recently with media stopping / incomplete in some worlds?

Post by Karima Hoisan »

Hi Ilan,
I fixed it!!
I re rezzed the bubbles that move you from one part too the other and take you to the room where the video starts to play when you enter, I put a copy of the video in another folder on Dropbox and hosted it from there..so I had a new link. I am not sure what helped what but it is working again as before all the way to the end:)
Thank you for trying to help.. Would love to invite you to see the whole world when you can:):)
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