Most of My Worlds Are Down

[Karima Hoisan]

Hello everyone,
I wanted to let you know that because of a problem with DropBox and streaming media in virtual worlds, including SL (they are working on it) my worlds that use media, which are ALL of them are affected and will not allow you to enjoy them as they were made to enjoy. At this moment only The Wizard https://www.kitely.com/virtual-world/Ka ... The-Wizard
and
In Your Head https://www.kitely.com/virtual-world/Ka ... -Your-Head
are working correctly because I have had to move all the media to a new server temporarily.
I appreciate your patience and when this problem is resolved I will let you know..

[Karima Hoisan]

Another exception is The Mountain https://www.kitely.com/virtual-world/Ka ... e-Mountain
The main experience is working fine as is the amazing Art Work. The Media on this world is incidental

[Ada Radius]

What is the Dropbox problem?
(I have been in tech support with Dropbox for days, wish I could find an workable alternative that does not compress audio or graphics files or media files)

[Dale Innis]

What is the Dropbox problem?

For many years, until a week or two ago, Dropbox (Dropbox Plus in this case) shared videos could be used as parcel media by sticking "&dl=1" to the end of the URL.

As of a week or two ago (exactly ten days), this stopped working (both in Kitely and SL): instead of the media playing, there's just a white screen, as though the file didn't exist or whatever.

Entering the same URL into a browser works fine: the browser downloads the file like it always has. The same video files put onto a non-dropbox server also work fine as parcel media.

So it seems like something has changed specifically about how Dropbox responds to requests coming from Kitely or SL, unlikely as that seems (like, how could DropBox even tell?). Karima has been talking to Dropbox support, and I've been doing various experiments, for a few days now, but neither of us have come up with either an explanation or a solution.

I wonder if other people who use Dropbox videos as parcel media have had the same problem!

[Ada Radius]

Aha, that explains a few things, thank you!! I've been having problems with Dropbox slowing down my system by insisting on downloading as well as uploading during sync, looks like it's trying to download the same 50 files over the last couple of weeks or so. No reason at all for it to be downloading anything. Tech support so far has been useless - wrong information, answering the wrong question or both.

I used Crankwheel to share my screen while I was helping teach a Blender class a week ago, and my whole system crawled to a stop until I figured out to put the blend file I was sharing on my desktop instead of trying to access it within Dropbox. Not convenient at all.

Alternatives? Google Drive is fine for docs and spreadsheets, appalling for the way it compresses and destroys audio. I found Amazon Cloud awkward for sharing files - Dropbox is pretty good at sharing for collaborations. A quick search shows me other possibilities: IDrive, pCloud, Livedrive, Smugmug. Anyone tried any of these?

[Dot Matrix]

I’m using pCloud. They had a very good “lifetime” deal for 2 TB of cloud storage — I was fed up with Dropbox’s subscription model.

One of the options from pCloud is “video streaming” under “Media and usability” — would that do what you need? See https://www.pcloud.com/cloud-storage-pricing-plans.html

You can try pCloud for free, or experiment with a monthly plan.

[Karima Hoisan]

Thank you Dot,
it sounds like it could be very good for us!
We will check it out..for sure..
DropBox seems clueless as to virtual worlds and streaming media

Thank you so much!

Karima

[Karima Hoisan]

Thank you Dot!!
It works in Public Folder~
Now to pass 20 sims of media to pcloud!
I give up with DropBox!!
You are a lifesaver

[Karima Hoisan]

Hi all,
I just wanted to let you know that after moving 64 video files from DropBox to Pcloud (thanks again Dot!)
all our worlds are up and running perfectly.
Whew!
Please Come Visit if you haven't yet..
The Wizard our latest is really lots of fun, if you haven't yet tried it:)

Thanks for your patience and your help

Karima