Web causes, or local computer issues? It is usually neither.

You are working feverishly to finish the final touches on your project video because people at both ends; your co-workers and your customers, are waiting to see it live. You are watching it upload. Finally, the last quarter inch of progress bar makes the distance to the promised land, and as you wait with baited breath for the expected web application to switch screens and show you the sought after “100%; Upload complete” award, nothing happens. After fifteen seconds of just hoping this is normal, you finally resign yourself to the fact that the dreaded Hanging Upload has hit you. Your video isn’t going to make it during THIS five minute segment of your professional life.

What are the most common causes of this malady? Is it the video management service on the web side, or is it simply my computer?

A video’s inability to upload is often connected to its ability to play smoothly over the Internet. But the bottom line is that you need a video file that is optimized for video on the web. This article will list the most common causes of your video file’s inability to make the distance to the promised land of your host server or CDN. And, none of them have to do with your CDN’s settings. (CDN=Content Delivery Network).

-Video Codec
There is a best case video codec for web video. It is h.264. There are others that technically work, but where flash is concerned, and even html5 for mobile, utilizing h.264 is still the best. For html5, it begins with a good picture and compression, while providing the same for directly playing in a Flash environment for desktops and other mobile devices that are still using Flash. If your video file is not using these best practices settings, then it could take a noticeably longer time to upload.

-Video File Type
Also, the best all-around file type makes a difference. MP4 is the web video file type king. It handles the visual and audio packaging very precisely as well as providing for correct placement of the moov atom which is the part of the video file that communicates to flash players what is contained inside the file and where to find it all. Our transcoding system makes sure to properly place the moov atom at the front of the file.

-Render Depth

Render depth is the setting you are manipulating when choosing how many megabytes per second (MB/sec) to render the video.  1.5 to 2.5 MB/second is a good range for videos that are not expected to be HD. It is very presumptuous to expect a large number of long, feature videos to arrive at viewers’ screens maintaining a true HD delivery because of the variability of so many technical limitations like viewers’ screen settings, Internet connections, etc.. But, virtual HD is standard on. Basically, the visual difference between actual, high end HD picture and virtual HD is difficult to detect by most viewers, given the condition of a broad array of technical limitations currently dominating the home web video viewer. A well-handled, upper end standard video can look very crisp and run smoothly.

Notice the settings in my above image of the Bitrate Settings from the Adobe Premiere CS5 Export Settings window. These TARGET and MAXIMUM bitrate settings are well over the 1.5 – 2.5 range I suggested earlier. But the 3.0 TARGET and 6.0 MAXIMUM settings work here because the video is only 1:52 seconds in length. A short video can enjoy the luxury of a higher render setting because the overall file size will still be relatively small. But, I still wouldn’t necessarily want to push the limits and render at a massive setting like 14MB/Sec.; not when I want the video to play smoothly on as many different computers and Internet connections as possible. The more medium or optimized the settings, the better balance one achieves between clear picture and sound, and playability over the Internet.

-File Origination.
The type of file the video was originally created as can play a large part in how it renders out for the web. We have found problem videos to be generally optimized for smooth web playing by simply converting the video to an AVI before rendering it as the h.264/MP4 file. The why of this working procedure is for another, longer article. We know that it simply works. Like changing some MOV files into an AVI before rendering into an h.264, or the same with some WMV files. It just usually works.   I will at least reveal that compression is a factor here. Converting a video into an AVI is a way to fool software and firmware imaging handlers into thinking that the file is uncompressed which allows for rendering into a smoother playing h.264/MP4.

-Your Machine Causing Time Out?
+ Computer going to sleep? We have not set a specific time-out in our application, but the settings of Zencoder and Amazon might be a different story. So, one area to check would be to go into your computer’s power management settings and disable the auto off commands that shut down the hard drives. This is not difficult and can be reversed when you are finished uploading a larger video file.
+ Screen Saver? You might also want to shut off your screen saver. When in doubt, it never hurts.
+ Too many other apps running? To make sure that your computer is not starving the video uploading task of enough working memory, you could shut down everything but the browser operating that task. Microsoft Office tools can be memory hungry as well as other email clients, spread sheets, photo and video programs and players.

+ Your Internet Connection. You might conduct a Speed Test. “High Speed” isn’t always as high as we’d all like it to be. Just because it isn’t a dialup connection, doesn’t mean it is lightning fast. Anyone can conduct a safe speed test with this reputable web site: http://www.speedtest.net/.   I have no problems uploading rather large files from my office in north central Illinois in a town with the population of about 4,000 and the nearest larger metropolis about 40 minutes away. My local Internet upload speed averages just a little over 1.2 MB/sec. I am paying for 1.5MB/sec, so even though this is subpar for my cable package, it is not a subpar connection speed for uploading videos to EZWebPlayer’s server. I commonly create and upload videos several days/week with no problems.

 

Want more info on Rendering for the Web?

-How to export High Definition video files to upload and stream on your website.
-Rendering Video for the Web Best Practices.