Fiction Fest - Viewing / Rating - Technical Issues Thread

I HAD issues downloading a few of the movies, but after a couple attempts at CMD-R'ing the movies pages, they downloaded properly. I'm all set for a small screening with our high schools students this afternoon.
 
Still can't see the two I mentioned. No sound. Anyone else having problems with issues today? I cleared my cache. I can see and hear other films fine.
 
Hey, guys. Any updates on any of these issues?
I'm trying to watch a few today and the streaming isn't working very well.

Downloading seems to be hit and miss. Any updates?

I know you guys are working hard behind the scenes. Just thought I would ask as a Mod hasn't responded here in a while.

Any info would be great.

Thx
 
Go to the dvxfest page = fail

Go directly to folder containing exact same files = success

Why? Cause PHP sucks. Stop trying to be fancy. HTML ftw.
 
Lee - thanks for taking time to voice such an encouraging post.

Not that I have to explain, but for the benefit of others who may wonder. There are many reasons why we don't just give a folder listing the films for you to download. Not the least of which is that our coded system actually quite efficiently handles multiple servers as mirrors and balances the load among them. Not only for downloads but also for the streaming system, which is still in an early beta state.

We could have chosen to wait until the streaming (online viewing) system was completely tested and ready before making it available, but we are always working to improve the experience for our users. So while there are still some limitations, it does work well enough that it is a benefit.

PHP is a tested and stable development system, used widely throughout the internet. It's not an attempt to "be fancy", it's an attempt to make a robust, stable, overall experience for our users.

What you don't understand is there is a lot more going on then just downloading a few films. The goal has always been to make it a fully integrated system that makes viewing and rating as seamless and simple as possible.

Having said that ... are there bugs in the system? yes. Do we have holes in our functionality? certainly. Does the system work as smoothly and perfectly as a large budget, team developed application that might be sold on the open market? no. Are we trying our best to get as close to that, even though all the development/design/implementation work is performed strictly on a volunteer basis by people who have lives and jobs outside of this site? Absolutely.

So, I am very sorry the system was more buggy than usual this time. Sorry the experience wasn't as seamless and smooth as we'd all like it to be. But know that people are dedicated to working on it, giving up much of their free time to make this site and it's extended features as rich, robust and enjoyable as possible.
 
Lee Saxon said:
Go to the dvxfest page = fail

Go directly to folder containing exact same files = success

Why? Cause PHP sucks. Stop trying to be fancy. HTML ftw.
Click to expand...

Why not focus on the positive, that this is an entirely free fest on an entirely free board, which nonetheless managed to entice sponsors into donating valuable prizes, and if there happens to be a glitch, let it go. Or at least leave the condescension out.
 
In my opinion, this has been a fairly smooth fest. The first day had hiccups, but I had no problems after that.

The fest mods deserve some props, especially running this fest while maintaining day jobs as well.
 
Good job and thank you mods. Everything was fine for me after the first day. I think downloading the zips is the best anyway because it's good to give each movie more than one view, and who wants to stream over and over? As usual Larry and mod gods, kudos for all the work you do to make these fests run well.
 
Actually I like downloading too. I like to watch and re watch a clip over again several times. I hate to miss something and sometimes that happens on the first pass.
 
It's funny you guys say that about the downloading, the reason we've been working on the streaming is because when all we had was downloads we got lots of requests for streaming. People didn't want to wait to download the films before watching them.

Well the plan is to continue to improve the experience in both cases, so hopefully everyone will have the solution that works best for them.
 
Larry Rutledge said:
It's funny you guys say that about the downloading, the reason we've been working on the streaming is because when all we had was downloads we got lots of requests for streaming. People didn't want to wait to download the films before watching them.

Well the plan is to continue to improve the experience in both cases, so hopefully everyone will have the solution that works best for them.
Click to expand...

I noticed that your servers were heavily taxed the day the videos came available, I was getting speeds like 45kbps. Speeds like that you cannot stream a video without it buffering for 30 minutes on a 6 minute video. I think that's why people had a bad experience streaming. I would suggest that for the first couple days to only make the videos available for download, and once the traffic dies down then make it available for streaming. That way people who want to stream can have a more enjoyable experience.
 
Yes, that is the issue. But it affects the downloads as well, not just the streaming. The reason people have timeouts downloading the large zips is that there are so many people hitting the servers at once.

I didn't bring as many mirrors on line this time as I have in the past, that definitely causes problems in the beginning as everyone hits it in the beginning. I can bring more mirrors online, but it does take time to push the files around. Although I am in the middle of completely re-writing the system that sync's the mirrors which should actually help me get them online much quicker. I also am going to dedicate a couple of the faster mirrors to zips only, at least in the beginning, and leave the streaming to its own mirrors. That should help separate them enough to improve overall performance.

All that said to say, I'm working on making things better for y'all :)
 
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