Playing videos on Giantbomb

I always seem to have trouble playing, videos on Giantbomb, for example Quick Look. Sometimes they don't play, or if they do play they stop & just load for ever or if they play ok they will become some what choppy after about five minutes or they will be in ultra low quality. Because of this I mostly just use Youtube to watch Giantbomb videos, but the last day or so Youtube has been not great, so I am kind of stuck.

I wanted to watch this San Andreas Quick Look, but I can't get it to play consistently in decent quality on Youtube or Giantbomb.

I have tried different browsers & I have my plugins up to date too.

Video on the internet always seem incredibly very fickle to me. I don't if this is something on my end or if it's just.. The Internet.

Anyone else have any such issues or any fixes?

I am having a lot of issues with videos and it is getting annoying, I just subscribed but haven't been able to watch anything all the way through because videos keep stopping.

@rorie i tested something by copying a download url and pasting it into VLC, the video played fine, so it must be the CBSi player (which worked fine for live streams though)

I generally hit the HD stream and then send it off to the chromecast. Just never do the auto quality, the chromecast can't deal with it.

This is interesting. I had this problem near the beginning of the year, but I've had no problems for months now.

I've only recently started streaming videos on the site rather than downloading and I've also come across the problem where the video would stop abruptly for a random amount of time (sometimes a few minutes, other times an hour plus).

I'm having similar issues. Videos acting weirdly when watching them on the site. Sometimes they might refuse to load. Other times they do, but then to remember-where-you-were-before feature doesn't work anymore, so I have to skip manually, and at that point, it stops working either. I've also had the "stop working for whatever random reason" happen as well. I doubt it'd be a bandwidth problem on my end, given that I can watch youtube videos at 1080p/60fps without issue, and I'm playing the videos on the site on "high" anyway. But yeah, just general weirdness.

This site has been pretty bad for videos lately. My biggest problem is when trying to fullscreen videos and when increasing the quality. Other players from other gaming sites work perfectly (IGN for example) but Gamespot and Giantbomb almost make my computer freeze. It takes forever to actually go fullscreen and seems like it's so much unnecessary work for my computer to handle. Other video players give me absolutely zero issues.

Running Windows 8.1 on a fairly new laptop from early 2012.

Interesting. Looking into this. We haven't seen widespread issues and I'm wondering if it's due to Akamais edge servers, or a problem on our end. Feel free to point me to specific troublesome content, if there is any. Also, let me know what video settings you have chosen.

Thanks

Hey there @auto,

I'm also an iPad user, and use it to watch videos. Currently controls load for me. I'm going to do some testing for you today to see what the problem might be. Care to provide some more specifics to help me out a bit? Which browser? Which iPad?

Thanks!

This is a common complaint in the tech support field so take what I say with the knowledge that I don't know you, I don't know what your connection is like, or what computer you have.

This is most common these days because video sizes are becoming extremely large (several hundred megabytes or more) and video stream can basically only go as fast as the server, as well as your connection, will allow.

Some people will think to themselves "I have a 5MBps connection- I should have no problems watching a video online." This is simply not true, even today. Websites have been tackling this issue for awhile now, but ultimately there are a lot of variables to consider and often they just won't be able to juggle them all for you.

I know with Giant Bomb their HD video sizes are huge. They're over 2-3 GIGs on average. If you are having trouble, and the auto setting is not adjusting it, I recommend setting the video quality to high or low. A very large file will take substantially longer for your connection to download (stream) than a file that is only, say, 100mb. Adjusting the quality will fix this if this is the problem. This goes for any website, but I want to mention Youtube also as people often upload huge files to youtube (that have not been compressed much more than youtube compresses the video) so the file size you have to watch is rather large- even when the video can be only a few seconds long. A 30 second video of game play directly from FRAPS (raw footage) at 1080p60fps can be upwards of ~500 megabytes or more. This is an extreme example, and uncommon now, but what I am trying to get across is that people do not consider file sizes often when uploading video most anywhere, but especially Youtube. Giantbomb does consider this (they've discussed it many times in the past), but Vinny (and ultimately their production team) goes for (in HD) quality over all else so hiccups can result- especially if the site is under heavy load.

I have a 100mbps connection these days and I even can sometimes have problems with video. It's a difficult thing to manage because any interruption in your connection (even one you don't notice) can cause problems for streaming video. I tend to download everything (video wise) now-a-days.

I'm not saying Giant Bomb can't fix some of the issues on their video player, or even be accountable, but something to remember is that if you're having trouble streaming video you may have to lower the quality, or even try rebooting your connecting equipment (modem, router, etc.). If you're having any connection issues at all (even ones you may not notice) it will cause video stutter, stop, or all manner of issues.

@cornbredx If the connection drops when streaming the player should recover, if the connection is not fast enough then a lower quality setting should be auto-selected by the player. It's nothing to do with size, it's all about bit rate, and from reading the posts people are saying they've tried lower bit rate streams. Saying stuff to the effect of "it's your problem and you shouldn't expect a bug-free experience" isn't helpful.

I've also noted issues with iOS 8 that people mentioned but it seems fixed in iOS 8.1, I've also had Firefox refuse to start playback for HTM5 video (HTML5 video on other sites and streamed direct from a URL plays fine) and reported a bug about it. The most reliable playback I've had is through the streaming flash player.

If you're on iOS (unless it's jailbroken) the only browser you can get is Safari. Even Chrome on iOS is just Safari with a different UI around it. You can watch the videos problem-free by opening the download links underneath the video on the video page (the one with the comments, not the frontpage of the site) instead. This also works on the desktop.

These are all work-arounds, of course, and the fact that they work and the embedded player does not suggest something is busted with the player.

Edit: I've also had the issue with the video locking up after a few seconds playback. On reload it would start playing, then seek to my last playback position (only a few seconds in) and lock up again, play/pause button does nothing, clicking the playhead did nothing. If it does it again I'll check the dev tools and see if it's actually downloading anything or spitting out an error.

@insectecutor: Saying stuff to the effect of "it's your problem and you shouldn't expect a bug-free experience" isn't helpful.

I didn't say that. Thanks for knee jerking assuming something instead of reading what I wrote =)

Don't reply to me to be aggressive and argumentative if you're not into reading what I say. Thanks.

Editted for clarification on what I am referring to.

@cornbredx: Great comment cornbredx, I think this comment should be part of the official FAQ! Great stuff, and right on the money.

Indeed, we will take full responsibility for problems on our end, which is why we appreciate the bug reporting. Sometimes it's out of our hands, and Akamai serves our video (just like it serves video on a large portion of web sites with rich content).

Giant Bomb video sizes are gigantic. It's very easy to underestimate the size of these videos, and your browser or your ISP can limit the amount and speed at which you download. ISP's sometimes offer "burst" speeds, which are temporary speed boosts, instead of permanent speeds, and your browser/OS can limit how much you download, by trying to be too clever (especially true for Chrome lately, tries to be too smart).

Going to continue to look into this, but the more configurations you can try, and more specifics you can provide, the more we can look.

Also, @insectecutor another great reply. Unfortunately HTML5 is very inconsistent browser to browser, OS to OS. Really appreciate your feedback, and work arounds.

Appreciate everyone's help.

@cornbredx sorry duder.

@jslack: No problem. I just wanted to give this tip for anyone that it could help. If you actually do have a FAQ and need to use what I wrote, or an edited version of it, I am fine with that.

@insectecutor: Apology accepted. No harm done. =)

@cornbredx: Appreciate it.

@cornbredx : Sound points. My connection certainly can be poor, though generally I seem to get a good 50mbps up to a max of 100. From my experience though(and I am certainly no expert here) problems seem to be as much in the website video players is as it is my connection. Even if the video has buffered I can still get intermittently choppy playback. I too will often just try & download the video, but that's not always an easy option. Does Giantbomb have a video download option?

Here's a video that just won't play for me at all. I see the first frame, but it just sits there:

http://www.giantbomb.com/videos/extra-life-2014-day-4-part-07/2300-9614/

@gatob: You have to be a subscriber in order to download videos on Giant Bomb.

That video you linked works fine for me. Just in case you needed to see if it was an issue for someone else.

Just as a tip the engineers may need to know your OS, the web browsers you use (or have tried assuming there are more than one), and what the version of those browsers is. The reason for that is the code is a little different for each one and it helps them narrow down where the issue might be if the issue is in the code.

I've been having problems with videos for the last week or so as well. I started noticing it after the Nov. 11 Unprofessional Fridays got archived, but it seems to be affecting every video I try to view on Giant Bomb. I've tried all of the settings available, but the videos either don't load at all or will only load the first few minutes and then stop/become super choppy. I'm using Chrome, by the way.

I'm having similar issues playing videos on iOS. First things first, I'm on a iPad 2, using iOS 7 and a 8Mbps connection. I primarily use safari & I'm geographically very far away (SE Asia). Videos for me always start at low quality, then in 30 seconds upgrade to medium & another 30 seconds later to high. After that I don't have a problem till the last 5-7 minutes of the video, where the video either stops or drops to low quality. I have no problems with YouTube content of any resolution or for that matter any videos anywhere.

Additionally, if I try to start a video on the high setting, it just won't start and give me an error 'the operation could not be completed'. Also, if I might add, all these problems disappear when I use a PC, navigate to GB.com on my xbox and play videos on whatever version of IE it uses (lol!! Wat?!?!).

One last thing..I worked with my ISP to optimize my connection. It seems data transfers through ISP's can fluctuate dramatically when trying to stream anything. If it drops too low, it will downgrade the video quality or stop altogether. It used to happen a lot before said optimization..now at least I can watch 95% of a video in high quality, till it drops/stops in the end.

oh yes, I meant to note that:

I am on Windows 8.1 and I gennerally use Firefox, but I have also tried using Chrome & SR Iron(Non Google branded version of Chrome). Internet Explorer though seems to fare the best in terms of actually loading the video, but again the problem is the video playback. Even when I have let it buffer plenty, the video will frequently hiccup during playback(the audio isn't affected), it makes it unwatchable.

Also, I realize Youtube isn't great for high quality but Giantbomb's uploads seem to be rougher than most. Is that on purpose?

Exact same problem here. Video is very choppy and unwatchable.