CrunchyRoll’s Expected Growing Pains
IT’S A TRAP.
Now, for some people, CrunchyRoll is just a streaming video site that has taken down a lot of their favorites. To those people I feel sorry, but ultimately have little to say to them. Such is how it always was on the internet. Different free resources pop up, people exploit them, people are exploited by the business methods that made those things free in the first place, and the two part ways when it stops being beneficial for either party.
But to address a few things, facts first.
Yes, CR took down pretty much most of their unlicensed content and user videos. However I get a feeling that there might still be some lurking out there. I just couldn’t find any. As far as I could tell, this was/is a progressive process as not all user-uploaded videos were taken offline all at once. So who knows.
The second bit is important. They have changed their video player code (at least for SOME of their videos, I know not for certain). And I’m going to copy pasta a message I got on CR (as I’m signed up as an Anime Membership thing) from Shinji, the de facto PR leader guy for CR–
We started simulcasting shows earlier this week, so you should have early access to shows like Naruto Shippuden 91 and Gintama 139 in HD. While most people seem to be able to play the video just fine, I’d like to let you guys know about the improvements we’re making in case you have had problems with the streams:
1. We’ve transitioned to a new, more secure, streaming service, so some of you might be experiencing slow loading or inability to seek - this is an issue with our service provider that we’re trying to fix. It’s also dependent on your own internet connection as well as geographic location. This switch was necessary to help protect our publishers’ content.
2. If your stream is choppy or laggy, it may be because of a slow connection or slow cpu. Try a lower quality if your computer is older. If you haven’t already, you should upgrade your flash player to version 10, which seems to play back videos more efficiently (we already require at least version 9.0.115 in order to play back videos properly).
3. We’re adding more error notifications in the video player, so if you get any errors you’ll know exactly what went wrong. Unfortunately, in the past if something went wrong (like if your internet connection wasn’t fast enough to stream the video) it would just hang with a blank screen without telling you what went wrong. That should be fixed shortly.
4. Geolocation restrictions - while we do try to get worldwide access when possible, copyright and licensing is complicated! Details about region restrictions are on the lineup page. We’re working on displaying more notices on the video page for this. We are also going back to our partners to try to get distribution rights in more countries.
5. Video quality - we’re working hard with our partners to provide the best quality for all of our shows! Unfortunately sometimes the source quality isn’t that great, although we are working together to improve the transcoding process. In the meantime, we’re experimenting with different encoding settings and filters to provide you the best possible quality. Please be patient! It will take some time to iron out the kinks with the source video quality.
6. Subtitle translation quality - while we try to check every episode that goes out, it’s a lot of work and our manpower is unfortunately limited. We also have limited control over the subtitles we receive and sometimes don’t have the freedom to change them. However, we continue to work with the subtitlers to improve and change them based on your feedback~!
Let me suggest an interpretation–
Like BOST, the CR video playback software is stingy on caching (probably for DRM reasons). Now generally speaking this is not a problem for CR’s LQ and HQ feeds, but this is a serious problem with their 480P and 720P feeds. Fact is, many Americans are on pretty weakass broadband. Caching is vital especially for streaming video of that size. More control over buffering and bigger buffers are vital to guarantee a good performance watching videos on average broadband. Look at how Hulu does it, for example.
But that’s not the terrible part. If you’ve watched stuff on CR prior to the switchover, you’d think they have a fairly workable video player. I’d basically cache half an episode and let it loose, and generally speaking that was more buffering time than I need. That was with a HQ feed. The terrible, terrible part is that on or very near the day of the switch, they rolled out a new flash player (requires version 9.0.115 of flash or newer) and new streaming servers. RECIPE FOR EPIC FALE. I mean, that’s also recipe for a class action lawsuit if you don’t push out system requirement changes like that, which may interrupt service. “Things not working well” is just what’s normally expected.
Also, let’s just ignore the problems caused by increased traffic with their HD streams for now. Why didn’t they run a round of testing before the 1/8 date? Why didn’t they tell us anything? Maybe they did, and I just didn’t know about it. Anyone knows?
In practice, the experience is not that terrible. Yesterday I was able to watch some stuff (namely, Druaga S2) after messing around with it for a little while. It was not a smooth experience; the 480 feed interrupted itself every 30 seconds or so, while the h264 feed was more reasonable. I realized the 480 feed, after a while, was a transcode. Things looked pretty much the same as a blown up version of the h264 feed. Not sure what was going on, but the video quality was definitely worse than expected for a pay-to-watch thing.
I can’t really say much about points 3, 4 and 6 out of the Shinji mail, but they don’t mean much if people in the right region can’t even watch the video without taking a minute break every 30 seconds. And I didn’t encounter any error messages that told me my connection was too slow or whatever.
As far as my connection is concerned, normally I pull a 720p episode of Xam’d from the PSN video store in under 2 hours. That’s about just a tad over 1.5gb worth in 100-120 minutes. So I get about 150-170 KB/s off them. I think my best score off dslreports.com is closer to 200 KB/s, but that wasn’t the condition of the line when I was trying it.
That said, the bright side is that all of this is not exactly a surprise. It’s just poorly handled. Also CR is actively working on it, and they are communicating with their customers. It could be a lot worse. (It could be Sony.)
One more CR related note I just want to toss out there is that yes, a lot of the videos no longer have ads built-in. I am blindly guessing this is due to the arrangement they have with their licensing overlords. How are they getting money? The sites still have ads. They still take money for DTO. They also now have a new crop of people, like myself, who are paying for their service. Or paying guinea pigs, more accurately put. If the service problems keep up, it would be awesome if they refund your first month of pay or give you a free month of service, don’t you think?
I wouldnt sign up on that membership thingey. They should have just make the videos free. And I dont care if its low quality, as long as you can watch the video. But I dont know if everybody agrees.
i don’t know anything about the technical jibber jabber but I did experience some fucking irritating issues with ep 11 of Shugo Chara that I think I can attribute to all this. i can’t help but feel the general crunchyroll audience won’t notice this at all.
I’m testing the Shugo Chara streaming on CR right now. It seems that when I pause the video, it buffers only a couple of minutes ahead until it stops. It won’t buffer ahead beyond that unless I play the video.
That is just whack because unless I kill my other downloads and dedicate my poor 1mbps bandwidth to CR I won’t be able to play the video smoothly. This also means that 720p and 480p will never play for me at all, negating my interest for a subscription further.
Kairu Ishimaru: the videos are all free. Paying users just get them 1 hr after Japan air time. Free users get them 1 week after. Also pay users get the higher resolution options.
bluemist: yeah, that’s exactly it. If you can’t buffer, I’d guess, 30-50% of the video ahead of time, I think a lot of DSL users will end up having to pause multiple times in an episode.
(Shrug) Well it depends on if there is more people would use their site than go on Youtube or not imo… I personally haven’t really checked out the site yet, after they started to air anime. But it reminds me of last year at Otakon, at that panel I wasn’t able to go to, but my roommates at that time has said of the fansub vs. the licensed panel, that they would have probably lynched the streaming sites.
Omo, you went to that panel right?
I imagine now CR has appealed to the economic purse of the licensing side, and pretty much promised them profits…so this is my way of agreeing with you, when you call CR a trap. Will it be bait or not, that is the question for the many U.S. people out there?
animemiz: Yea, I was at that panel. Did a little post on it too.
I think what CR is doing is ultimately something necessary. But what makes it or BOST or Youtube or Funimation’s initiatives or AnimeNewsNetwork or whoever else work is being able to bridge the business end. Bring profit and a large user base to entice the Japanese side, and decent service to bridge the gap to users.
Obviously at this point no one is doing all that good of a job, naturally because everyone’s just starting out. CR is definitely using its newfound VC money to get companies like Toei on board, but I don’t know if they have enough foresight to hire quality people to work the back end and front end.
I have a 5Mbps connection here (in Georgia), but most of the time CR’s pretty slow, which causes problems because the player only loads 1 minute at a time. The encode quality isn’t that great on some shows as well. Kept getting dropped frames and bad stuttering on Shugo Chara doki (but Druaga plays fine).
Hopefully they’ll get the kinks worked out before people come demanding refunds. Paying customers shouldn’t be beta testers (^^;;
I don’t mind helping them out.
But they need to get over the whole Odex thing.
Once they nab exclusive distro rights, they don’t really have to worry about some stupid otaku who can’t do business prpoerly.
That was certainly my feeling. And the lovely thing about the 480p version being a transcode is that when I finally resorted to Gonzo’s Druaga YouTube channel, I found the quality to be just fine. Hi-res Druaga was a big part of why I ponied up the subscription money, and going to YouTube gave me a sour taste. I was going to suggest the refund or free month as well, and I don’t think it’s an unreasonable thing to ask.
When you mentioned, omo, of the region-locking procedures, I’m puzzled.
Considering the economy of scales that they can generate simply by making it available globally, I’m thoroughly surprised that they are still heeding to the content owners’ requests for region-locking. It’s absurd.
Let the cash flow go directly through services like Crunchyroll, Bost TV and other services. Get them to provide layers of financial platform to empower them to acquire the various methods of payment that users can use. That way, these companies act more like a technology provider, rather than a distribution company. I’m disappointed by money politics.
Overall, they need to do something about those niggling crop of problems users like you, omo, are experiencing. What do I expect from them are at least a smooth and stable service so that weakass broadband users can utilize the service more effectively and conveniently.
I seconded DrmChsr0’s comments. I’m particularly am offended by the mere presence of our weakass distributor in this miniscule red dot.
Don’t forget that despite their online personas that would indicate they’re 13-year old forum retards, these guys are Berkeley graduates. They know exactly what they’re doing. Pretty sure they have a solid gameplan for growing their business model and so far I think it seems to be working for them - Japanese companies have sat up and taken notice.
Solid game plan needs capable customer service peoples! Acting like sneaky smartasses will not do.
TP: The region issue is much more complicated. I suggest you actually look into this, because it’s a no brainer that making things available globally is better. There are many reasons why they can’t.
I don`t really like CR, the whole site seems unprofessional. What I wonder is, why do they offer 3 different prices for the same product - the download to own option. I wanted to pay for Eve no Jikan but was presented with 3 options: $2, $3 and $5 I belive (the last offered some lame avatar bonus), I`d love to support the authors (hell, I imported the dvds) but they give me no explanation about the prices :(
I don’t know, I’m still on the fense about supporting them. I know that ultimately streaming is the future, but I feel that buying just one R2 DVD series per year helps the industry more than wasting my hard-earned money on these clowns. The bottom line is the industry gets my money one way or the other, at least that’s my latest rationalization.
The only legitimate complaint I can give so far, their 720p sample isn’t representative of the Crunchyroll Experience(tm) as it’s not RTMP-streamed, meaning they only demonstrate the video quality but not the playback experience.
Having sampled some of their 720 stuff, I think they’re not worth extra. The quality looks more like blown up 480. The 480 feeds do look okay for the most part.
[…] reasons why I wrote the above paragraph, was the perplexing question I raised in Omo’s post: “When you mentioned, omo, of the region-locking procedures, I’m […]