Hi all,
we're currently testing the possibility of streaming educational videos directly from www.nwdanet.com via HTML5
For testing purposes we have produced this 23 something minutes long video in which I'm doodling around in TG2, talking about how to manipulate cloud, the camera position, the sun etc... it's pretty much a beginner level video.
We would like to optimize this service going forward and in order to do that, we need your feedback. Please watch the video at
http://www.nwdanet.com/terragen-tutorials/66-understanding-tg2-clouds-part-i
DOESN'T YET (!) WORK WITH FIREFOX or INTERNET EXPLORER
It should work fine with either Safari, or Chrome, however Chrome's implementation of HTLM5 doesn't seem to give you the controls to go fullscreen.
Please provide feedback here in this thread, specifically on the following aspects:
1 - Video Quality... is it easy to watch, is the quality and frame rate good?
2 - Audio.... is the narrator easy to understand? Is the level of background noise acceptable?
3 - Content... is the speed of the "presentation" ok, or is it too fast, too much detail or not enough detail (for a beginner level tutorial)?
4 - Streaming... is the content streaming fast enough to your location, so that you can watch the video without the player having to pause and load in the middle of the stream?
Your feedback is much appreciated.
Thanks in advance,
Frank
Good idea, Frank. But it doesn't work in Opera. Just a blank space with controls that don't work.
Quote from: Dune on January 06, 2012, 11:11:32 AM
Good idea, Frank. But it doesn't work in Opera. Just a blank space with controls that don't work.
yeah thanks, I forgot about Opera. Have you been able to see the video in Safari or Chrome? If yes, I would appreciate some feedback to the questions I posed above.
Thanks,
Frank
I only use Opera and occasionally IE, so any answer is up to the others.
Hi Frankl,
1 - Video Quality... is it easy to watch, is the quality and frame rate good?
Fine for me, nice and smooth.
2 - Audio.... is the narrator easy to understand?- yea again no problems but you could cut down the number of errmms!
Is the level of background noise acceptable? - didn't notice any!
3 - Content... is the speed of the "presentation" ok, or is it too fast, too much detail or not enough detail (for a beginner level tutorial)?
Speed is fine, but you really need a novice to answer this one.
4 - Streaming... is the content streaming fast enough to your location, so that you can watch the video without the player having to pause and load in the middle of the stream?
again this is o.k. for me.
Kevin.
Worked in Chrome fine for me (personally I don't get on with the browser but thats not important!)
1 - Video Quality... Frame rate is good, quality is ok, sometimes I loose track of the mouse pointer. (I have seen tutorials where there was a method to indicate the mouse pointer, contracting ripples was one)
2 - Audio.... Background noise and enunciation were fine.
3 - Content... for a beginner just right although as part of a tutorial series I would have expected by this stage the student should be familiar with the interface (lesson 1 maybe)
4 - Streaming... No issues
My only real issue was there were too many "umm's" and "err's" interrupting the flow of the presentation. This is the hardest to get right inho.
It's difficult to get an easy going, familiar friendly flow going with out a very tight script and its next to impossible to get a tight script with random seed values being generated.
A great start and this is (again imho) a much better way to teach Terragen that with pre-sets which although useful do not in them selves let the user know why the pre-set author chose that particular set of nodes in a particular way.
Video tutorials will allow the novice to see something of the mind of the artist.
Hope this helps and best of luck
Richard
Thanks guys, that's good news to me, so far. Let's see what others have to say.
The errs, and uhms: honestly I had no script at all and no idea what I was going to show next, I just kept talking while I was doodling around so that I have a decent video for testing. I think the err's are more dense at the beginning and became a bit less later on when I got used to talking. Anyway, as soon as we're publishing a "serious" video, I'll make sure it has less errs and uhms :)
Regards,
Frank
Hmm...The video loads..But nothing happens with the play button, stopping and clicking play again does nothing. This was on chrome
On Explorer I got a bunch of errors and no video visible??
Chrome is the latest version but not sure about explorer, since I dont really use it
Edit: I can rewind and go backwards to see what's happening but playing video is not working
Quote from: freelancah on January 06, 2012, 12:06:48 PM
Hmm...The video loads..But nothing happens with the play button, stopping and clicking play again does nothing. This was on chrome
On Explorer I got a bunch of errors and no video visible??
Chrome is the latest version but not sure about explorer, since I dont really use it
Edit: I can rewind and go backwards to see what's happening but playing video is not working
Hi,
I wrote in my first post that it will not (yet) work with IE or FF. But Chrome and Safari should work (I've tested it here at home).
Could you retry with your chrome browser?
Thanks,
Frank
Sorry Frank, I think I'm blind to red text ;D
I tried again and it's still the same with chrome. Very odd, I dont think it's my internet because every other video streaming site works and I have had no issues with anything else..
Cant figure out why this is happening
That's what I expected: stuff that works here doesn't mean it works there. But I'm grateful you told me that you can't get it to work. At least now I am aware that I cannot assume it works everywhere when people use Chrome.
I'll add support for some other browsers soon.
Anyone got this to work fine on Safari yet?
Thanks,
Frank
I'm watching it now in Safari with no problems. So far, so great - these are the kinds of tutorials I'd like to see much more of to act as an entry point.
In Chrome I got a "The video cannot be found. It may have been removed from the server. HTTP 404" error.
I tried it on my server. Seems to work fine so I conclude it's something that's not up to date with my system.. Will have to check to see if I can see what it is
EDIT: server running chrome
thanks again.
*** be advised that NWDA will now go down for maintenance and will hopefully return in a few hours ***
Regards,
Frank
Works fine for me in Chrome. Glad to see you are tackling these, there's a lot of interest as you know. And now we know what Frank sounds like! ;D
Regarding technical matters, the AllVideos plugin for Joomla works very well cross-browser. It's Flash-based, but far more people are able to play Flash videos than HTML5, so even though it may be technically less desirable, practically speaking it makes more sense in my view.
- Oshyan
I have Firefox 7. Is that out of the equation?
Hi Frank!
1 - Video Quality... Nice and smooth, no problems viewing.
2 - Audio.... Clear and well understandable. The 'errms' didn't bother at all, especially when you mentioned you just talked without a script. I didn't notice any background noise.
3 - Content... Speed is good and there was enough content.
4 - Streaming... Streaming was fast enough, no loading pauses. The video shut down once and I had to refresh the page to start it again, but otherwise no problems.
Definitely great start and hopefully there will be hours and hours of these to come!
Hi all,
concerning the browser compatibilities - as far as things stand with HTML5, not all browsers support the same codecs. For example, FF and Opera can only do oggv and theora, but no mp4, whereas chrome, safari and even IE9 can support mp4, but no ogg or theora.
In the end we need to either fall back to flash (which i want to avoid), or offer 2 files of the same thing but with different formats.
Eventually I will offer something for FF users, too (I am a FF user myself), but at the moment we're just testing the server capabilities and experiement with the encoding, which is a science of its own.
Quote from: Oshyan on January 06, 2012, 01:53:22 PM
And now we know what Frank sounds like! ;D
It's hard to withstand my irresistably awesome voice, I know.... Wait until you hear Martin's or Franck's :)
Cheers,
Frank
Do you just want to avoid Flash out of principle? Because despite its issues (which I recognize), it really is still the most broadly supported player/system by far. Any site that supports HTML5 pretty much only does it as an *alternative* to Flash, with existing Flash support available for the majority of users. I would just like to see these reach as wide an audience as possible, with a minimum of hassle for you, the content creator.
- Oshyan
Updated my system thru windows update and yet no effect. Have no clue why it wont work
EDIT: nvm. apparently there were 3 more updates. It works now!
Hi FrankB.
Firstly, thanks so much to you and those who are working with you, for endeavoring to make top quality tutorials, they are greatly needed as you know!
I watched the tut with safari (current version), as I use safari for most web surfing.
The video quality was very high, I had no problems viewing and could see everything perfectly! Much better than almost everything on youtube.
The audio was clear and crisp. no problems.
Your english is very good, and understandable. And your accent adds character to the product.
As to html5, I say go for it. If guys like you don't produce content for the format, we will never get rid of flash. On the other hand, I understand that the tuts need to be available to all.
Keep it up!
I enjoyed this very much. Video quality and sound was excellent. I thought the content was nicely detailed, covering a lot of ground in a learnable way. I call this a beginners tutorial but it would need to be part of a series, starting with the interface and moveing on ffrom there. Look forward to seeing more. It would be great if someone -you? could do the same thing with them pesky blue nodes. Personally I'd also like to see some tutorials on masking techniques.
Mick
Can't get it to play.
Updated browser, plugins, windows, and videodrivers, still only se a X in the middle and the spinning ring when i press play.
Using win7 64 and firefox 9.0.1.
Sorry did not see the FF warning. lol. Maby im blind to red text to.
Any chance for a download link for the video ?
It would not run on Chrome. Could you post this on YouTube? I'm trying Firefox now.
I get a message that it 'may have been removed from the server'. This occurs with Chrome and Firefox.
No luck with Chrome don't know this Safari...please do a Flash version
... could very well be that we switch to flash entirely. These are just experiments so far, so nothing is carved in stone yet.
Thanks for the interest!
Frank
I "think" Vimeo files are flash encoded/wrapped (forgive me but this is not my area). On showing some of my Vimeo hosted videos to a friend with an iPad he told me the reason they could not play was that Mac generally dose not support flash. Flash is not being developed by Adobe for mobile devices I believe any longer and it would seem likely that it will be fazed out altogether.
Cheers
Richard
Ooops...forgot Flash and mac don't get along...sigh
Doesn't work for me, and I'm using Chrome. Same message about "may have been removed from server". I'm glad you're trying to use HTML5, but don't understand why it isn't working. Even typing the URL to the video returns error 404.
Oh, and yes, this is my first post here, but I've been lurking for quite a while.
I like the Educational Video TG2 :)
But perhaps you start a production quality MasterClass Lesson. A real "Animation fly through Project" form scratch to Final product. I must not a free Tutorial but focus on realism Quality final results.
http://www.planetside.co.uk/images/stories/planetside/st-helens-anim_new1_add-rock_beauty-shot-test13_8192-ter_with-lake9_70fov_old-atmo_beauty-shot2_3h1m44s_final.jpg
So all the process and TG worklow to get this would nice....