Improve Auto Quality Selection for Faster 1080p Playback
in progress
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Barry Zimmerman
We recently migrated our video library from Vimeo to Gumlet and have noticed a significant difference in how quickly Auto quality responds to a fast internet connection.
On a 1 Gbps connection, Gumlet videos regularly start at 360p, move up to 720p, and can remain at 720p for some time even though a 1080p version is available.
For comparison, our remaining Vimeo videos are also set to Auto. On exactly the same connection, Vimeo detects the available bandwidth very quickly and moves to 1080p almost immediately, resulting in a noticeably sharper picture much sooner.
I am aware of the start_high_res=true option, but I don’t want to force the highest resolution from the start because some of our members will be using slower connections and this could potentially cause unnecessary initial buffering.
It would be great if Gumlet’s Auto adaptive quality selection could respond more quickly to high-bandwidth connections, moving to 1080p sooner when the connection can clearly support it, while retaining the existing adaptive behaviour for viewers on slower connections.
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Barry Zimmerman
Thanks for making the changes. I’ve just done some further testing on our live website and wanted to share the results.
On a 1 Gbps connection, when viewing a Gumlet video in the normal embedded desktop player, the video is still remaining at 720p for a considerable amount of time. In my latest test it was still at 720p after 1 minute 30 seconds, despite a 1080p version being available.
If I switch the same Gumlet video to full screen, it does eventually move to 1080p, but this is still taking approximately 20 seconds.
For comparison, I tested one of our remaining Vimeo videos on the Match Focus website under exactly the same conditions. Vimeo moved to 1080p within approximately 3 seconds of playback starting, while remaining in the normal embedded desktop player — there was no need to switch to full screen.
So although the recent changes may have improved the behaviour, there still seems to be a significant difference in how quickly Gumlet’s Auto mode responds to available bandwidth.
We don’t necessarily need Gumlet to start at 1080p. Starting at a lower resolution is perfectly reasonable and obviously beneficial for viewers on slower connections. However, on a 1 Gbps connection, I would expect Auto to recognise the available bandwidth and move to 1080p within a few seconds.
The fact that it can remain at 720p for over 1 minute 30 seconds in the embedded player, and still takes around 20 seconds when viewed full screen, suggests the adaptive quality selection is still being quite conservative compared with Vimeo.
Hopefully these results are useful for further tuning of the algorithm.
Aditya Patadia
We made an update to our player algorithm. It should show a higher-resolution version faster now. Can you please check and confirm?
Aditya Patadia
updated the status to
in progress
We are looking into this.