welcome to the Digital Delivery forum

[Tim Wilson]

I beg to differ.

https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/17/871302

Re: Following up re: digital delivery
by Bob Zelin on Aug 4, 2010 at 12:53:35 pm

Hey, are we starting a NEW FORUM for digital delivery ?

Bob Zelin

I simply agreed. 🙂

Tim Wilson
Associate Publisher, Editor-in-Chief
Creative COW Magazine

My Blog: “Is this thing on? Oh it’s on!”

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[Mark Suszko]

I seem to dimly recall there was a “speed send” system out there where your file was cut up into smaller pieces, and those pieces all fed simultaneously, to be reassembled at the other end. The internet is good at that kind of thing, packets are packets. But I think that presupposes you have enough bandwidth access and the hardware to handle the simultaneous reception of the files, and their integration at the reception end. And if you had that much hardware and capacity, then you probably didn’t need the simultaneous multi-send strategy in the first place anyhow…

I am fascinated by AP Snapfeed, what they do is automatically scale the quality or the send time, according to what your priority is, speed or quality, and what’s available to the system, from Inmarsat or fly-away VSAT satellite terminal, down to twisted copper POTS lines. If you absolutly need to get *something* out ASAP, it will send out a tiny, jumpy screen movie, but it send it in the time you allot to the system. The more time you have, the better the quality it offers you.

The part of Snapfeed I really like for news is that should the FTP get cut off at any point, the receiving location can still play whatever part of the file was sent right up to the break. With other FTP systems, you spend 30 minutes feeding it up, and if the feed gets interrupted in the last 10 seconds, the file on the receive side is unplayable.

[Bob Zelin]

the issue is not file size, the issue is the speed of delivery.
You can use YouSendIt for up to 2 Gig files – but even with that, it still takes a LONG TIME to download that file. Like I said, using an alternate method (which I will discuss in the Digital Delivery Cow forum), it took 40 minutes to download an under 200Meg file.

Bob Zelin

[John Davidson]

Bob, I just did a YSI test and downloaded a 50 meg file in 40 seconds. A second test on a 700 meg file I sent last week to an editor downloads for me in 11 minutes.

Something is clearly wrong on the receiver’s end. If there’s a bottleneck, I suspect it’s not with YSI or anything you can control. If the receiver has supposedly superfast internet, suggest they speak with their IT network engineer. I bet money there’s a speed cap placed on each hub on their network. This happens with Discovery and there’s nothing we can do about it.

YSI is fast man. Much faster than 40 minutes for 200 megs when you don’t have IT guys screwing with speeds.

I think I mentioned this before, but DMG Chopper will break up larger than 2 gig files and rebuild them on the other end once everything is downloaded. It’s a nice way to get around that 2 gig limit, and it’s free and easy.

[Bob Zelin]

please excuse my ignorance, but what is YSI ?

Bob Zelin

[Zane Barker]

YSI = You Send It.

Like has been said its not a problem with YSI, the problem is the person downloading it has a poor internet connection.

Internet providers limit the how fast you can download things. Many times internet providers have different levels of service that you can pay for, so often you can pay more to have a faster connection.

**Hindsight is always 1080p**

[Bob Zelin]

And what has been your experience with 2 Gig files with YSI ?
How long is the transfer (not with a T1 or faster line) ?

Bob Zelin

[Tim Wilson]

Mileage will vary of course, but we use YSI quite a bit, and find it to download rather significantly faster than FTP. Certainly easier to manage for folks on the other end of what you send. They click a secure link in an email, and save the file wherever they want to.

Not that you won’t have to get them on the phone and walk them through figuring out where they saved the dang file.

The 2GB limit can be a pain for sure, but boy howdy, is it easy to use.

[John Davidson]

If a 700 meg file with YSI (you send it) comes in at 11 minutes, a two gig file comes in at about 25 minutes. This is on regular old Time Warner / road runner southern california internet.

Here are some handy questions for slow receivers to troubleshoot their download speed if you send a file.

1. Are you on DSL? DSL is the worst.
2. Do you use comcast and pay for super fast speed? Well, Comcast in your area might be throttling specific sites like ‘you send it’ (Google ‘net neutrality’).
3. Are you using a wireless internet connection on the computer you’re downloading? Try using an ethernet connection to the router/modem rather than wireless. It can make a HUGE difference.
4. What speed results does ‘speedtest.net’ give you? It will help identify slow connections quickly.
5. Are you on a mac and most of your IT guys are pc people? PC IT guys are notorious for handicapping macs – because they can’t admit they have no idea what they’re doing.

Most FTP hosts (like host gator, etc) can almost hit 1 meg per second on a download, but since those systems are feeding multiple sites off of one or two servers, they will rarely go faster than that (most go much slower actually – in the 100kbps – 600kpbs range). With YSI I’m hitting 1.3 mbps consistently. I believe my nephew in Bucheon, SKorea had 80mbps download speeds and was able to go even faster than 1.3. I’d be interested in seeing what speeds you guys get on your downloads.

Many networks I’ve worked with have their own internal ftp. One network has a fantastic one. Downloads came off their server ridiculously fast, and uploads fully maximized my upload bandwidth. Large files didn’t have a limit on size. Another network’s is throttled to a specific speed and if you go over 1 gig in file size, the upload will drop. Their internet speeds internally are also slower, so when I send a YSI file, it takes nearly an hour for them to download a 1 gig file.

There’s not going to be a perfect system unfortunately. I like You Send It because it’s fast and easy. Net Neutrality isn’t going to happen it looks like, so I doubt it’s going to get easier for us to find a consistent method of online delivery. We will all have to have multiple options for uploading and transferring files. I currently use mobile me (slowest), 2 FTP services, and You Send It.

[Chris Blair]

I think You Send It has a 2GB limit on uploads…so in Bob’s case it wouldn’t help unless he sent two separate files that were then put back together on the other end…which is likely not an option.

The only solution that I know of for files as large as 3GB would be a T3 line, which has a (supposedly) constant speed of 44.6 Mbps. So you could theoretically upload about 250MB per minute, or 3GB in roughly 12 minutes.

Of course the downside is the cost of a T3 line would be in the thousands per month!

As a comparison, a T1 line would take about 30 times longer…or 6 hours on average to upload a 3GB file, but where we’re located it only costs a few hundred a month and you can also put your phone system on it since it’s actually a telephone based copper line. So in our case, it’s about the same as paying for a separate phone system and internet cable.

But I can’t imagine trying to use it to upload a 3GB file.

Somebody mentioned breaking it into packets…which is I believe what bit-torrent does. But I think for that to work you have to have mutliple people (peers) downloading the file at the same file. So if only one person is doing downloading, I don’t think you’re able to take advantage of the principals of torrents. Maybe that poster was talking about something else…but I know I’ve uploaded and downloaded 1GB or larger files in an hour via bit-torrent, but in those cases there were dozens of peers and also “seeders”…which are others who were uploading the same file while I was downloading it.

Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com
Read our blog http://www.videomi.com/blog