Sit Along Problems

[Ten]

I hope everyone is well.

I'm having some trouble viewing the ustream videos on the blog. I used to be able to see them ok, but lately they haven't worked, there's just a big empty white space, even the player itself doesn't load, the operator11 videos still work fine though. I've tried in both firefox and safari and have the latest version of flash. Has anyone had anything similar?

[Longdog]

All OK her on IE7

[Shohei]

Im on Safari (and firefox) and have no issues with the sit-a-longs.
double check your version: here
Should say:

You have version 9,0,115,0 installed

If thats all good then check in your system settings:sharing to see if you have your firewall enabled or if you are using a router, check the firewall on it. Its stands out to me that your running into this on two different browsers, but you can see the operator11 videos. And you say you've got the newest version of flash? That sounds to me like a firewall issue. Also what ver. of OS, Browsers would be helpful.

oh and if you do have a firewall enabled on your mac and/or modem/router - you need to open ports 1935 for both TCP/UDP in/out and the IRC chat port of 6667.

Gassho
Dirk

[Jundo]

I have had to use Ustream for a couple of weeks due to certain technical problems with Operator11 (they may be going out of business as well). There are a few alternate video services like it, and I will be experimenting over the coming days.

I had a couple of people write me to say their problem with Ustream was resolved once they updated Flash,

Gassho, Jundo

[Ten]

Thank you for your replies!

I checked a couple things from your computer knowledgable post there Dirk. I do have the latest version of flash and the only firewall I have is the one that's built in to the OS, which when I looked it up was turned off anyway. It doesn't matter too much though as I've managed to find a work around of sorts. I've found a way to get the direct url to the video, it seems to use the ustream player fine then, but it's full screen, blocky and jerky., I'm sure I'll manage though. I can view the videos again and that's the main thing, but I have quite a bit of catching up to do!

Thanks again!

[Mika]

The ustream video works fine if one has stable and relatively fast (or at least fast enough) internet connection. However this place I spend most of my time at has only wireless network available that sometimes lags and has glitches. Now, this isn't be a big problem for sites like youtube or googlevideo where the video gets downloaded to cache before and when you start viewing it, so you can wait for it all to download before watching.

With ustream, however, I can usually watch some four or five minutes of the sit-a-long fine and then it starts buffering every couple of dozen seconds, sometimes more (and sometimes less). That makes following Jundo's speech difficult, especially if it stops in the middle of a word.

So what I'm asking is if there's a way to download the whole video feed to your computer for watching, or if it would be possible to upload those sitalongs to googlevideo or youtube too? Or some other place which works more like the two sites and not direct streaming like usteam?

That would help me a lot for now and for the future when someone is not around a stable highspeed internets.

[Skye]

I'd like to vote for Google Video as it has an easy link for MP4 downloading of entire episodes for offline viewing or ipod zazen on the road... thread-jack

I've had intermittent problems with ustream, sometimes it gets stuck at "init" and the play button never appears. But it mostly works OK.

[Jundo]

Hi,

Google Video/You Tube is not usable for a daily netcast (filming, editing and uploading time is the issue).

However, Dirk told me about a nifty little add-on to my firefox browser that allow download in various forms. I will look for his information (unless he gets here first).

Sorry for the troubles, and thank you for sticking with it. Usually, if I haven't said anything good in the first two minutes, you can forget the rest anyway!

Gassho, Jundo

[Shohei]

Welp I can help ya get the video files to watch on your computer so you can watch them with out the skiping caused by a poor internet connection.

One way for individuals to save the Sit-A-Longs is to download and install Mozilla Firefox web browser (available for ALL operating systems, mac/win/linux) http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/ once installed you can install a tiny extention...
Video DownloadHelper 2.5.1 (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3006)
available right from the firefox homepage. Once this is installed you can view any page that uses embedded flash movies and save them to your local drive in flash format... for laterviewing or archival purposes (once this extension is installed you will see a small image that is animated, in the upper toolbar by the url that, when clicked, drops down a menu to choose to save said video). That being said there are also a host of free or online tools you can use to convert that format (.flv) to avi, mpeg or the like. *You can view the freshly saved videos in the native flash format (.flv) using VLC (http://www.videolan.org/vlc/) player which is also free and available for all operating systems

---------------------------------------------------------------

okay i just tested for myself and found that the **VLC on My computer (OSX) played the vid but the audio dropped out, this is due to VLC needing a pluging (FFMpeg) Rather than going through that i googled and found a number of free standalone players for the flv format and they worked beautifully. there are also a number of free conversion applications so you can make the files ipod friendly (or zune or w/e you use) im just going to dl the files for archival purposes... load them on a thumb drive so i can watch them @ home (no high speed connections where i live, I can only watch from work)

FYI these files tend to be around 85mb on disk.

*=so i had read...
**= mistake on my part... that is again what i read on a support thread. The actual problem is below.


Okay well after further research it turns out that operator11 used an audio compression that is proprietary to Adobe and only Adobe has the decompressor needed to get the audio out of the flv file into another, more standard format. Now i did find some resources to get around this but there are legality issues etc etc.

SO... short of it is the older sitalongs can only be watched on a computer able to use one of the many free/trial players. They all say they can convert to mpg/mp4/etc but most have in the fine print that "name of troublesome codec goes here" is not supported. That means you would have a truely silent sitalong :B

Gassho
Geekinhiemer

[Mika]

Google Video/You Tube is not usable for a daily netcast (filming, editing and uploading time is the issue).

What exactly is the problem with filming, editing and uploading with those two mentioned sites? How does it work for uStream? How would you like it to work? Perhaps we could find some other alternative that would suit all our needs that you could use.

However, Dirk told me about a nifty little add-on to my firefox browser that allow download in various forms. I will look for his information (unless he gets here first).

Well, I did try that download helper - though I've found other means to download from youtube/googlevideos before. Perhaps I don't know how to use it properly; when I view the sit a longs now I get the Download Helper icon next to address bar, but ustream is not listed in the list that it gives, nor can I find any other meaningful way to download the videos. Perhaps it doesn't work for this site?

Usually, if I haven't said anything good in the first two minutes, you can forget the rest anyway!

The problem is, you usually do!

[Shohei]

Aye it seems Ustream has locked stuff down some more. the format is now .usv which is still a flv file but customized and the download helper in fire fox ignores it :/ Sorry all but the above will not work for Ustream.

[Jundo]

Hi,

I will try to come up with some alternative to Ustream (believe me, google/youtube are not set up for what we do here). There are new resources coming online all the time.

Just keep in mind that we are pioneers. There are bound to be glitches now and then. Heck, Dogen had to go to China in a storm tossed leaky boat for his Zen Practoce.

Gassho, J

[Mika]

I will try to come up with some alternative to Ustream (believe me, google/youtube are not set up for what we do here).

That would be fantastic! I know that those two sites mentioned are not very good, but just gave them as an example of the kind of functionality for the viewer that I'm after (mainly the full length buffering / cache and possibility to download the video). I also asked for the features you need because there are many computer and internet "savvy" people around here so we might be able to give some ideas or suggestions you haven't thought of yet.

Just keep in mind that we are pioneers.

Yes, and I'm eternally (with the condition of impermanence) grateful for you to bring us this opportunity to participate in Treeleaf.