AstroBin Videos feature ready to test! - Forums

Dear friends,

I've reached an acceptable state of the Videos feature that I believe is ready for a test round, and since, as you know, I only have 2 eyes, I would really appreciate if you guys in the Beta Testers group took it for a spin!

PLEASE READ:

The Video feature is hosted on a separate site: anything you do there does not affect the real AstroBin website
The beta website does not have working emails, so you cannot test email notifications, that's okay

I deleted all two-factor authentication settings, please let me know if you have trouble logging in

In case there are some links on AstroBin that take you to www instead of beta dot astrobin dot com, please let me know
Some parts of the website might be slow or broken because this is a test environment, please don't report issues that have nothing to do with:

videos
thumbnails
image data edit form
display of your gallery
display of the slideshow feature

The search engine will not work properly: please do not use it and don't report issues about it

THINGS TO TEST:

Upload videos of different sizes and formats (avi, mov, mp4, etc). The maximum allowed is around 2 GB
Check that the videos play and look good
Check on mobile phones too
Check that thumbnails are okay
Check that the slideshows play ok
Feel free to click around and try to break things (as I mentioned, you're not sending anyone emails, and you're not affecting the real AstroBin website)

HOW TO TEST:

Go to https://beta.astrobin.com/account/login and login
Upload a file as normal (you will see that the uploader and image editor data are on https://beta-app.astrobin.com/)

HOW TO REPORT ISSUES:

Make sure this is an issue specific to videos and not something that's present of the production website
Send me exact steps to reproduce the problem and include screenshots and links if relevant

Thank you so much for your help!
Salvatore

Salvatore Iovene:
Dear friends,

I've reached an acceptable state of the Videos feature that I believe is ready for a test round, and since, as you know, I only have 2 eyes, I would really appreciate if you guys in the Beta Testers group took it for a spin!

PLEASE READ:
The Video feature is hosted on a separate site: anything you do there does not affect the real AstroBin website
The beta website does not have working emails, so you cannot test email notifications, that's okay
I deleted all two-factor authentication settings, please let me know if you have trouble logging in

In case there are some links on AstroBin that take you to www instead of beta dot astrobin dot com, please let me know
Some parts of the website might be slow or broken because this is a test environment, please don't report issues that have nothing to do with:
videos
thumbnails
image data edit form
display of your gallery
display of the slideshow feature

The search engine will not work properly: please do not use it and don't report issues about it

THINGS TO TEST:
Upload videos of different sizes and formats (avi, mov, mp4, etc). The maximum allowed is around 2 GB
Check that the videos play and look good
Check on mobile phones too
Check that thumbnails are okay
Check that the slideshows play ok
Feel free to click around and try to break things (as I mentioned, you're not sending anyone emails, and you're not affecting the real AstroBin website)

HOW TO TEST:
Go to https://beta.astrobin.com/account/login and login
Upload a file as normal (you will see that the uploader and image editor data are on https://beta-app.astrobin.com/)

HOW TO REPORT ISSUES:
Make sure this is an issue specific to videos and not something that's present of the production website
Send me exact steps to reproduce the problem and include screenshots and links if relevant

Thank you so much for your help!
Salvatore. Absolutely my privilege.

*** Type absolutely my pleasure I look forward to watching it.your reply here ***

Hi Salvatore,
Happy to help

I just tried uploading some videos for you, but the uploader didn't seem to work.

Dropping a movie file onto the uploader did not capture the video file.

Using the browse option, I could select the video file, but it didn't upload then either.

Have other testers seen this behaviour ?

Cheers,

Gary

Hi Gary,
What is the file extension? What browser were you using? Diet it work if you try a regular image?

Hi Salvatore,
I tried uploading some .mov files, which didnt work, then tested using some .jpg and .png files - those would not upload either unfortunately.

I tested initially using Safari on a Mac - but the behaviour is the same when I use Chrome.

There is nothing unusual about my setup - uploading images (as opposed to movies) works as expected when I use the regular uploader.

Gary JONES:
Hi Salvatore,
I tried uploading some .mov files, which didnt work, then tested using some .jpg and .png files - those would not upload either unfortunately.

I tested initially using Safari on a Mac - but the behaviour is the same when I use Chrome.

There is nothing unusual about my setup - uploading images (as opposed to movies) works as expected when I use the regular uploader.

Hmm that’s weird. Could you try opening the developer console in Chrome and see if you have any error messages?

Yes - it is strange.

This is what I see in View/Developer/Developer Tools/ Console when I open the Uploader ...

JavaScript API has been loaded directly without a callback. This is not supported and can lead to race conditions and suboptimal performance. For supported loading patterns please see https://goo.gle/js-api-loading

As mentioned earlier, neither the 'Drop File Here' or the Browse function seem to work.

Using 'Drop Here', the Uploader does not recognise that a file has been dropped.

Using Browse, I can navigate a folder hierarchy and select a file, but after I click 'Open', the file does not appear in the Upload window.

Im not sure whether that helps ?

FYI - Im testing this on a Mac Studio with M1 Max Apple Silicon - behaviour is the same using Safari.

I hope that helps - pleaser let me know if you'd like me to test further.

Hi @Gary JONES,

thanks, this helps!

I could fix the issue, but to do so I needed to change your password to sign in as you.

Your password on the real AstroBin website is unaffected.

I will email you your new password for beta.

Could please test again?

How about others? @Ruediger, can you also give it a look please?

Thank you all!

Salvatore Iovene:
How about others? @Ruediger, can you also give it a look please?

Hi Salvatore,

I will try asap. Probably on next weekend. Thank you!

CS
Rüdiger

Thanks Salvatore,
OK - I logged in using the new credentials ...

It works !

One thing ...
If you select/drop a file for uploading but do not enter text into the Title text box, the uploader appears to fail.
The only indication that something is wrong is that the word 'Title' turns red, and a small '!' appears at the end of the text entry box.

I had my screen se to hi-res when I first tested this, and I didnt notice the warning - I suggest this be made more prominent.

Also, the thumbnail seems to select a frame from the middle of the movie, which might be of little interest compared to the main subject, or might not be representative of the object of the movie. I suggest making it possible to select a specific frame for the thumbnail.

Otherwise, it seems to work OK for this .mov file

Also, some of the image metadata (acquisition etc) might not be relevant to some uploads - particularly for movies such as this where the type of object is 'other' - so would be good for the uploader to skip those sections.

I also noticed that uploaded movies do not always appear in the Staging Area - and that movies promoted to the Public Area do not appear in the Public Area - if you are only testing the uploader, perhaps this functionality hasn't been built yet ?

Hi @Gary JONES,

Gary JONES:
I also noticed that uploaded movies do not always appear in the Staging Area - and that movies promoted to the Public Area do not appear in the Public Area - if you are only testing the uploader, perhaps this functionality hasn't been built yet ?

Your videos don't show in your gallery because they don't have an acquisition session, and your gallery sorting is by acquisition date. Even the banner at the top of your gallery informs you that images without an acquisition date will not be shown. It is not specific to videos.

Gary JONES:
If you select/drop a file for uploading but do not enter text into the Title text box, the uploader appears to fail.

This is happening on the real AstroBin website too. I need to make sure the error message is shown! Will fix.

Gary JONES:
Also, the thumbnail seems to select a frame from the middle of the movie, which might be of little interest compared to the main subject, or might not be representative of the object of the movie. I suggest making it possible to select a specific frame for the thumbnail.

Agreed, but probably later, depending on how much a demand there is for that.

Gary JONES:
Also, some of the image metadata (acquisition etc) might not be relevant to some uploads - particularly for movies such as this where the type of object is 'other' - so would be good for the uploader to skip those sections.

This is no different than with the images. I prefer to keep the choice, otherwise I get people asking me why they can't add acquisition details etc :-)

Salvatore Iovene:
Your videos don't show in your gallery because they don't have an acquisition session, and your gallery sorting is by acquisition date. Even the banner at the top of your gallery informs you that images without an acquisition date will not be shown. It is not specific to videos.

Hmmm - yes ...
The warning might be more meaningful if it said something like "2 of your images are hidden because they do not have an acquisition date".

Salvatore Iovene:
This is no different than with the images. I prefer to keep the choice, otherwise I get people asking me why they can't add acquisition details etc :-)

Yes - but if the user selects 'Other' as the Subject Type, then the Acquisition screen says ...
The subject type "Other" does not support acquisition sessions.

Which is what I was suggesting

This doesn't apply just to movies of course, but to anything that is not an 'acquired' asset - such as a simulation or drawing etc.

Hi Salvatore,

I did a quick test and uploaded a 35MB AVI. Here my comments/observations/suggestions:

1. "This video is still processing, please return to this page later. " is showing now for quite a long time and has not finished (>20 min).
Suggestion: Show a progress bar or at least status. So you might get the feeling it has stalled.

2. The video should not get published publicly before the conversation has finished. Otherwise visitors click on the thumb and and get disappointed, since it is still under processing.
Suggestion: Video-Thumbs should only be shown when conversation has finished.

3. The "Play" arrow is covering a lot of the thumb nail.
Suggestion mark videos with a small batch instead of the large centered arrow.

Something like that, but in the typical AB style.

Hope this helps a bit

CS
Rüdiger

Update1: After more than 2h still not processed.
Update2: Still processing after 12 hours. It seems, something is not working as expected.

Hi @Ruediger, thanks for testing!

Ruediger:
1. "This video is still processing, please return to this page later. " is showing now for quite a long time and has not finished (>20 min).
Suggestion: Show a progress bar or at least status. So you might get the feeling it has stalled.

Apparently H.264 demands that the pixel width and height are even numbers. Your video had an odd-numbered pixel size, so the encoding failes. To address this, I will:

Resize the video by 1 pixel if necessary
Add error handling logic to account for videos failing to encode

I will look into providing an ETA and a progress bar, but it's probably a lot of work for something very rarely used, because in my tests the encoding is quite fast even for large videos, so my assumption is that by the time you're finished with inputting the data, the video is ready.

Ruediger:
2. The video should not get published publicly before the conversation has finished. Otherwise visitors click on the thumb and and get disappointed, since it is still under processing.
Suggestion: Video-Thumbs should only be shown when conversation has finished.

No images on AstroBin are automatically published, until you click on the "Promote to the public area" button. And I guess nobody will do that when they see that the video is still not available. I don't think this is an issue.

Ruediger:
3. The "Play" arrow is covering a lot of the thumb nail.
Suggestion mark videos with a small batch instead of the large centered arrow.

I can make it a bit smaller, semi-transparent, but I don't think it should be a badge, especially because it might get mixed up with other badges.

Salvatore Iovene:
No images on AstroBin are automatically published, until you click on the "Promote to the public area" button. And I guess nobody will do that when they see that the video is still not available. I don't think this is an issue.

Hi Salvatore,

I think, this is different from person to person. For example I have never ever used the staging area (except for one image I shared to one person ). I always post directly. Moreover in combination with videos, this process wont work out, because you would have to come back again and again and check manually whether your video has been already processed or not.

Ruediger:
I think, this is different from person to person. For example I have never ever used the staging area (except for one image I shared to one person ). I always post directly. Moreover in combination with videos, this process wont work out, because you would have to come back again and again and check manually whether your video has been already processed or not.

Unless you're uploading a video that's 30 minutes long, in 99% of the cases the video will be ready when you've finished with the form, so you won't need to come back later. Also, it looks like I should be able to add a progress bar after all, so that should help!

Salvatore Iovene:
Ruediger:
I think, this is different from person to person. For example I have never ever used the staging area (except for one image I shared to one person ). I always post directly. Moreover in combination with videos, this process wont work out, because you would have to come back again and again and check manually whether your video has been already processed or not.

Unless you're uploading a video that's 30 minutes long, in 99% of the cases the video will be ready when you've finished with the form, so you won't need to come back later. Also, it looks like I should be able to add a progress bar after all, so that should help!

If it so fast, then it is no issue.

@Ruediger and others:

I fixed the case where videos with even-numbered pixel dimensions would not work
Added a progress bar for the encoding process, even tho you'll see rarely (only for very long videos)
Made the play button a badge on the small thumbnails, as Rüdiger suggested, after playing around with some options

Please test some more if you can.

Thank you!
Salvatore

@Salvatore Iovene hats off to you! Now I'll finally be able replace my humongous GIFs with 1/10 size MP4s.

What I noticed: the H264 videos I uploaded are published without any re-encoding, which is what I was hoping for (I use the probably-everywhere-supported-by-now H264/YUV420p codec+pixel format combination). This is important, as any lossy re-encoding tends to destroy fine details (esp. in prominence/granulation animations, or subtle tone gradations on Jupiter), as I've found when I tried uploading some of my stuff to YouTube.

However - when I uploaded a larger HuffYUV (lossless) video, it's still showing in its original form. ~~Shouldn't it be re-encoded in some way?~~

EDIT: now I get it, I was using "download the original file" links to compare files

Having this link is good enough. And the generated preview is also of good quality.

Hi all,

I started the roll out process, so testing is no longer necessary on the beta site.

Thank you all!