BAD ERROR: Logo can no longer be customized with 7.1.14.727.beta

Hey guys, Thanks for the quick response. But I have some bad news:

The issue is still not fixed. We still get the “FV Flowplayer” Logo during playback…

In addition, now the videos take over a minute to load and start streaming!!!

They eventually do, but it takes ages. (We are using HLS Cloudfront distro btw…)

This might help: I’ve checked them using multiple VPN connections from different regions. Some of them are a little faster, but overall the experience is slowed down. Without using a VPN is noticably faster, but still slow. Besides, many users do use VPNs so, telling them not to use it is unacceptable.

You need to speed up the playback start time with this last release. It was working fine in the previous one…

Here are some additional observations:

I’ve looked through your codebase (lots of great code btw :)

But, here’s the thing: You’re already checking for license during install, and also scheduling a daily for a cron job to check it. Why also check it during playback on your side?

From what I understand, the player is “checking in” with your server for EVERY playback to see if it’s got a valid license. That burdens every video playback – and since your change of that code coincides with the slowing down of the videos – I think that’s where the problem is.

I’m concerned because that design makes our sites dependent on your licensing servers for every video playback!

More importantly, I don’t think you should burden the user experience of our customers by delaying them for a license check that you’ve already performed several times for our domain. There must be an easier way.

You could at least cache it on the database daily during your cron job and check during every video playback. Or, cache it per user session. Or do an async check – still check for the license with every playback but don’t block the player’s operation until the license check actually fails.

That way, our users don’t have to wait for your servers.

Also – do you have Service Level Agreement for your license servers. What if they go down? Will playback eventually start, or will the whole thing stop working?

Please fix this fast, it is hurting our business. A minute to start a video equals player not working.

PS – By the way: if you guys need some automated testing infrastructure to capture errors like this, you should contact me off board… I’d help you out. Or you could setup something like this: http://topnotch.tech/web-guard-your-page/

I know you’re working hard, but it’s also disappointing to be the customer who discovers that a feature we paid for has stopped working.

Thanks for the quick and detailed response and excellent service! And thanks for letting me know about the rollback option – that is and comforting. (And it’s good to hear about the license checks…)

Anyway… I did some network analysis and I think you are right. It looks like the culprit with the delay is a HLS related query; at least that’s the one with the longest consistent delays. Occasionally CloudFront chokes too, which can throw off the numbers through proxy or VPN connects.

Keep up the great work!