I’ve been hearing for a while that Blip.tv is slow.
It’s never seemed bad to me, but I didn’t really have anything to compare it to. I have to be honest, I really love the features Blip.tv gives to its producers. Not so much to its viewers. But to the producers. The automated file conversions from FTP uploaded masters is an exceptional time saver in post, and the automated upload to YouTube, while not perfect, also saves some redundant work for me after the show each Tuesday night.
So, to hear that Blip.tv is slow seemed backward to me; it is a real time saver. To me, a show producer.
Last July, we launched a syndicate in China, because Blip.tv is blocked in China and our viewers were crying out (in particular, Mainland China residents who had traveled to places like Germany for school and had fallen in love with the show, which is very popular there).
So for kicks, I thought I’d test the speed difference between Blip.tv and our China syndication system.
For this little experiment, I used the exact same file from 3 sources (Blip.tv, Amazon S3 and our China syndication system).
Here are the shocking results:
File: Episode 295, H.264 SD Quality, 246378147 Bytes (235 MB).
Blip.TV: 34m 25s, 117 KB/s
Amazon S3: 52s, 4.48 MB/s
Our China Syndication System: 37s, 6.19M/s
I’m sorry, what? Blip.tv took nearly 35 minutes to download the episode, whereas our syndication system into Mainland China, which is housed at our datacentre in California, took only 37 seconds! That’s basically one second for every minute it took through Blip.tv. I did not expect that! I’m also impressed that the little syndicating system (which I designed) outperformed S3.
No, we are not going to drop Blip.tv. It has its place, and that place is as I described. They’re a big part of our distribution chain. But perhaps it’s best to retire them as the source for our RSS feeds and let them stick to what they do best: from the encoding to the distribution to YouTube.
So I have a feeling our system which was built to help viewers in China watch the show may soon become our world-wide source for RSS files. What do you think? Want to receive Category5 episode 5500% faster?
Now, to git’r done!
Comment below.
Hi Robbie,
I can confirm that the download speed of the Blip-server is a bit low (understatement). 130 kB/s on a good day, but I’ve seen download speeds of only 20 kB/s on bad days. I’m using Miro and often when I want to watch one of the greatest weekly tech shows on the net I’m better off just watching the episode using Youtube.
Just my cup of tea.
Greetings,
Petriko
Hi Robbie,
Is bandwidth from the feed from California more expensive to you than blip?
Although speed is always nice for viewers, download speed for the RSS feed isn’t all that important for me because it works in the background and I wouldn’t usually be waiting for it. I would rather you save the money, if it’s significant.
Karl
Hey Karl,
Thanks for the comment. I appreciate the sentiment. The long story short truth of it is, the server in question is already in place and costing us money as Blip.tv and YouTube are both blocked in China, and we still want our viewers in China to be able to watch. So in reality, we’re already paying for it regardless of how we use it.
This transition is also one of redundancy. I’m big on that. It gives us yet one more place in the cyber realms where Category5 videos are backed up.
The speed boost is a fortunate side effect of a server which already exists in our infrastructure… we’re just going to start using it for more than just China.
Cheers!
Robbie