large videos failing to upload

mtnbiker

I have more trouble getting large videos to upload to smugmug...argh. I'm going to guess about 50% of my attempts fail...sometimes they never show up in the gallery, sometimes they just show up with the processing image icon....and yes sometimes the do post.

If they are listed, the upload log always shows the same thing
" Wrong bytes received. Was your connection interrupted? Please try again, and contact a hero if the problem persists."


All videos are less than 10 minutes long and are less than 600MB, most have been between 400-500MB

mtnbiker

ok I uploaded 3 more videos last night...nothing in the upload log, nothing in the gallery...

Alexander

Same here, they just vanish.
No error messages, no log messages.

I'm trying to upload to
http://www.melanie-und-alexander.de/TimeCatcher/trailer/11066641_LY7w3
or
http://time-catcher.smugmug.com/Other/video/11112669_EyuXG


Thanks!

Alexander

Um... I just posted this. Then I went back to the gallery
http://time-catcher.smugmug.com/Other/video/11112669_EyuXG
deleted one other video, and suddenly I see two "Processing Image" thumbs.

Somethings happening out there...

Alexander

Same behaviour in the melanie-und-alexander gallery.

Okay, whatever is going on there: Would one of you heroes care to explain that? Out of PURE technical interest...

mtnbiker

nothing showing up in either the log or gallery yet over here.

Alexander

Same here.

Andy

Guys, for uploading issues you should, in the future, write our Support Heroes - I'll ask Doc to post here.

EDIT: No need to write them now.

mtnbiker

thanks Andy

docwalker

Hi guys. When you see this happen it usually means that the file did not make it to us. When you contact us on the help desk we ask you to run Traceroutes and a Line Quality test. In most cases it turns out to be a connection problem. You may be able to get to other sites on the internet and upload files. But every site you visit uses a different server and may be located in a different city. Problems with one connection may not effect others.

Please do contact us on the help desk so that we can see if there is a pattern to what is happening. There may be something on our end. I just checked and I am seeing a bunch of videos currently uploading and processing so I am not sure where the issue may be without your test data.

mtnbiker

Thanks Doc I'll let you know next time this happens, as it seems to happen quite a bit. Right now the videos I am uploading seem to be working, still waiting on one to finish uploading, and one to finish processing.

ChancyRat

FYI, I have had the same problem over the last 5 days. The first time I uploaded a 300MB video, it showed as a thumbnail processing in the gallery, but never showed in the upload stats and the thumbnail never got clean. I deleted that and tried another 8 times now, for all these efforts, no upload log, no thumbnail, it's as if I never did it. But simple uploader appears to have completed.

A few days prior to this pattern, another video uploaded properly.

joinrats@joinrats.com

Peter

I've had this problem a number of times and finally figured it out.

Any time I used the "Simple" method of uploading, I would run into problems. There were many times when it showed my video was uploaded and complete, then going into my album there was nothing . . . Blank.

Sooooo . . . . I switched to the "Olde Faithful" uploader. I've not had a problem with uploading videos using that method.

And btw, I have a very good connection.

Peter

mtnbiker

Peter thanks for the suggestion, but...tried it last night... never uploaded anything...the progress window never closed, no entry in log, no video in gallery.

timk519

docwalker wrote:

Hi guys. When you see this happen it usually means that the file did not make it to us. When you contact us on the help desk we ask you to run Traceroutes and a Line Quality test. In most cases it turns out to be a connection problem.

Then SM needs to change their uploaders to handle these kinds of conditions and retry blocks that "don't make it through".

SamirD

timk519 wrote:

Then SM needs to change their uploaders to handle these kinds of conditions and retry blocks that "don't make it through".

How about just changing to the upload method that was invented for the Internet, FTP--the File Transfer Protocol. Vote for it here:
http://smugmug.uservoice.com/forums/17723-smugmug/suggestions/294159-ftp-uploading?ref=title

I've had seen some strange uploader behavior today with it not allowing to skip duplicates. I'm having to do a large batch of video uploads this weekend, so I'll watch for a video upload issue.

kofa

Same for me
I only have one entry in my upload log: a failed one because of codec problems. Tried another codec, uploaded using Java applet, it said upload successful, and then nothing: nothing in the log, nothing in the gallery. Tried both the Java uploader (twice) and the HTML form (once).

babygodzilla

SamirD wrote:

How about just changing to the upload method that was invented for the Internet, FTP--the File Transfer Protocol. Vote for it here:
http://smugmug.uservoice.com/forums/17723-smugmug/suggestions/294159-ftp-uploading?ref=title

I've had seen some strange uploader behavior today with it not allowing to skip duplicates. I'm having to do a large batch of video uploads this weekend, so I'll watch for a video upload issue.

I am having these troubles as well with larger files. I vote for FTP.

kofa

Update

kofa wrote:

I only have one entry in my upload log: a failed one because of codec problems. Tried another codec, uploaded using Java applet, it said upload successful, and then nothing: nothing in the log, nothing in the gallery. Tried both the Java uploader (twice) and the HTML form (once).

I've contacted support and we're investigating. I've been told I used bad size, and was asked to visit the following links:

It looks like your video is in a non standard video size. We recommend that you keep your videos to one of the sizes we have listed here:

http://wiki.smugmug.net/display/SmugMug/Video+help

You can do this using a free application (be sure to also use our recommended settings). Here's how:
http://wiki.smugmug.net/display/SmugMug/How+to+convert+and+format+a+video+for+upload+to+SmugMug

Since I use Linux, the suggested application may not be the best way for me, but may help others. I've tried reproducing the required settings using FFMPEG (a command-line converter), but still no good. I've been asked to share my files with support. I'll do that once I'm home; I'll report back here if a solution is found.

A suggestion: if something is wrong with the files, it should be shown in the log. (As far as I know, unknown codec and length over the 10-minute limit are already shown; I think all problems should be reported, with maybe pointers to the right codecs/settings if that is the case).

A question: I had thought no matter what size I upload, smugmug would resize to the pre-defined sizes; that is, even if I'm limited to 640x480, I could still upload HD, and SM would create the resized versions, then discard my original (HD) video. Is this not the case?

docwalker

Hi Folks, I have been testing this today and finally got a video to fail. I am investigating. I know that my test video is in our limits. So I do have something to work with. I tested with multiple size videos and finally one that was ~500MB finally failed to appear and does not show in the log.

As for the FTP, we do not support FTP and because of the way we store files, it is not an option. Once I can figure out what is causing this failure, we should be able to get the normal upload method working.

ChancyRat

ChancyRat wrote:

FYI, I have had the same problem over the last 5 days. The first time I uploaded a 300MB video, it showed as a thumbnail processing in the gallery, but never showed in the upload stats and the thumbnail never got clean. I deleted that and tried another 8 times now, for all these efforts, no upload log, no thumbnail, it's as if I never did it. But simple uploader appears to have completed.

A few days prior to this pattern, another video uploaded properly.

joinrats@joinrats.com

After trying many times on both simple and oldefaithful, I gave up. Nothing ever showed as even a thumbnail or error message in the log. So I opened the file in PE7 and did "close empty tracks", even though I have no idea if that is supposed to help. Then I re-converted the file, and tried uploading again, to Simple, and it worked the first time.

One added oddity - two additional processing thumbnails appeared in the gallery along with the new file - but their file names were the OTHER file name, of the first version I had attempted. But it had been DAYS since I had tried with that version, where NO thumbnails ever appeared. Then, those 2 thumbnails never processed, so I tried deleting them just to get things right, and on my first effort (which I repeated several times), while the delete option appeared to work, the processing thumbnail did not delete. Then I tried deleting the 2nd processing thumbnail, and it did delete, and then the 1st did delete.

I don't know whether this is helpful to anyone, but thought I should mention it.

kofa

FYI: I've just finished uploading a version of my video somewhat over 200 MB (into http://photos.kovacs-telekes.org/Csalad/2009/mikulasvonat-2009-12-06/) - the previous versions were over 500 MB. It now shows in the log (mikulas-ffmpeg-kofa.mp4, ID 784809459, 'in the queue'). Suddenly, all my previous uploads appeared in the gallery as being under processing (they still don't show up in the logs).

mtnbiker

my guess is they will never finish processing, I've see this as well

timk519

mtnbiker wrote:

my guess is they will never finish processing, I've see this as well

I've had images in the "processing" icon for 3 days before I deleted them.

kofa

update from support
From support:

We are unfortunately having problems with large video files of larger than about 300MB right now. Hopefully we will have the issue fixed soon! Our engineers are aware of the issue.

ChancyRat

kofa wrote:

From support:
We are unfortunately having problems with large video files of larger than about 300MB right now. Hopefully we will have the issue fixed soon! Our engineers are aware of the issue.

I love it when I get confirmation that I'm not crazy.

SamirD

ChancyRat wrote:

I love it when I get confirmation that I'm crazy.

Fixed it for you.

Glad to hear we got some confirmation on the issue. I've got some HUGE upload batches coming up in the next day or so.

mtnbiker

anything on this yet? still having issues...there are two videos I can never upload, and never show in my log...both meet all requirements set forth by smugmug.

coolcat7

same problem
I am also experiencing this problem. loaded 1 large video about 3 days ago - nothing. today loaded about a 446mb video - nothing.

SamirD

What uploader are you guys using? Did you try it with the old faithful uploader and get the same results?

kofa

SamirD wrote:

What uploader are you guys using? Did you try it with the old faithful uploader and get the same results?

See earlier posts, e.g.

kofa wrote:

Tried both the Java uploader (twice) and the HTML form (once).

The "HTML form" is "the old faithful uploader".