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The GiantBomb Quick Look Thread

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http://www.giantbomb.com/news/area-man-visits-largish-website-chuckles/3767/

Continuing that transparency I'm announcing two fairly major things we're launching on the engineering / business side of the sites that will go into effect for everyone who isn't a premium member later today.

1. We've partnered with Meebo to deliver their IM chat bar across our sites. This helps us sell high-value advertising that frankly, we have no internal infrastructure to do ourselves. They've been really easy to work with and it fills a gap in our company. As an honest tech company, they've made it easy to hide the bar if you don't like it.
2. Over the next couple weeks we'll be switching the video player that anyone who isn't a premium member sees to YouTube. This will save us some money on bandwidth and let us take advantage of YouTube's ad sales network, but most importantly it will increase our visibility on YouTube and introduce more people to our sites.

We're excited about both of these changes. I can tell you that one of our main goals for the next couple of years is exposing a larger audience to our unique brand of content. I think we're going to bring a lot of new users to the sites through YouTube, Boxee and Roku that may not have heard of us. The bandwidth off-load for our increasingly mis-named, hour-long Quick Looks is nothing to sneeze at either, but really that's just a secondary win for what continues to be a frugal, growing business. We made both of these deals to help grow Whiskey larger.
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The youtube thing was a great decision for everyone. In addition to being less janky than their flash player, non-premium members also get mobile video access.
 
Jtwo said:
The youtube thing was a great decision for everyone. In addition to being less janky than their flash player, non-premium members also get mobile video access.
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Non-premium members have always previously had mobile video access via html5. This is literally taking away features from non-subs.
 
I just watched that quicklook and already got a youtube player, seems fine to me. Nice to see them go forward with advertising. If they ever do a GB only subscription I'll cough up though.
 
Frankly I'm glad that they're finding more ways to make money. I trust that they won't let it get out of control so I don't care.
 
Xanathus said:
Non-premium members have always previously had mobile video access via html5. This is literally taking away features from non-subs.
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Hmm, I always thought html5 was subscriber only. When I had a monthly sub I had html5 and it was great. But now I don't.
 
Jtwo said:
Hmm, I always thought html5 was subscriber only. When I had a monthly sub I had html5 and it was great. But now I don't.
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Yeah, I'm pretty sure it was subscriber only and that was one of the reasons I didn't subscribe until this year - I would never use mobile access. But all these awesome new premium videos were enough to get to subscribe. Them and getting rid of that fucking awful Dead Island ad.
 
Yeah they've done a really really great job making the subscription extremely attractive. Everytime I go to the site I see something and am like "oh sweet" and then realize I can't watch it. I wish I had the spare 50 bucks right now to subscribe but if I did I would go out and buy Rage soo.. I'm stuck in the non premium ghetto for the foreseeable future.

fwiw, you get the html5 stuff on the desktop as well. it was a lot smoother than the default player, at least on my old mac.
 
I don't mind the videos being on Youtube, but the quality is horrendous. I don't see the point in locking out decent quality video to non-subscribers either if they're offloading the videos to Youtube.

For people who hate the bar just hide it. It's very unobtrusive.
 
Jtwo said:
Yeah they've done a really really great job making the subscription extremely attractive. Everytime I go to the site I see something and am like "oh sweet" and then realize I can't watch it. I wish I had the spare 50 bucks right now to subscribe but if I did I would go out and buy Rage soo.. I'm stuck in the non premium ghetto for the foreseeable future.
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Get the normal subscription then.
I always wanted to buy the yearly one, but never found enough funds to do that, but for the nes extravaganza i just said fuck it and gave them 5 bucks. You pay more yearly, but it's much easier to spend 5 bucks every month then 50 once.
 
Jtwo said:
Hmm, I always thought html5 was subscriber only. When I had a monthly sub I had html5 and it was great. But now I don't.
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It's sub-only on the normal site, if you're using an iphone/ipad/maybe other mobile browsers then it used the html5 player.
 
rakhir said:
Get the normal subscription then.
I always wanted to buy the yearly one, but never did find the funds to do that, but for the nes extravaganza i just said fuck it and gave them 5 bucks. You pay more yearly, but it's much easier to spend 5 bucks every month then 50 once.
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No way, that'd be like paying monthly for XBL. I just need to sack up and get a yearly. I'm not too worried about it, I'm already sold on it. Its just a matter of when I can treat myself without feeling like a horrible irresponsible person.


Xanathus said:
It's sub-only on the normal site, if you're using an iphone/ipad/maybe other mobile browsers then it used the html5 player.
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Interesting! Didn't know that.
 
Is this youtube shit for everyone that isn't yearly subscriber? I pay monthly and I can't get the other player, which is some bullshit, it's not like their normal video quality hasn't gone enough down the shitter already.
 
Stronghold 3 QL is playing the YouTube version for me. I'm a subscriber on iPad; is it because of the latter that I'm getting the YT video?

Edit: nevermind. Got it back. Have to refresh the page and manually select HTML5 on the top left of the video.
 
WoodenLung said:
Is this youtube shit for everyone that isn't yearly subscriber? I pay monthly and I can't get the other player, which is some bullshit, it's not like their normal video quality hasn't gone enough down the shitter already.
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Monthly subscribers should get the HD-video and 'old' player as well, I think. This page provides some insight as to what each type of member gets: https://auth.whiskeymedia.com/upgrade/
 
Enosh said:
christ at least make it 480p...
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Not sure if this is what's happening, but doesn't YouTube upload a low quality version of the video first, and if there's an HD version, it will appear later?
 
Ken said:
Not sure if this is what's happening, but doesn't YouTube upload a low quality version of the video first, and if there's an HD version, it will appear later?
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There will not be an HD-version of GiantBomb-videos on YouTube. That's an option they disabled on Youtube, because HD-videos (anything above 360p for Whiskey)) are exclusive to members only.
 
Ken said:
Not sure if this is what's happening, but doesn't YouTube upload a low quality version of the video first, and if there's an HD version, it will appear later?
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looking at the other QL they are all 360, so I don't think the video is still processing
 
I thought the recent video quality (on the normal player) was low because of the busted tricaster?

I know/think they could temporally fix everything by buying a deicated HD Capture unit, but I think they are running the feed though a temp solution until they get a new/fixed tricaster unit, which means lower quality stuff til then.
 
Thomper said:
There will not be an HD-version of GiantBomb-videos on YouTube. That's an option they disabled on Youtube, because HD-videos (anything above 360p for Whiskey)) are exclusive to members only.
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I see. I guess that makes sense but hopefully the new people they are trying to get to join GB will look past the 360p.

At least the Metagame is in HD.
Lol
 
Enosh said:
looking at the other QL they are all 360, so I don't think the video is still processing
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And the videos on giantbomb.com have been 360p for as long as I remember.
This is not new, just hosted in a different spot.

Rufus said:
Wasn't it always 360p...?
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Yes.
 
yeah watched some of the YouTube 360p videos and yeah...... if they do think its ok to offload all there non member videos to YouTube I think they should up the quality to at 480p to try make the videos not look like amateur arse.

I think everyone would be ok if they leave 720p and the 60fps videos for members but for god sake give free guys decent quality videos.


The youtube videos are like its 2005 and I set the gamespot video player to 240p to watch on the spot to save bandwidth.

Could it be that they got interns to do it and the fucked up the compression? the stuff looks BAD.
 
I just spot checked a few random 360p videos on site and youtube. They look the same to me. That's not to say they couldn't look better at 360p with superior encoding, but it looks like a straight port to me.
 
Sega1991 said:
It was, but the 360p they're posting to Youtube is considerably worse than the on-site versions and even most other 360p Youtube

We're talking "borderline unwatchable" here.
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It is unwatchable on the site since the embedded videos run choppy as fuck.

It's bad enough they look like compressed video from 1998.

The only reason I can see them doing this is to try and force some users to sign up which is a low tactic.
 
funkystudent said:
Could it be that they got interns to do it and the fucked up the compression? the stuff looks BAD.
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My understanding is it's an automated system.

I think it's youtube's encoder. Depending on codec and resolution, the end result can either look really good, or really bad.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_3lqFxNJPM
360p looks great here, because the source file was 480p with the H.264 MP4 codec. When Youtube re-encoded for the 360p version, it didn't have to do much to it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqxgD5tYsVs
360p here is a mess, because I uploaded the video in 360p WMV. Even though I encoded it at 2500kbps, all the weird re-encoding Youtube had to do at 360p completely mangled the video, much like what's happening to the Whiskey Media stuff.

I've actually heard people say it's better to upload all your videos to Youtube in HD resolution even if the video itself wasn't recorded in HD, because Youtube will take that high-resolution video and encode super clear 480p and 360p versions from it. By uploading in 360p natively they're basically hosing video quality unless they use very very very specific encoder settings.
 
Aaron said:
I just spot checked a few random 360p videos on site and youtube. They look the same to me. That's not to say they couldn't look better at 360p with superior encoding, but it looks like a straight port to me.
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I just compared the stronghold 3 QL on the site (high) and youtube and they look damn near the same. the site’s video has some slightly cleaner lines on some small text but it’s not a night and day difference at all. it’s pretty subtle

I wonder if some of the older videos are the ones hurting more due to dual conversions? they’ve been using h.264 on the site for a long time so it should be the same file being used in youtube.
 
big_z said:
It is unwatchable on the site since the embedded videos run choppy as fuck.

It's bad enough they look like compressed video from 1998.

The only reason I can see them doing this is to try and force some users to sign up which is a low tactic.
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well they also said that youtube videos will help them expand there audience which is a valid point and a ok idea but at 360p and crappy quality I can only guess any new viewers will think its a bunch of dudes recording videos in there bedroom and not a proper games outlet backed by a multi millionaire.


I guess we will see what happens next week. I would not be shocked if they up the youtube quality because there does seem to be a bit of a outcry from the community and its not like it costs them anything extra to make future free videos 480p instead of 360p.
 
I was going to do my own comparison but it seems like as I was doing this almost every single Youtube video on the site went back to the versions hosted on GiantBomb.com. Like, I was specifically going to compare 360p Bloodrayne Betrayal because that's one of the Quicklooks I downloaded to watch through my media server, and it brought up a Youtube player at first that gave me an "malformed video ID" error and when I refreshed the page it was back to the on-site version.

And the youtube channel for GiantBomb has now made every single non-intern video they've uploaded "Unlisted", meaning I can't search for any of them on Youtube itself.

Edit: Okay, maybe they aren't unlisted, because I can search for other quicklooks and find them on the GB Youtube channel. I guess Bloodrayne just must not be up right now? I don't even know. What a frustrating trainwreck this is turning out to be, though.

Edit 2: Okay. Managed to get ahold of the site version of Stronghold 3 vs. the Youtube version. Yeah, the difference here is negligible, though I could have sworn that when I started this whole mess a few hours ago that the Youtube version looked significantly blurrier - maybe it was still processing or something, I dunno.

7sNXB.gif


A difference of only 30mb. Definitely not unwatchable. I'm fine with that. My main problem was somebody linked me to "Video Thing: It's A Website" and the quality on the Youtube version was abysmal.

PwXJS.gif


Checking in to it more, it looks like this is one of the old old old videos Kessler uploaded when he was the sole owner of TheRealGiantBomb Youtube channel (upload date is from 2009). Whatever he did, Youtube doesn't like it, as despite the claim that the video is playing in 360p, the FLV for it is actually 240p. Because it was before the premium subscription stuff, you can actually switch to 480p and get the proper "site quality" version.

Why they didn't just wipe the whole channel of all of Kessler's old uploads and re-post everything fresh is a mystery to me.
 
Video encoding is not Giant Bomb's strong suit, in my opinion. The HD game videos I make for fun (Adobe Premiere > lossless .avi > .x264 using a program Zarx264gui) look significantly better than their "HD" mp4s, at a lower bitrate, even. I always notice weird pixelation/blocking and flickering in their videos. Patrick and Brad were going on about how "gorgeous" Uncharted 3 is and the video was a blurry artifacted mess in some spots. I can't imagine what their workflow is to get such mediocre results.

They really need to get their video encoding and YouTube uploading sorted out. I imagine they're just uploading the "low" mp4s premium users can download, then YouTube compresses them even further. I'm guessing that's why some videos look so bad on YT.

And really, 360p? I really hope they bump it to 480p. That's just unfair to free users.
 
EricDiesel said:
Video encoding is not Giant Bomb's strong suit, in my opinion. The HD game videos I make for fun (Adobe Premiere > lossless .avi > .x264 using a program Zarx264gui) look significantly better than their "HD" mp4s, at a lower bitrate, even. I always notice weird pixelation/blocking and flickering in their videos. Patrick and Brad were going on about how "gorgeous" Uncharted 3 is and the video was a blurry artifacted mess in some spots. I can't imagine what their workflow is to get such mediocre results.
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I agree with that. It's not entirely in their control, though, pretty sure it's all done by a third party.
 
I hope those of you complaining about the video quality are sending your feedback to Dave et al too.

The Whiskey guys have shown they are willing to listen and make changes, you won't get any of that by putting all your complaints here.
 
randomlyrossy said:
I hope those of you complaining about the video quality are sending your feedback to Dave et al too.

The Whiskey guys have shown they are willing to listen and make changes, you won't get any of that by putting all your complaints here.
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I posted about the Video Thing quality issue in the GB forums, yeah.
 
AnEternalEnigma said:
360p looks like fucking ass.
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on the plus side I just noticed it makes jumping from watching giantbomb videos to watching old 2004-2006 gamespot reviews really easy.


watching Jeffs Steel Battalion review right now
 
Khq0s.jpg


They dun did it now. If you remove the uploads section from your YT channel, you're objectively a bad person.

randomlyrossy said:
The Whiskey guys have shown they are willing to listen and make changes, you won't get any of that by putting all your complaints here.
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I've always got the impression anyone at Whiskey tends to mention GAF more than their own boards on podcasts and such.
 
WoodenLung said:
Because that is what none subscribers are getting instead of the giantbomb player. I even get it and I am a monthly subscriber. :/
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I'm a monthly subscriber and I get the option of Streaming, Progressive, HTML5 or Youtube.
 
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