We know Skyfire fans like the ability to watch video on their phones: Skyfire handles formats other browsers can't.

Right now the Skyfire team is looking for some feedback. How good is the video quality? Specifically, how is the framerate you get when watching a video, such as from YouTube.com, with Skyfire?

Please post your response, and include the phone you are using and what kind of connection you usually have (EDGE, 3G, WiFi, etc.).

Also, please answer the poll question.

Thanks in advance for your opinions. The more information we have the easier it is to make Skyfire better than ever.

Dave as i said earlier video quality is improved from alpha 1 but audio video sync is not good with all video sites..audio starts first then video...just a little bit more improvement needed...I am streaming over 3G network

I have to say the video is very bad. I have the redraw issues to begin with. As the video is playing the buffering is all screwed up. At first it'll move like stop motion animation then it'll speed up to 2 or 3 times normal speed. Don't even let me get started on the audio. No video since about Dec. 15. has been in sync. The experience has gotten so bad, it's eaiser and faster for me to download the video on my phone and watch in Coreplayer. Using HSDPA on ATT.

I'm probably the only 1 (or at least from what I've read about) that has no problems at all with audio and video syncing when watching a video whether it be Youtube, or JustinTV even WorldStarHipHop. The videos are exceptional quality and the audio is crystal clear, Framerate is great as well no skipping no buffering in the middle of a video as soon as I go to the page I'm able to watch the video all the way thru with no problems. Maybe its the network I'm on???

I voted Good because there is always room for improvement, I'm using a T-Mobile TP2 running on 3G

i'm streaming over wifi... And the symbian A/V sync is pretty bad... The video frezzes frm time to time and the audio plays even before the whole page loads ... I'm using nokia 5800

interaction with flash objects is limited (IIRC Ajax is a little bit better)

Voted good on frame rate because of audio/video sync issues. Actually, the frame rate is pretty good, it's just that frequently the audio is lagging behind the video (or vice-versa).

Phone: MotoQ 9c (yeah, i know, time to upgrade)
Carrier: Sprint
Network: 3G EvDO Rev A

Well i've used the Real Player for viewing youtube mobile videos and it's video playback is much smoother than in Skyfire. I use EDGE connection on my Nokia N73 phone. Well RP has great Audio/Video Sync.

The team is currently working to improve audio/video sync. Thanks for your feedback.

well, just like others, i voted good because audio or video lags from time to time. I'm using the alpha version on my 5800xm and i'm quite satisfied by skyfire in general. To be ownest, i never thought i could handle flash content greater than 9 on my symbian phone. At least not before the major cross-platform update that adobe announced for this year. That changed thanks to skyfire. When it does not lag, the video quality is great, and the hd option on youtube also works. I have spend hours and hours watching videos there and on other sites by now using wifi. I know improvements are about to come, and i'm simply happy for it.

i also have a bit of a problem with viewing videos , the videos play well and then it just freezes and ctches up later . a bit annoying but skyfire in general is awesome. just wish interaction with flash content would be priority as well as viewing videos full screen and not to mention tabbed browsing and text reflow...with all these added i'd gladly purchase skyfire as i'm sold already with these few major features lacking

Sorry but ive just been trying skyfire for the first time and i'm not very impressed.

Video frame rate is so poor as to be almost unwatchable on youtube, and tvcatchup.com (also uses flash). Audio is not in sync with the video, and you can't enlarge the picture to full screen.

I have also found that my phone's screen turns itself off whilst watching a video if I dont interact with the phone for more than about a minute. It doesn't do this when, for example, using Opera to watch youtube content.

Lack of pop ups is also a major disappointment. There are many pages I use that won't work without pop ups enabled.

I am finding a pretty low success rate so far whilst looking at websites that I know use flash or java. For example, www.radiotuna.com shows me a black area where the flash content should be. It doesnt work with shoutcast's own built in player either which is also a major disappointment.

I'm using an N97 mini and i've tried it using both my home wifi and 3G network and the results are the same.

i agree wid d above person d frame rate is quite low with wifi and 3g as well
i hav a 2mbps plan of wifi
D frame rate is like 15-20fps....!!!

There is room for improvement in the frame rate and A/V sync on Symbian 5th Edition phones. This is one of the reasons the product managers made this release a beta. Look for improvements in the next release.

kk
Don take it d other way dave
I was jus reporting...
Thnx n regards

I think video framerate, audio smoothness and audio video sync depend on how fast your Internet connection is since there's no buffering in Skyfire.

So, maybe the user should be allowed to set the "Media Quality" to be displayed by Skyfire on his device ie: images, audio and video ranging from low to high.

That way, during times of slow connection, he would still enjoy video at reasonable framerate, acceptable audio smoothness and good audio video sync. Pages would load faster too.

Hi I have a Nokia 5530xm and every time i watch videos the sound works but video is more like a gif picture and i cant get the regular myspace so cant watch vids from there or listen to music ive tryed to restart skyfire a few times and still cant watch videos i hope skyfire will fix the problem soon because ive been wanting skyfire for a long time now please fix.

The developers know there is room for improvement in video support on Symbian S60 5th Edition, especially in the area of audio/video sync. Look for improvements in a future release.

The mobile site is being displayed for Myspace; this is also something slated to be fixed in a later version of Skyfire.

Even with home WIFI with a 5Meg download and my PC can stream full screen smoothly, skyfire is a bit choppy and certainly when I watch sport highlights such as football on my Premium TV subscription for my club the players look like they are skimming across the grass rather than running as thier legs dont move much before they are at the other end of the pitch.

But its free, its in development and its infinately better than what I had pre Skyfire which was nothing at all that could play this content.

The frame rate doesnt look any better if I use WIFI with 5 Meg download or non 3G which is impressive because I can use it anywhere regardless of great mobile reception but when better connection is available it doesnt really improve.

Nokia 5800 user.

Don't forget S60 3rd edition as well. There are still issues with video/audio playback and syncing. Video playback is watchable, just not fluid. By that I mean I can still make out each individual frame as it plays back. I would say I get an average of 5-10 fps overall on sites like youtube, espn and cbs sports. It's not always consistent though. Sometimes I may get good playback, other times it may drop to 1 or 2 fps or worst.

Video quality is good. It's a big improvement over previous release. It's not as low resolution or pixelated as before.

The syncing issues is still present. Though what I like now is that audio and video tend to resync back over time. And at worst, they may be off by 1 sec or so. In previous release, I remember there were horrible syncing issues where video and audio can get out of sync by 5 to 10 seconds, especially on Hulu, when it was working back then.

I'm using a Nokia N78. Playback is typically the same on both wi-fi and 3g. Though with wi-fi, playback is a bit better, but not as much as I would expect.

That being said, the new v1.5 release is a big improvement over the previous releases, so congrats.

i have audio/video sync and freeze sometime in my n73,too.

Here's what I found:

GPRS:
Page load speed: Slow.
Video framerate: Poor, as low as 1 frame per 5 seconds.
Audio: Surprisingly OK, some missing bits but overall still acceptable.

EDGE:
Page load speede: Moderate.
Video framerate: OK, about 1 frame per second.
Audio: Terrible, mainly because the sound is repeated or reververated on top of itself. As I mentioned in another post, it sounds like those announcements in a football stadium it's unintelligible and very annoying.

3G:
Page load speed: Fast.
Video framerate: Good, I guess about 5-10 frames per second.
Audio: Excellent.

The page load speed and video framerate are understandable but the audio is strange. Why is GPRS better than EDGE?

I tested with audio only sites such as the BBC and audio/video sites such as Youtube.

Now the audio and video sync is improved a little bit..now the audio starts with video but video is showing like slow motion movie and still little choppy..improvement is done because earlier audio starts very earlier to video..good job developers..little more effort is needed in video..audio streaming is too good from starting..

in fact that i think that the video playing ability of skyfire is very good, which i think at least better than my netbook, but there are 2 questions i face when i playing video in skyfire:
1.when play video for a few minutes, my phone will become very hot
2.i cannot make the video become fullscreen when i playing it in skyfire with video streaming site like youku or 56.com etc.
I am now using 5800xm and 802.11g connection

works well but framerate is inconsistent using tvcatchup. Thanks though and keep it up. Cant wait for next release. I was so happy to find the beta. Nokia 5800 over 3g. Virginmedia.

Mixiah, do you find framerate depends on the quality of your network connection?

hi dave, the 3g connection appears to be solid but i guess it depends on how many people are accessing it. I'll try at different times of day and get back to you.

Frame rate and sync both seemed much better when I used Skyfire today than they had been in the preceding few weeks. That's on Verizon 3G.

I have seen extremely choppy video and even video that lagged so far behind audio it was unwatchable in the past. Have to admit, I started using my phone's YouTube app for a while there instead of Skyfire. But I was lazy today and stayed in Skyfire to watch some videos, and they were pretty good.

I was watching Dailyshow episodes today (by the way, thanks to you and support for getting the 3rd party flash problem fixed). I was doing this on my Nokia E71 over Wifi (not 3G). Noticed a decent amount of chopiness, but for the most part, not too bad. After first episode ended, I started another, and it was pretty bad. This happened at about 2:50PM (Central Time) on Saturday 3/13. Not sure if the servers got busy, but since I was on Wifi, I don't think it was Network.

I've been seeing some serious choppiness with my desktop viewing of Comedy Central stuff lately. Maybe it is the same cause?

hi dave, tried over wifi at home, 3g out at work. Resolution and picture quality are good but framerates always a bit choppy. Thanks again.

I was attempting to watch DailyShow Full Episodes today during the day and experienced problems on Skyfire site with My Nokia E71 on AT&T.
Commercials would start but then freeze, basically tried a few open/closes of the browser and pause/play of the video player to no avail. Saw a lot of "Video Loading" message in the upper left hand corner of the video window right below "-Full Episode".

Came home and watched a dailyshow video and a Colbert video (1/2 hour episodes) with no problems on my laptop over WiFi connection (cable). Then attempted to watch Dailyshow video (ssme one I previously watched successfully) on my Nokia E71 over WiFi (same Cable connection/safe WiFi Router) and would not play.

Message in the upper left corner saying "Video Loading".

Then went to Fancast on E71/Skyfire. It took 2 or 3 times of loading the Dailyshow there to get a video to finally start running. Played reasonsble well, but a little choppy here and there. Paused the video on Fancast then went over to Dailyshow and tried again to load video. Got a little of the announcer introducing the Dove Skincare for Men commercial but once again got "Video Loading" when commerical tried to load. Let it try to load for a couple of minutest and gave up. Something just doesn't seem right, at least with the Dailyshow site, but I don't really believe it is limited to just that.


I am guessing there is a problem with one or more Skyfire Servers or the most recent update ?

I'm finding that clips play fine but that the full episodes do not. Are the clips working for you?

Sorry for long delay in replying. Clips do seem better than full versions. May be something related to intros and commercials? Anyway, I think quite a few folks watch Dailyshow via Skyfire, so hopefully support can look at and see what they see.
Thanks,
Jeff

Video performance stinks.

I think it got WORSE after the supposed "upgrade"... either the upgrade was some attept to lower load on the servers by some tricks and no new or more powerful servers were really added.... or else wen adding more power they broke something. Because all these prolems got worsem and it was already pretty lousy to begin with.

How disappointing.

In a way it is a relief since now I know my phone or network is not broken.

I am using Palm Treo Pro, WindowsMobile 6.1, AT&T hspd 3G... sometimes a WiFi connection is available from in my house, either some nearby business or a neighbor... seems to be always on and no password needed so I use it.

Sometimes WiFi performance seems better, sometimes worse... no real pattern, hard to make any sense of it.

Worse is the audio... just HORRIBLE!! Starts and stops, echoes and reverb s and multiple copies out of sync playing at once. How can it be this pathetic and Skyfirenot know? There is obviously some major bug in the software... I am a software engineer and this is so obviously not working, major malfunction, no excuses.

Video also very inconsistent, very occasionally plays well, b utusually only briefly then starts to pause and stutter. Pausing video occassio nally helps a bit, but problems usually come back very quickly.

Also all the above issues - black box where player should be, player shows but just says "Loading..." forever, video sticks then runs many time normal speed trying to catch up I guess.

The combination of the jerky playback and all the bizarre audio problems really appears extremely pathetic and ameteurish, totally limping along most of the time repeatedly trpping and falling down.

Quit claiming you can play video with this because it is usually so awful as to be unwatchable. Maybe its a prototype or demo-lev el capability, but is certainly not a professional result. Skyfire should be embarrased. Get your act together, guys. I mean, intentions are great,nice try, but if you could put more resource on actually finishing the basic playing abilities of the software, and probably increase the server numbers and power by 50-100 percent... then you would really have something to crow about and Skyfire would be really flying.

I will leave all the "flowery" adjectives to the previous poster and say that the problem may be widespread. Previous versions seemed to work somewhat better. I had some problems on MLB gameday audio site today. Just audio, no video and I was noticing jitter (audio would jump and repeat). It was on AT&T but 3.5 G so I would have expected it could handle audio only. MLB requires login (only 15 dollars American). Let's me listen to baseball games at work. Dave, do you think this is a situation Skyfire staff is having trouble replicating the problem? You indicated you had seen the Dailyshow problem with full episodes a week or so ago.

Carrier: Sprint EVDO Rev A
Phone: Still using my old Moto Q9c
OS: WinMo 6.1 (standard)

Hi Guys,

Just wanted to let you know there are still audio/video sync issues and now I'm starting to get extremely choppy playback. So choppy, as to make me stop watching the video. The choppiness started just a couple weeks ago, for me anyway. Just thought I'd mention it.

I've tried during peak times and off-peak times and get pretty much the same result. I've compared it to my desktop and laptop and the PC's play video fine whereas skyfire's just not performing well at all. I did that to determine if the actual web site I was viewing was just being hammered.

I also tried in areas where I have a full strength signal and extremely fast 3G performance (using other browsers) and in areas where the signal isn't so good. With a good signal, video is barely watchable. With a poor signal, video often won't even start and if it does start, it's impossible to watch.

Hope you guys can get this fixed. Skyfire's big claim to fame is flash video playback and as I've said lots of times before, if it can't play flash vids from the more popular websites then it's really just another browser.

Good luck fellas... hope it can be worked out. As a software developer I tend to have the mindset of fixing the features you have (or claim to have) before trying to add new bells and whistles.

There are two separate issues here: whether a video will play at all and what quality the playback is if a video does play.

At the Daily Show, for example, I see no problem watching clips, only with watching full episodes, and I don't think anyone is reporting anything different. Hulu, on the other hand, never works because Hulu is blocking non-desktop browsers (including Skyfire).

The quality of video is a distinct question. Let's focus on that in this thread, in keeping with the title of "Frame rate when viewing video".

To help us know more about the video quality issues, does anyone see a pattern as to when problems arise? Is it generally a certain time of day? Or with certain Skyfire servers? (Find the server ID with Help -> About -> More Info.)

Also, can we narrow down when the problem started? Was it before the datacenter upgrade?

Thanks for letting us know about this issue. I'll be discussing it with the rest of the team tomorrow.

This morning 3/31/10 at 7:05 AM Central time, I was able to watch an entire Dailyshow video without any issues for the first time in at a few weeks. Server that I did it on was 10.102.120.117, version was 1.5.0.15495 and this over 3G . Video played until at least 7:25. Very Happy! Will try and test later in the day also. As far as how long back the issues were going, hard for me to know because I had stopped using when Skyfire was having trouble with 3rd Party Flash issue. FYI, last night I has trouble with Daily Show over Broadband from home on phone, but unfortunately did not get server IP. Will do so next time. Both times I had trouble yesterday, it seemed like play was fine for the first few minutes and then started experiencing problems. Thanks,
Jeff

Listened to Mlb.com game day audio on AT&T 3G from about 12:39 PM Central time until about 1:01 PM without issues(longer than yesterday before problems) , then audio started cutting in and out and repeating. Server was 10.102.120.142 if that helps. When this happened, I ended Skyfire and went to skyfm music through Nokia browser and was not experiencing problems.

I wish I could give you a date when I started seeing problems but since I've been having so many video related problems either with sites not working and/or frame rate and audio sync problems, I pretty much stopped using Skyfire for quite some time. The last time I tried to use it, the slow frame rates and/or jittering started and I just shut down the video and moved on to something else.

To be honest, I've spent way too much time trying to get skyfire to do what it claims it can do and am not really caring whether it works or not anymore. I've decided to wait till the new 4G android phone comes out for sprint and then I'll be switching to droid from WinMo anyway so I probably won't be using skyfire anymore, unless you guys crank out an android version.

Before worrying about an android version tho, I really suggest you get what you have working first.

Dave,

Went to DailyShow.com today at about 6:50 AM Central over AT&T 3G to watch last nights episode. Video seemed to be playing fine, but no audio on server 10.102.120.126. Exited Skyfire and came back in on 10.102.120.129, still no audio.

I thought that maybe something was wrong with audio on my phone, so I validated that audio was working via built in FM receiver that worked fine. Then went back into Skyfire on server 10.102.120.186 and audio/video worked well (watch a whole Dailyshow episode without issue). That made me wonder if audio problem had been with my phone (and that using the radio had somehow reinitialized audio on the phone so that Skyfire could use it). Exited Skyfire, came back in on server 10.102.120.101 and Dailyshow audio was not working again. I wouldn't have thought that exiting Skyfire would have caused any audio problem with phone hardware to re-appear.

From the above, it really seems to me that you have some servers which MAY be working fine (at least at certain times/ for certain periods of time), but others where they are not working correctly (possibly again at times, can't say too much about that). When I had audio problems, I tried pausing the video and restarting in hopes that audio would pick back up (may want to talk with Engineers and see if they can attempt to Re-initialize audio after a resume from pause if they aren't already doing, not sure if that is needed, but might be a thought ?).

Hope the above time/IP addresses give your engineers more to go on in conjunction with my information (I am guessing your engineers have logging on so they can verify when I connected and which servers I hit).

Finally, to make troubleshooting easier for us the user, maybe you could ask Engineers to add a "Bug Reporting" feature to the client. It would allow user to go to "Help, About" and submit an issue and provide engineers with their server IP address, timestamp of the issue submission, and a picklist of issues describing the problem that would then give your engineers more to go on. May be that you only allow certain User IDs to do the submitting (those you consider trustworthy and willing to do follow ups), but it seems that you may need to think about betting information gathering so you can more quickly notice and pinpoint problem servers ?

Again, when I finally got the video/audio working on 10.102.120.186, it played well, so I think some of the previous issues may be getting better.
If fixing these problems is a resource issue (i.e. engineering time/money) have you thought about charging a nominal fee to users (i.e. maybe $5 or so for an account/browser). I don't mind paying a small amount if things work pretty well, but would hope that you could get the "kinks" worked out a little sooner.

Thanks and hope you folks can refine this a little to correct the problems. Skyfire gives us a Great Tool to do Flash and other video/audio that you really can't do (for now) on mobile platform. For that I am very grateful. Don't mind working with you to fix some of these problems, but easier problem reporting might improve data to your engineers.

Dave,
Any chance of an update on this. I can continue to give you problem server IP addresses, applications, and times if you want me to (because issues are still occurring), but if your Engineers are aware of the cause of the problem and working on a solution, I won't bother.
Thanks,
Jeff

Thanks Jeff. Yes, we are seeing these issues as well and are working towards a solution. I don't think we need additional data at this time, but if we do I'll post here to let people know.

so I'm not the only one having these issues but I fined that the problems begin when the connection speede falls below 90kbpps or so. Above that, it's just OK.

Thanks for that info. How are you measuring connection speed?

I just go to this site on my phone's default browser:

http://www.dslreports.com/mspeed?jisok=1

It doesn't work using Skyfire. Speaking of which, maybe Skyfire should have this speed test functionality built-in?

great idea... it could be a benchmark to let users know if they're getting full functionality of Skyfire

kind of like a System Requirements list

amirudin, are you able to see the problem on 802.11 connection as well as with 3G? If seeing the Skyfire problem on 802.11 are you seeing the Bandwidth drop there also ?
I have a pretty reliable home network and have seen the problems on 802.11g so I am not sure it is only a BW issue (but could not say for sure). On my Nokie E71 I was unable to run the Speed test using the built in browser, but maybe Skyfire could come up with their own speed test (see below)?

Dave the Bandwidth thing might be of value, especially if it is part of what I suggested which is a way to submit an issue from Help on the Skyfire browser. It would attempt to gather some basic information (url, IP address of server, Bandwidth test of some sort) and forward that to Skyfire for troubleshooting.

I'm not able to test it over wi-fi. ButI guess wi-fi doesn't guarantee high speed.

I'm surprised that the E71 browser is not able to perform the test. Out of curiosity, can you give me more info on this?