Before things broke we were using a Flash player and all encodes were encoded with a width of 480px. We now are using HTML5 video adaptive streaming using DASH and the videos are encoded at LQ: 240p @ CRF 27, MQ: 360p @ CRF 25, and HQ: 720p @ CRF 23. We won't upscale the video--if the video is less than 480p, then we skip the MQ encode and just do LQ and HQ.
Video playback should work in all major desktop browsers with the exception of Internet Explorer. IE supports MSE but the player doesn't seem to be working. We were unable to test with Apple Safari, but we believe it should work as well. Additionally, Chrome and Opera appear to have issues rotating images (see homepage in Edge or Firefox), but they will otherwise play the videos fine.
On mobile devices, playback works on Windows Phone 10 and Android. Playback on IOS does not work as Apple currently doesn't support MSE. Once Apple does add it to their browser support, it should work fine then.
Currently, we have our home page video queue working and are in the process of finishing up all videos that premiered in 2016 and 2017, which means previewing will be ready for our upcoming Viewer's Choice Awards. Other videos on the website will be restored over time as they are encoded for the new streamer. Embedding previews in a post has unfortunately not been restored, and once we do restore it video links will have to be updated. The administrators and moderators will be standing by to assist you when the time comes.
This is the first of many steps that we hope to take in regards to improving the site and user experience. Thank you for your patience, and we look forward to announcing even more updates for 2017.
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