Skip to main content
G
gbye
Known Participant
May 16, 2012
Question

Adobe Flash and the MLB.TV Baseball season current ongoing spinning circles problems

  • May 16, 2012
  • 1 reply
  • 17756 views

Is Adobe aware of the current ongoing problems with MLB.TV streams that are succumbing to the so called "Spinning Circles " problem that is widely discussed at MLB.TV Support Forum?

In the forum MLB.TV has not detailed what constitutes the MLB.TV media player as far as full components makup.  It is widely known, however that Adobe Flash and a product known as  NexDef are involved as prime components and probably are the culprits for the problem that some MLB.TV Premium paid subcribers have been experiencing from say 6 APR 2012 thru 14 Apr 2012 and continuing so far.

Has Adobe been helping MLB.TV try to solve the issue. If not , please read the MLB.TV support forum and recognize that Adobe will probably be red flagged, if not already, as flawed, and thus IMHO will lose thier MLB.TV contract to Microsoft Silverlight again ... at least until HTML5 comes  along eventually to save the day ... I hope.

This topic has been closed for replies.

1 reply

chris.campbell
chris.campbell
Legend
May 18, 2012

I wasn't aware of this problem.  I'll forward this along to our video team for their review.  Could you provide us with some links to the threads on the MLB support forums?

Thanks,

Chris

G
gbyeAuthor
Known Participant
May 22, 2012

Chris,

I have now asked the MLB.TV Support Forum about the possibility of providing researchers from Adobe a temporary login temporarily view the MLB.TV Support Forum pages that apply to the streamed video Visual Quality problem (now also know "abnormal spinning circles"

I have visited Adobe's:

bugbase.adobe.com

but because of required entry portions in the web form format, I now have a few preliminary questions on certain entries.

I want the bug report to reflect circumstances of all impacted paid subscribers, but Adobe's form fillout only provides mutually exclusive selects etc. that would make the bug report less than ideally representative. 

I have set up Adobe Case Number 0208405348 by phone today in an effort to discuss this matter and all my other posts in this Adobe forum.

As it turns out, all my posts are indeed all interrelated to the use of Adobe Flash plugin and/or Shockwave Flash when troubleshooting the MLB.TV media player flaws.

Will you please contact me by phone or private mail.

As we go, along, and assuming you have not yet been able to log in and view the MLB.TV Support Forum at posttime, I will add new subpost links as you had requested.  for example this link:

http://mlb.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?content_id=13800469

may be reachable publically. It provides an MLB.TV tutorial on how to setup the dreaded (and "... sometimes disabled ...") NexDef software.

NexDef was reportedly originally written by Justin Chapweske of Swarmcast

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzs9QcnDPPU

Swarmcast is a company that, IIUC, is either Google-search-string OOB (Out-Of-Business), or at the very least, no longer involved with NexDef as used by MLB.TV.

NexDef seems to no longer work properly as intended in conjunction with (the) Adobe Flash component(s) in the MLB.TV player. IMHO, these two primary player components seem to conflict with one another as both want to conduct quality adjustments automatically at timed or triggered intervals.

If these adjustments trigger and run PROPERLY and BRIEFLY say ONCE A GAME and lock the resultant quality that would be OK. I think that's what happened last season but this season things have been different.

Notabally, Even if NexDef is not installed the quality issue this year persists ... Does this imply that Adobe alone is at fault? or are there newer implementations or component additions to the MLB.TV media player that are giving Adobe Flash or Nexdef a bad name?

By the Way (BTW), the tutorial mentions ways for users to adjust Visual Quality and more importantly how users can determine the Visual Quality level that works for their receipient hardware and software configuration. This user guided customization has reportly worked just fine for impacted users in the past ... Their settings STUCK. This year (6 April 2012 thru 22 May 2012 and continuing) their chosen settings do not STICK. IMHO, The faulty interplay between Adobe and NexDef is a likely root cause. That's why we need your (Adobe) help.

Thanks

chris.campbell
chris.campbell
Legend
May 30, 2012

Chris, IMO you correctly identify the problem with MLB.com as being related to MLB using SwarmCast's NexDef technology to implement HTTP dynamic streaming.  I also note from this post http://blogs.adobe.com/ktowes/2010/06/flash_player_101_http_dynamic.html that Adobe has developed and deployed an equivalent technology to the one implemented in NexDef, an adaptable, scalable swarm-fed HTTP HD streaming technology.  These look to me to be similar in concept and purpose.

If this is the case, isn't the simple and prudent solution for MLB.com to jettison NexDef (as SwarmCast has done) and embrace your HTTP Dynamic Streaming technology?


I'm not a video expert by any means, but I do know that we do extensive testing and support using our tools.

Terms & ConditionsAccessibility statement
Using the community Terms of use Privacy Cookie preferences Do not sell or share my personal information ad choicesAdChoices