Failing to buffer video - common problem?

Question

I uploaded a video to CS Review through Premiere CS 5.5 for customer review today. I used the 2 Mbit option, as we are all on at least 20Mbit connections.
However, on the CS Review site the video (12 minutes long approx) is interrupted with the following error ever 10 seconds or so:
Failing to buffer video.
The server is not responding quickly enough to play back this video. Playback will continue when buffering is complete. [UnableToBuffer]
Is this due to lack of bandwidth on the CS Review site (csreview.acrobat.com)? Is this a common problem, or just a temporary situation? Right now the whole CS Review is providing a very sub-par experience for our customers. It seems like a nice idea, but needs to work if we are going to be paying for this come next year.

Answer 1

My client is having the same problem -- but I encoded for the lowest level, the 1 Mbit option. We've been using it for a couple weeks now, reviewing some 20 different timeline segments -- from 3-4 minutes to 30 minutes long. She's getting these buffer messages all the time -- and it's also frequently just freezing up.
Of course, we're not sitting next to our clients -- so we can't tell whether they're clicking the same buttons too many times ... what's going on in their computers ... variations in their server connections ... etc. We're stuck here in a "the customer is always right" situation. We're providing a service to these folks and they don't like it when we waste their time.
But in general -- yeah, this is a super idea -- and lots of things do work well (relatively quick encoding, good image quality, eliminating the need for my client to write down any timecode numbers, being able to print a PDF record of what you're doing, having folder and project options at the CS site). So you're definitely on the right track.
But ... clients find it hard to play the files back and forth. The single-frame back & forth button is useful in some situations -- but clients want to be able to scroll back and forth to find in/out cues, etc. And this part of it is very clunky.
And if there's a glitch, we're not able to help them -- they're stuck. The CS site just does whatever it does, and things grind to a frustrating halt.
Maybe this should be a program you sell us, where we run it from our computers and our own websites. Or maybe it can be run from a faster, more responsive site.
This particular client of mine has given it a really good tryout. But now we're going back to me encoding & uploading files to my own website ... emailing her a link ... having her download the file to her computer, where she can easily play it, scroll back and forth, etc. This is also a clunky, time-consuming solution -- so it's not ideal. But at least we have control over the process and we can fix it when something doesn't work correctly.
I'd love to use the CS site -- I think it's a great idea. Yes, I'd certainly pay for it. I've tried it with a dozen clients for various size projects. It's been OK for a few -- unuseable for others -- clunky and slow for others. Needs more work.
Please fix it -- there's a huge market for this. If the Adobe version doesn't work, someone else will surely offer the same thing -- maybe as a program that we run ourselves.
I'm definitely an Adobe fan and I would love for this thing to work well.