Top Rated Video Dissapointment

NickMartini

NickMartini

Active member
I have never posted in "Site Discussion" but after NS's most recent site update I have a complaint. I have been an active member on NS since I was 12. My favorite part of Newschoolers in the past couple years has been the "Top Rated' videos section. It used to be - Click on "top rated" on the nav bar, and presto, you get to see the best videos in skiing . Now you click on "top Rated" and you have to choose from like 10 options (embeded, this month, etc), that has 100% ruined what that part of the site did for me. I am not alone on this, most avid NS members I have talked to also dislike this. Do other agree? If so, can we please get this shit changed back to how is used to be. I miss "top rated videos"
 
Discussed at length in this thread -

https://newschoolers.com/ns/forums/readthread/thread_id/648883/
 
But hold on... I'm more than happy to argue this.

Because I have a much broader view than most of you, I can see things you don't. In actual fact, EVERYONE constantly bitched that the video section was dead because the top rated section never changed.

Stept - Guys like you and me forget this because we don't come on newschoolers as often as we used to. However the people that are on here constantly have been BEGGING to have a top rated section that updates more often. That is why we made it default to "of the day", because when it does this you can see new videos much easier instead of the same ones all the time.

Lets split this into two discussions -

1) VIewing top rated of all time by default. Frankly I think this is a bad idea, because its better to see more new videos. Please let me know if others agree with me.

2) Embedded. Ok, fair enough you want to watch vimeo. ITs just that we're trying to build a really good video system, and we have to make the hard decision to eventually walk away from Embeds. On the back end they cause massive issues for building the system we want to build. Henceforth, the more we can slowly move away from this the better position we will eventually end up in. This will be good for the ski industry as a whole to have control over this.

Why don't you guys be one of the first people to join our producer program? Would you be interested if we can match the quality of Vimeo that we will pay you for every view you generate on videos on newschoolers? I will gladly accept you into the program and get you started right here right now. Aren't you paying for Vimeo plus?

We want to share this revenue with film companies and independant film producers. We want to help you make money. We want to build a new business for you to take part in.

We can't do that if all of us give all the business to Vimeo and YouTube. We need to band together and create a new part of the ski industry. Stick with us, and we'll handle the tech and the ad sales, so you can just focus on making and watching videos.

So whaddya say... you guys interested?
 
it always takes me a little while to get used to the changes/updates made to NS, and they always bother me at first but then you just get used to them.

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I have seen you argue this video issue quite diligently, and understandably so.

However I just don't see the people "BEGGING" to have the daily videos be the first thing that they see. From a pure viewership numbers standpoint, I would say the opposite is true. The "top rated" videos are watched the most because they are just that, the best, and thus have the highest amount of views.

Obviously I don't work at newschoolers and don't get messages regarding site improvements or anything like that. But from an avid user's position(since what like '02?), I feel like you are using the a somewhat copout argument for defaulting "daily" "videos on NS server" rather than showing the best content right away regardless of it's source. (I feel the real reason is you want the ad revenue. You did address this in the other thread somewhat and I agree with you, but for the love of god CHANGE YOUR ADS. CALL VITAMIN WATER. TELL THEM THEIR AD IS DECREASING VIEWERSHIP, AND HURTING THEIR IMAGE. And start selling shorter run times of ads in the future. Diversify them.)

All you have to do is click through 2 page refresh's and you are essentially at the same place you used to be. Not too difficult, but to be honest I just wait for edits to show up on Facebook now. I have stopped visiting the video section since the change, not hating, just stating my own personal experience. I could care less about the daily videos that show up in October of some kid skiing his backyard setup. I want to see the best. Let the kids who are dying for comments from their friends on their own videos be secondary. They don't bring in as much ad revenue. Not for NS, not for skiing, and not for the athletes (I feel) we should be supporting.

I do agree some change is in necessary, and I do think you guys do a great job. Keep at it, and just offering my shitty $.02

 
There's two issues here. Let's discuss them separately please.

Landing page of Top Rated videos can be set to day/week/month/all time.

I personally don't care which of these it is. The complaining I heard was over many years of the old section, where not a ton changed in top rated. Videos sat there for a long time.

We can change this to whatever you guys want. You want monthly then that doesn't matter to me you can get it. SO please, everyone pipe up. You want this changed its done.

I will start another post for the second issue.

 
I can't tell you how wrong you are.

I actually had to beg and fight Paul to even keep embedded videos on the site. It took a huge amount of work for him to jam that into our new video system.

You have to realize... an embedded video from a code perspective aint video. Its code.

The issue by no means is the landing page. That you are correct about, we could very easily change the landing page to have both types of videos. HOwever... that does NOTHING for the end goals of what we're trying to do here.

We are trying to build a business that supports video producers. Young video producers don't care what they do with their content, because they don't have bills to pay. The moment that they make a movie with their highschool/college friends and release it, they're stoked and quality is all that matters.

However - the moment that these same producers release their movie when they have to pay bills, and realize that selling DVDs is a dead art... the whole thing comes crashing down. That is why you see so many smaller companies with tonnes of potential flame out or get gobbled up by the bigger guys.

We have built an ecosystem where those same people will be able to have their business flourish. Advertising and sponsorship are a wonderful way to fund a business. Sure its a bit annoying, but you put up with it every single day everywhere else in this industry.

What you producers backing Vimeo need to realize is that we are trying to help you build a business. You are begging us to let you keep paying a bunch of guys in New York money to host your videos and sell ads against them... without giving you squat. Even if they enable rev share, trust me it will be peanuts comparatively to what we're putting on the table.

Join us. Embrace the new video system. Use it. Try it. Apply to be a Producer.

We can change this industry together.

 
I've actually come to like the top rated system quite a bit Bishop. I also like the idea of the producer program, really good thinking. Can you clarify what exactly would qualify somebody to be accepted into that program? In other words, are you looking to only get involved with the professionals who are relying solely on ski video-related profits as their income?

Also, on a slightly unrelated note, do you think you could change it so that when people go to your profile and click videos, it shows the embedded ones as well (without having to click videos & embedded)? I understand your reasoning for not showing embedded by default on the main video page, but it seems unfair on the profile page considering I was sometimes forced to embed (such as when our 20 min ski film was too big for the 300mb limit)? It sucks that those are hidden now.
 
What we're looking for is people who produce good videos that people want to watch. We will in no way going to favor pros over unproven people.

That being said, the primary things that we will look at:

-Videos you make are good (both riding and video quality)

-You make lots of videos

-You have proven track records of your videos getting views

-Your videos are fun and interesting

-You have a really freaking good idea for a series

-You want to launch a movie with us

There's other factors to consider, and obviously if you're a professional then you will have a good library to pull from.

What matters though is that people on Newschoolers want to watch your shit. In the end that is all that matters. Even if people get in for the first year, if they aren't getting good views and positive response, we will re-evaluate their position.

 
I agree with Nick to be honest, and i know im not on here all that much... because i would rather ski then to sit on a website all day, but i always have problems uploading videos straight to NS, and the Quality on Vimeo is so much better than yours. No offense to NS at all i think this site is awsome, but i enjoyed how it was much better than it is now.
 
I see Bishops point, however I have a solution.

How about when you click on the top rated linky in the nav bar, it simply brings you to the top rated of all time instead of today. That way, the people who are on here every day simply have to make one more click, where as the intermittent users can simply see the best of the best.
 
call me crazy but I just don't think vimeo quality is THAT much better than NS anymore. NS really stepped it up with the new player imo

 
As for day/week/month/ all time I used to always navigate straight to top rated. I assumed NS would pick out the bangers and orange named edits for me. Since the change, I've noticed i'm watching alot more members edits and some good stuff I probably looked over in the past. By having day first its creating much needed viewing opportunities for new and fresh edits. I can still click to all time and It does not drastically effect the quality of edits that make it there.

As for the video/video & embed I feel quite differently. I see why NS wants to push their video system and I've seen BIG things happening in terms of quality BUT by pushing the NS interface tab first, it is undoubtedly skewing which edits get views, ratings and make it to top rated.

To me NS's charm is its ability to pull from hosting sites and organize them into one place so I don't have to sift through vimeo and youtube to find out what's new and hot.

The the NS interface has potential among those sites. Let the NS interface speak for itself though. If it truly works (and at this rate of improvement) people will start using it more frequently on their own. Until then, as a member I feel I am being hurt by NS's agenda to push its interface. What's important to me as a member is probably different than the administration

I really hope the NS system takes off and wins over based on merit and its interface . Until then, as a member I want easy and unbiased access to a spot that organizes the best media on the web. It should start with videos & embeds and every hosting site should be given equal opportunity. The day/week/month help create fresh views, but having the videos tab first is tricky and does not accurately promote the best videos that are being put out.

P.S i was stoked to get a new smith ad today instead of vitamin water

 
the new vid player of ns is laggy as fuck IMO

each time start a vid on ns, my browser start laggin for 1 min for every video. i stopped watching vid on ns because of that.And no its not my computer because i tryed it on other computer and it still lagg.
 
you can see straight away before you play the videos from either NS media player or Vimeo that there are some major differences. If the NS player had a few more similar features to Vimeo it could make a big difference as far as being aesthetically pleasing to the eyes.

A short list of things that might help

-Play bar showing video length

-Background thumbnail from the video

-Name of the video on top of thumbnail before pressing play

-Upload username

Maybe these things are stuff people don't really care about but I personally am instantly attracted to the visual appeal of the vimeo player over the NS player.
 
I agree with you on all those points. But if you read my post and the post I quoted, we were talking about video quality, not the player.
 
Yeah i dont know I have to disagree,

I just watched both of Will's videos and neither or them made my browser or comp laggy at all, and additionally those were the first videos ive seen from the new player (haven't been on ns much lately) and i'm really impressed! I thought the quality was really good, had both players in HD and I mean, I really couldn't tell much of a difference, it looked like maybe the colours were a little bit richer in vimeo, and maybe a tiny bit less pixelated in full screen but that could've just been my mind, other than that it looks really good, quality wise a lot better than the old players.

Kudos NS!

 
I know, I only know one other person who's laggin when he open a video. I tryed this with all the other computer of my house and they are all laggin, I also tryed with my school computer(really good pc) and its still lagg. I don't know why its laggin like that and its really anoying cause i cant watch vid from NS anymore. I used to watch about 10-25 vid every day but now i can only watch about 1-5 -_- . embedded vid don't lagg and atleast there's a section of embedded video =) . but with newschoolers video i can download them on my computer and then watch the vid in the bus or any place where there's no connection. I do agree with you about the quality, I don't see the difference between vimeo and Newschoolers.

I still wanna say good job to every mod for working hard trying to make everything better on Newschoolers.
 
i have the best connection i can get, super mega high speed. its only the ns video, i can watch the same vid on vimeo with hd and it wont lagg. just for an example, a guy in this thread posted a embed vid from ns and it take me 5min for my browser to start working again.
 
Are you using internet explorer? There is a known bug with the 3rd party video player we use with certain versions of IE. They are releasing a fix, which we will apply as soon as we know it is stable. That should hopefully fix a lot of people issues.
 
It is understandable that NS wants to move away from embedded video, but cutting them completely from the site in future would be disappointing. Being a member for over a decade seeing links to my old content deleted would be tough. As Garth once said, "we fear change."
 
We'll never cut the old legacy content and delete it. No matter what it takes, we will continue to hack it back into the system. We will never delete your old stuff.

The key to all of this is when we finish the NSTV navigation. You'll get it when you really understand NSTV and how awesome it is going to be.

 
Just doin' my part. I've been in the dark working on a ton of shit for NS. Its time to come back and move this shit forwards.

 
fixed, you were right about the internet explorer bug. i`m now using mozilla firefox and everything works fine.
 
I think it's a nice improvement. I hated having to sift through pages of top rated looking for videos i hadn't seen yet. now I don't have to.
 
imager.php
 
NICE! The internet thanks you for converting.

Hopefully soon there is a player upgrade coming that will fix the IE bug.

 
completely agree. i have seen people say that they are video of the week and what not when TOP RATED was strictly TOP RATED and thats not. take away all this other stuff they have added and bring it back to the way it was before.
 
Doug, i don't think anyone is ever gonna be happy with the video section.

I for one am stoked for HD support, the quality is so much better than it used to be. Im all for doing away with embeds in the video section, its really not that hard to upload a video to vimeo and a video to NS, ive been doing it that way for years. NS needs ad $ and eliminating embeds could be a big step to WAY more money for video ads.

i do like the old layout, but im getting used to the new one.

If people are complaining their videos aren't getting views, i would bet 90% of the time its because you uploaded an embed. NS is trying to chill out the embeds and have more people upload to NS, theyre starting the weening process and honestly i think they should just cut the cord, cold turkey.

I like the top rated day, week, month, all time. Videos that make the week top rated might not make the regular top rated and may go unwatched in the old system. Its nice to go to the day top rated because it always has a new cool video to watch. Top rated all time as been pretty boring, like the old top rated was.

I think the way the new VOD works is good now too, even am videos should be recognized if they deserve it, not just "pro" videos. video of the week and video of the month really highlight great videos from the week and month, i like that feature alot and those videos will probably be "pro" or orange name videos, oh well.

The whole orange name and concept of "pro" videos on NS is getting way too out of hand. every kid expects the best edits to be orange names but thats not always true, at all. if your name isn't orange, it doesn't mean you cant be top rated, it doesnt mean you cant be VOD, which i think is cool.

I think people need to stop bitching (tons of "orange name" complaining going on for some reason?) and lets the new system get into full swing. with the plans for NSTV and the potential of the video section, i think its going to be better than ever.

Just sit back and let the creators of NS do their magic, they have created by far one of the best forums online FROM SCRATCH and have created so much for us to enjoy, for free. Go to another forum online, you'll see how much better NS' shit is.

/rant-discussion
 
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