Naturally, we do transcode a lot of movies here. This involves handling large directories that is moved to different file systems and going through different sub-processes (such as extracting/demuxing audio and video streams; injecting audio, video and subtitles into new containers; quality control; re queue etc.

Operations are performed upon large batches that hence needs to be moved between directories and/or physical units.

Overall, the process is now pretty streamlined. There is just one thing that freaks me out.

Say for example that I have to move 100 movies, each a sub directory with 10+ GB of data. This can take a long time, so often I do this before I leave the office expecting the process to be finished when I come back the morning after.

Guess what? Often the process has stopped while copying the first movie, displaying a confirmation dialog: "Are you sure you want to move the system file Thumbs.db?".

What the hell? What would you think I'd want to answer?

There is at least three design flaws here:

• The files is meaningless for the user, so just copy it will you!
• Event if you refuse to do anything without bothering the user, please at least copy the rest of the files while waiting for the decision!
• Windows Explorer has been behaving like this since forever. Soon I'll be switching to OSX just out of irritation.

I'll get back to write another post after carefully sitting by and watching when the computer copies some files.

/Adam

We've understood that some users experience a problem downloading their movies with our browser-based P2P client (and other clients for that matter). Not all of them where from Israel.

So, we've implemented an automatic fallback to http download. The browser will prompt the user to save the file directly. This will be triggered if the download is going too slow during more than a minute. We hope that this will help you customers dependent upon restrictive ISPs...

Cheers

I believe that at least once in a life time everyone writes a 'My Favourite Movies'-list. As I have not done this yet it is time, and that time is now! (hehe, that sounded corny... nice, just the way I like it!)
Below are the ten, carefully select movies of my list. Since these all are my favourite movies I won't rank them amongst each other. They will simply be presented I thought of them, which actually does give a way a bit of their individual ranking anyway...

Shawshank Redemption

I rembember seing the Shawshank Redemption with my buddy at his house. It must have been around 1995 and we had rented it from the local video rental place. We hadn't heard a single word about this film and didn't know what to expect at all. Wow, what I bomb! We were totally blown away. I can't remember which movies were on my top list at that time, but I'm pretty sure this one went straight to the top and Morgan Freeman has been one of my favourite actors ever since. I know I was telling people about this movie and how much I liked long before I figured out I wasn't the only one... I was quite shocked when I saw the IMDB top 250 list for the first time and noticed that The Shawshank Redemption was in the top. If I remember it correclty it was in the number two spot at that time.

Gladiator

There are a few things I really like to see in a movie: An interesting life destiny, an epic story and a historical setting. Ok, there are a few more things but what I wanted say is that this movie has all what a boy could ask for. Yes, exaclty. This is the definitition of a boys movie. Ohoh, almost forgot: What we do in life echoes in eternity... *chills*...

Lord of the Rings - trilogy

Ok, here we go again. Epic story, a boy's wet dream getting to see on the big screen what could only be pictured in ones imagination. I have only one thing to say. Thank you Peter Jackson.

Rudy

I'm a sucker for true stories were people do their best all the time and are finally rewarded. But what I like most in a movie and what makes me weep is when people really go out of their way and do something truely beautiful for each other. The scene were the entire football team is lined up outside the coaches office is one of those moments. Oh, did I mention the setting is college football. Does it get any better?

The Matrix

Groundbreaking is just the beginning to describe The Matrix. Everybody remembers the the slow motion 3D scene when Neo is dodging flying bullets. The movie is so amazing that it even carries such a weak actor as Keanu Reeves. Matrix Reloaded and Matrix Revolutions don't reach the same level and therefore are not included in this list like the LOTR-trilogy. However it ties us to the real essence of The Matrix: Agent Smith...

Forrest Gump

I believe it's hard not to love this movie. It has a little bit of everything, sort of like a box of chocolates. Forrest Gump also features a very interesting life destiny, just like a movie on my top list ought to.

Good Will Hunting

I just got the feeling that I really wanna stop writing and just take a few hours to watch this movie again. I think it's so cool that someone as smart as Will Hunting (Matt Damon) can just cruise through life without hardly anyone knowing. Yeah, terrible waste but cool anyway. The janitor solving the 'unsolvable' problem, brilliant!

Kingpin

I don't understand how this movie can be so underrated? Don't people have a sense of humour or what?! Kingpin has some of the funniest scenes ever shot, all in the same movie. Like when our hero Roy Munson has been out milking the cow early in the morning and the Quaker Father goes: We don't have a cow. We have a bull...

Rounders

Hmmm... I guess I have a thing for Matt Damon since it's the second time he makes my top movies list. Maybe I do. However Rounders made it onto list because of the setting. Poker! A movie every poker lover would put on his list.

King of Kong

I bet you're thinking: Wow, this is an outsider. Well it really isn't if you think about it. True story, sports (sort of) and people giving their best shot. Very much like Rudy indeed. And you have got to love the amazing characters in The King of Kong and I'm not talking about the two main characters but rather all the fantastic people in the vincinity like the referee, the fans and the technician.

The Hurricane

Just need to give an honourable mention to this beautiful story. One of those movies that made me shed more than one tear. Not as much as Rudy but still.

What about the Godfather movies? Why aren't they on your list you looser? Well, I guess I am a looser. It was so long ago I watched'em I can hardly remember Marlon Brando saying "You can act like a man! What's the matter with you?", while slapping his useless godson over the face. Quite frankly, they never left much of an impression on me but I guess I'll have to re-see them some day.

Damn, have I written a load of garbage or what?! But one thing is for real: The List!

Hi everyone!

Just saw Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds this weekend, and it was amazing. Check out Chapter 5 in the following video clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOJTS5hnisE

If you want to see another Tarantino masterpiece, check out Planet Terror.

Must see list:
Pulp Fiction
Inglourious Basterds
Kill Bill
Jackie Brown
Reservoir Dogs
Natural Born Killers

One Love,
/Tedmeister

Full (or true) HD is beautiful to watch, but really demanding for your computer. Unless you use an application that takes full advantage of your computers hardware - hardware acceleration - such as video card and/or the CPU's multimedia capabilities, you'll need a pretty powerful computer to render full HD without flickering. The major operating systems built-in players such as QuickTime for OSX and Media Player for Windows will in most cases have full HW-acceleration on their respective platform. Most open source players won't!

Most Windows users, will probably be able to play 1080p if the file is a wmv-file (encoded with any Microsoft supported codec such as VC-1 or older WMV-codecs), but not mpeg4. As we consider mpeg4 to be a better standard in most other aspects, we use this format as often as possible. Is this bad news for windows users? Not necessarily. There are three resolutions to this problem:

• You're lucky enough to have windows 7 installed on your computer with the latest version (12) of Windows Media Player, you'll also have full support and HW-acceleration for mpeg4 files encoded with h264.
• You have a powerful computer that think that HW-acceleration is for wimps, and just renders the video smoothly without whining. If Windows media player won't play the movie at all try one of the open source alternatives, for example VLC Player.
• If you have tried the full HD-version of an Ameibo movie and it fails miserably, contact us and we will create a lower resolution example for you!

Conversely, most OSX user will be able to play mpeg4 1080p-files just fine with QuickTime Player. You're in other words better of than Windows users this time! Consider this as a compensation for not being able to play our copy protected material (DRM)...

Also, there are some advanced set-top-boxes that can play HD-material without complaining. Example of this is TViX, Popcorn Hour. Although I think it does, I'm not sure if PS4 supports mpeg4 files...

/Adam AKA Col. Jessep