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> Compare that to the Reddit video player This is worthy of it's own question. Why is Reddit's player so uniquely bad? It's worse than any other video player

> Compare that to the Reddit video player This is worthy of it's own question. Why is Reddit's player so uniquely bad? It's worse than any other video player on the entire internet.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
jawr 4y ago
It’s serverless
- TechnicolorByte 4y ago
  For someone who doesn’t know much about this stuff, what does that mean?
  - europeanguy 4y ago
    It means it has no server.
    - catfishx 4y ago
      Yes, no server. It runs somewhere up in the clouds!
  - not_kurt_godel 4y ago
    Ignore them, it's unlikely they know what they're talking about at multiple levels
    - jawr 4y ago
      It’s my understanding that Reddit video was PoC’d by one person using aws lambda. Severless often gets touted as being the best way of doing things rather than just a way. My comment was a dig at that. But it seems like my comment somehow exposes multiple levels of ignorance, would love to know what they all are!
      - not_kurt_godel 4y ago
        It was unclear to me that you were being tongue-in-cheek. Were you serious, I'd point out for starters that A. You probably don't know whether it's serverless currently and B. Even if it were it's not a particularly uniquely likely explanation for consistent latency at scale
    - hot_gril 4y ago
      I took it as a joke about cloud marketing speak.
  - syrrim 4y ago
    Usually that it works via "functions" like aws lambda that don't maintain a long running process, but instead start a new process for every request.
  - penjelly 4y ago
    my understanding is that in a serverless architecture the dev does not manage the server, there still is one but its managed via third party cloud services who expose basic server or database functions which your app can plug into. think a "like count" database, it needs to increment and persist. Both very simple, and its implementation is entirely decoupled from the client implementation. Firebase would manage that for you, youd just call firebase functions instead of updating a database yourself. note: i dont know if this is how tiktok works
cellularmitosis 4y ago
Indeed. The behavior I've seen consistently is that the first N seconds play, then buffering starts, and it _never recovers from buffering_. And it has been this way for at least a year. Astonishing.
- silisili 4y ago
  This is what I get on the second play. Without fail, my experience is: Play video. Usually works. Try to replay video. It stops at 4 seconds. Refresh browser. Now the video is half the size? But it now plays, though tiny. I don't know who wrote Reddit's video player, but it's obvious they are a masochist. That they still haven't fixed it speaks volumes of their eng org to an end user like myself.
- O1111OOO 4y ago
  > The behavior I've seen consistently is that the first N seconds play, then buffering starts, and it _never recovers from buffering_. It's why on the Desktop, at least, I always have a https://redditsave.com/ https://redditsave.com/ tab opened. It's just way faster (and less frustrating). There's an FF extension that automates this : https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/downloader-4-reddit-redditsave/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/downloader-4-... : which I haven't tested. *update, a few minutes later: decided to install extension. Looks useful. Now the testing phase...
fregante 4y ago
The fun part is that they completely botched an experience that iOS can delivery natively. I built a mini app to extract the HSL stream from a URL and have iOS play it. It usually solves my problems with it: https://arte.vercel.app/ https://arte.vercel.app/
encoderer 4y ago
Is Reddit what engineering at scale looks like when not funded by a surveillance monopoly?
- hengheng 4y ago
  Or not funded at all, which is both its curse and its blessing.
- revolvingocelot 4y ago
  Don't fret, surveillance is still baked right in. The video player is bad so that one installs the app, whose video player, and ability to spy on the user, is much superior to that of the browser. The various ol., old., and i. subdomains, which still allow access to a functional reddit with a functional video player, are there to keep the old-school power users from revolting, for now, anyway.
KRAKRISMOTT 4y ago
They want to encourage you to use their mobile app
- rchaud 4y ago
  I'm using the same 3rd party Reddit app as I have been since 2013, and not only do videos work fine, I can download them to storage as well. Here's hoping Musk doesn't turn his attention to them anytime soon.

> Compare that to the Reddit video player This is worthy of it's own question. Why is Reddit's player so uniquely bad? It's worse than any other video player on the entire internet.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

jawr 4y ago

It’s serverless

TechnicolorByte 4y ago
For someone who doesn’t know much about this stuff, what does that mean?
- europeanguy 4y ago
  It means it has no server.
  - catfishx 4y ago
    Yes, no server. It runs somewhere up in the clouds!
- not_kurt_godel 4y ago
  Ignore them, it's unlikely they know what they're talking about at multiple levels
  - jawr 4y ago
    It’s my understanding that Reddit video was PoC’d by one person using aws lambda. Severless often gets touted as being the best way of doing things rather than just a way. My comment was a dig at that. But it seems like my comment somehow exposes multiple levels of ignorance, would love to know what they all are!
    - not_kurt_godel 4y ago
      It was unclear to me that you were being tongue-in-cheek. Were you serious, I'd point out for starters that A. You probably don't know whether it's serverless currently and B. Even if it were it's not a particularly uniquely likely explanation for consistent latency at scale
  - hot_gril 4y ago
    I took it as a joke about cloud marketing speak.
- syrrim 4y ago
  Usually that it works via "functions" like aws lambda that don't maintain a long running process, but instead start a new process for every request.
- penjelly 4y ago
  my understanding is that in a serverless architecture the dev does not manage the server, there still is one but its managed via third party cloud services who expose basic server or database functions which your app can plug into. think a "like count" database, it needs to increment and persist. Both very simple, and its implementation is entirely decoupled from the client implementation. Firebase would manage that for you, youd just call firebase functions instead of updating a database yourself. note: i dont know if this is how tiktok works

cellularmitosis 4y ago

Indeed. The behavior I've seen consistently is that the first N seconds play, then buffering starts, and it _never recovers from buffering_. And it has been this way for at least a year. Astonishing.

silisili 4y ago
This is what I get on the second play. Without fail, my experience is: Play video. Usually works. Try to replay video. It stops at 4 seconds. Refresh browser. Now the video is half the size? But it now plays, though tiny. I don't know who wrote Reddit's video player, but it's obvious they are a masochist. That they still haven't fixed it speaks volumes of their eng org to an end user like myself.
O1111OOO 4y ago
> The behavior I've seen consistently is that the first N seconds play, then buffering starts, and it _never recovers from buffering_. It's why on the Desktop, at least, I always have a https://redditsave.com/ https://redditsave.com/ tab opened. It's just way faster (and less frustrating). There's an FF extension that automates this : https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/downloader-4-reddit-redditsave/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/downloader-4-... : which I haven't tested. *update, a few minutes later: decided to install extension. Looks useful. Now the testing phase...

fregante 4y ago

The fun part is that they completely botched an experience that iOS can delivery natively. I built a mini app to extract the HSL stream from a URL and have iOS play it. It usually solves my problems with it: https://arte.vercel.app/ https://arte.vercel.app/

encoderer 4y ago

Is Reddit what engineering at scale looks like when not funded by a surveillance monopoly?

hengheng 4y ago
Or not funded at all, which is both its curse and its blessing.
revolvingocelot 4y ago
Don't fret, surveillance is still baked right in. The video player is bad so that one installs the app, whose video player, and ability to spy on the user, is much superior to that of the browser. The various ol., old., and i. subdomains, which still allow access to a functional reddit with a functional video player, are there to keep the old-school power users from revolting, for now, anyway.

KRAKRISMOTT 4y ago

They want to encourage you to use their mobile app

rchaud 4y ago
I'm using the same 3rd party Reddit app as I have been since 2013, and not only do videos work fine, I can download them to storage as well. Here's hoping Musk doesn't turn his attention to them anytime soon.