Really bad performance for Udemy site / player

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#99

Something else I had wondered about, for the people experiencing problems, was whether itā€™s course related?

So, taking Todd as an example, if you switch to a different course (perhaps something really abstract that isnā€™t likely to have many concurrent users), does the player suddenly spring into life, and then, if you were to return to, in Toddā€™s case, the Unreal course, is it woefully problematic again.

Thought it might be interesting to see as a test, the next time anyone is having difficulties, it really needs to be the same person I think though because we are all based in different countries and may have different configurations locally, and as we do not know what the server architecture looks like for Udemy, it would be fairly hard to pinpoint anything significant without having the same test case.

Anywayā€¦ was only a passing thoughtā€¦

#100

Well, Firefox was using 344mb cache, limit set to 350mb. Doesnā€™t sound like much (where I used to work, terrabytes didnā€™t sound like much thoughā€¦), but I hit the Clear button. Iā€™ll probably resume the course tomorrow so Iā€™ll see if issues persist.

#101

I finished Tank Battle this evening (finallyā€¦it was my second attempt after getting bogged down the first time) and after clearing the cache, no more issues. I thought there was one once when 10 seconds of a video repeated, but I confirmed by backing up that nopeā€”the 10 seconds (changing the Health to 350 to illustrate a health bar bug) was actually recorded twice! But it all worked.

Now the question is, why does a full cache even matter that muchā€¦surely itā€™s not a case of ā€œdo not buffer because older stuff in cache is fullā€, right? Iā€™d think new would get priority over old.

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#102

I will be flicking back and forth between unreal and the blender/blender pipeline courses over the next few weeks so if any problems were going to occur it would be then, but i am on wwhen the UK is quietest so i may have to do some testing later in the evening and at weekends.
Iā€™ll let you guys know if i find anything but to be honest i dont expect to have an issue :smiley:

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#103

That would be handy, thanks Marc :slight_smile:

When I have been on its typically in the evening, but not with GameDev.tv courses, I am also in the UK, but havenā€™t really had any problems (not for a long time). This is why I wonder about checking other courses that are not GameDev.tvā€™s also, if you flick between one of theirs which is behaving terribly and then to something a little abstract that would have very little people using it (ā€œUnderstanding the Impact of Trauma in Early Childhoodā€ for example - although that isnā€™t actually free, but you see my point), if that one suddenly works without fault then it might suggest a different issue.

If it is also choppy, then it at least rules out (mostly) perhaps the course itself. This obviously doesnā€™t take into account any cleverness Udemy may have for hosting very popular courses on separate servers/farms etcā€¦ although I doubt its that advanced.

From what I can see, as an Instructor on Udemy, you donā€™t get to see real time activity, unless @Ben can advise otherwise, I donā€™t think there is anyway to see how many students are accessing your course(s) at a given time, this may have been a useful indicator.

#104

Timestamp 12:07 UK time.
In Unreal course lecture 263 repeating glitch in the buffering where a section of the video pauses and buffers but yet it seems its buffing out of sequence.

glitchinthematrix.png1356Ɨ232 73 KB

The lighter grey areas are the unbuffered areas just for clarity as memory meh :smiley:
If you see just where i have the video paused there is a light grey area and then a segmented buffer. This glitch was consistently here if i went back and forth past the glitch point. If i passed the point and then went back to before it the glitch still reoccurs.

Edit :- Cleared cache, Reloaded page and glitch is gone.

I have no idea how this works but i am guessing this is getting worse at peak times and some with slower connections just crash out.

Update 15:44

I did the same lecture again (Second project) and had no issues with buffering the entire video.
No Browser Restarts
No Cache Clearing
No Refreshes.

@System edited a lot of my post in the forum
#105

Timestamp 12:15 - trying to see if I can get the same results as yourself, I clicked onto the Course from the Udemy My Courses and have a black screen with a spinning (wobbly) spinnerā€¦ and nothing elseā€¦ donā€™t appear to be able to access the course at all!

CPU now maxed at 100%, ethernet receiving 8Kbps / 16Kbps periodicallyā€¦

Wonder what time Udemy kick off their backups?

Updated Fri Jan 20 2017 12:19

Closed tab, browsed to Udemy again, it was very slow. Got to the course content this time, but scrolling down on the list of lectures became unresponsive.

Managed to get to lecture 263 and played it from 08:42 through to 10:02 and it didnā€™t appear choppyā€¦ unlike the received network dataā€¦

942Ɨ530 81.8 KB

Updated Fri Jan 20 2017 12:25

Tried another course on Udemy, course description / content loaded much faster, videos played immediately. Much smaller course however.

Updated Fri Jan 20 2017 12:27

Watching task manager whilst playing other video. Spikes on ethernet correspond exactly with the buffering incrementing on the video player. CPU has calmed right down, video quality on this one is 720ā€¦

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#106

Could you give me a little more info in regards to the conflicting players? Iā€™m using Chrome and I already know that clearing the cache doesnā€™t solve my particular problem. Just a pointer in the right direction so I know where to start with some google searches. Cheers.

#107

Sure, The problem appears to actually have been fixed with the dual flash players with the latest version of chrome (I reverted back to firefox before this) but if you havent updated chrome since september 2016 then you may need to.
The issue was that chrome comes with its own adobe flash player and when chrome installed a seperate one you would get the confliction.
The way to get arround this was go into the add ons in chrome and remove the one that is not adobe.

As said if this is your issue simply updating to the newest version of chrome will solve it.

That said however if the videos do run on flash player and not html5 they should not be playing at all in chrome.
I am wondering if @Rob is correct of internet load being the issue in that it depends on the course.

I have been in a smaller course for 2 days and not experienced any issues today.

I know its not much help and possibly another dead end but rest assured we will keep trying to figure this out and work with Udemy (Well the staff will and i send reports when i get an issue).

Good luck!

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#108

Had a bad experience on chrome while watching ā€œC++ with Unrealā€ recently and was told to share it here. This was the post I made talking about my problem in more detail.

Basically, in chrome I wasnā€™t able to watch the Playtesting video in my Unreal C++ course at all. I tried to watch the video and it wouldnā€™t even load the page, making me wait or kill the page. The only way I could watch part of the video was going in the previous video and hitting continue, but that would only load up half of the video. I was able to use Microsoft Edge to watch the rest of the video, but will continue using chrome (as it is my main browser) and going to edge in a ā€œtime of needā€.

#109

I am facing all the stated problems now! Video playback hanging, constant refresh needed! Such a horrible experience!!!

#110

My Udemy experience is absolute garbage at the moment. I can press play on a video and wait up to 10 minutes before itā€™ll play anything. Meanwhile, I can hit play in Netflix and load instantly. Once a video plays, if I pause it Iā€™m up for a wait of several minutes again before it plays.

I have had some luck using a VPN which locates me to the nearest capital city besides my own and that seems to have worked which makes me think it might be an issue with the CDN. Itā€™s incredibly frustrating and Udemy support takes a lot of time in asking (the probably necessary for the most part) simple questions when Iā€™ve tried all of that already.

The video playback issues are massive inhibitors to learning and getting inspired to do the challenges because of the constant interruptions.

#111

My solution was the avast security.The web watcher has clogged down the
performance!

#112

Itā€™s happening to me as well. It was fine this morning. Now itā€™s not. Any other streaming service works just fine on different devices.

For a paid service, where you pay by the course, Udemy is really handling this bad with their list of suggestions to clear cache, restart browser, and restart device advise. Such things are desperate attempts. There is obviously something wrong at their end, as this issue keeps coming every now and then. And it basically means, I canā€™t resume the tutorial. Yes there is download option. But thatā€™s not nearly as convenient.

Sorry thatā€™s just a rant, and letting others know Iā€™m with you suffering as well.

#113

Ironically, I never thought Iā€™d say that in my life, but what eventually worked isā€¦ wait for itā€¦ little moreā€¦

Microsoft Edge!

Since everything else seems to work fine, I still see that as an issue with Udemy, and not the OS/browser. But try it. See if it helps

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#114

Udemy performance is a dog for me. Itā€™s literally unwatchable, with buffering every 3-5 seconds for up to 1 minute. Iā€™ve tried different browsers and operating systems to no avail. I can do speed tests at the same time as Udemy is buffering and I get 30MBPS, itā€™s mental. Iā€™m beginning to wonder if itā€™s CDN related, given I live in Tasmania.

Iā€™m less than impressed with their support too, having to repeat the same thing over and over again as my case gets flipped between support staff in what has been around a year of shocking performance.

#115

I had this same issue, Win 7 and having a poor internet connection (youtube or Netflix, not both at the same time). I thought the problem was with the internet speed but it turns out it was with the display driver. Iā€™m doing the Blender course in Udemy and they suggest installing CUDA driver for your video card and turns out that made it slower. After re-installing the video card driver the streaming went back to normal.

#116

Have the same problem, i tried to clear the caches but that did not help, i will try to disable adblock to see if that will help me.

#117

Ok the solution of disable the adblock, fixed my problem. The video shows now without lags.

#118

Adblock: canā€™t live without it, but sometimes it blocks too much (On my own blog, it blocks the ā€œshare this to Facebook, etc.ā€ icons. Disable it on ā€œgoodā€ pagesā€”and Udemy is pretty good about not covering text with huge flashing ads for strange medical procedures :slight_smile:

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