Troubleshoot and Solve Video Problems Here

MAIN TEST SETUP INSTALL SOLVE SYSTEM

• Symptom: You are experiencing trouble getting the video to play on this site.
  Resolution: Verify that you are meeting the minimum system and configuration requirements.
• Symptom: The video takes a long time to start up or  it stops and restart several times during play.
  Resolution: It is likely that you selected the incorrect video preference for the Internet connection you have.  For broadband users, if you selected the correct setting, the video should start playing within just a few seconds after activating play.  For dial-up users, most videos (except for the longer ones) should start playing within 30 seconds after activating play.  If you believe you made the proper selection then you are likely on an extremely slow or noisy Internet connection.  Choose a lower video setting for your preference to correct the problem.
• Symptom: The video plays, but stutters or stops and restarts, does not play smoothly, seems to skip portions of the video, or the audio is not synchronized with the video.
  Resolution: Your system is too slow (e.g.; old) to handle the video preference that you have selected.  Choose a lower setting to correct the problem.  If you are using a modern computer and experiencing this then you might have too many other programs running on your system during play.  Shut down all unnecessary or other programs running on your system and them try running the video again.  If you are still experiencing this, then your system is likely in need of repair or tune-up to bring it up to it's expected performance level.
• Symptom: If you can see video but cannot hear any audio.
  Resolution: Make sure you have speakers connected to your system, they are turned on, and you have the volume turned up.
• Symptom: Dial-up Issue — You use a dial-up internet connection and have set your preference to the High or Medium Quality setting and have observed that it takes a very long time for the video to start and when it does, it performs poorly.
  Resolution: Use only the "Small Video" preference setting. Regardless of your system, any setting other than "Small Video" will yield poor performance on a dial-up connection.  The file sizes of the High quality videos could, especially on the longer videos, take an hour or longer to download to your computer before it can play.
• Symptom: Dial-up Issue — You use a dial-up internet connection and have set your preference properly to the Small Video setting and have observed that it takes a while for the video to start playing.
  Reason: This is normal.  To provide the highest quality streaming video we could to dial-up users, we have taken bandwidth of the video to very edge of dial-up connection capabilities.  This means the system might need 30 seconds or longer to buffer the video before it can start playing.  On some of the longer videos, this buffering process could take 1 to 2 minutes, longer if your dial-up connection is over a poor quality phone line.  Note however that once you have played the video once through and allowed it to be stored in your computer's internet cache system, that you should not have this problem when you play this same video a subsequent time.
• Symptom: Dial-up Issue — You use a dial-up internet connection and have set your preference properly to the Small Video setting and have observed that video starts after a short delay, plays for a short while, and then stops for perhaps up to a minute or more, and then start playing again.
  Reason: This is normal.  The system we use tries to calculate how much of a delay is needed to buffer the video so once it starts it will play all the way through to completion without having to stop for buffering again.  On dial-up connections however, the data delivery system over the ordinary phone line is not always consistent, and the data stream itself is interrupted, perhaps by your modem, your computer, or your ISP.  When this happens, our web video system needs to stop, recalculate the buffer space needed based on the average bandwidth of your connection, and then download the video stream into the buffer before it can start playing again.  This same problem with dial-up inconsistency can cause play to stop and restart again later in the video.  This is an issue with your dial-up connection and your ISP and not a problem with our video system or our servers.  Our system is simply trying to adapt to your specific data download capabilities when it stop and restarts.  Note however that once you have played the video once through and allowed it to be stored in your computer's internet cache system, that you will not have this problem when you play this same video a subsequent time.
• Symptom: You specified to remember your setting, but the system is not remembering your setting.
  Resolution: You probably have your browser set not to store persistent cookies or you are using a cookie manager (either 3rd party or built into the browser). Change your browser and/or your cookie manager settings to allow our web site to store persistent cookies.
• Symptom: A setting you previously specified with the remember my setting attribute set on a previous visit to this site worked for a while and then suddenly disappeared.
  Resolution: You probably cleared your internet cache and/or your cookies from your computer between visits or it has been a long time since your last visit and the cookie expired.  Simply set the preference again with the remember my setting attribute.
• Symptom: Audio sounds tinny or distorted or has echo on the Small Video (Dial-up) option.
  Reason: This is normal and there is nothing wrong with your computer nor with the video.  The reason for this is because the audio is very highly compressed in order to download the complete data stream (audio and video) at dial-up connection speeds.  We felt it better to sacrifice audio quality rather than video quality in order to provide our dial-up visitors the ability to stream our videos effectively.