# Versus Tracker - Problems for you?



## Argentius (Aug 26, 2004)

I just switched mine off in frustration. If they'll give me a refund, I'll definitely take it.

Tried both yesterday and today to get the live stream to work, but the quality is so bad that it's not worth doing -- the audio is fine, but the video plays for a few seconds and then freezes for thirty.

It looks high quality when it WORKS -- who knows, maybe it taxes my broadband or my computer too much.

However, I've messed with every setting I can find to no effect -- and I will add that streaming video from other sources like Netflix and Youtube work with no problems. 

I'm on a cable router that's about 1.5mbps, have tried with my wifi and just plugged in with a cable.

Anyone else having similar failure, or, success?


----------



## tethernaut (Dec 11, 2008)

The Tracker is crashing mobile Safari on my iPad. If I set the video to full screen immediately, it run for 5-10 minutes, and the video looks great, but then it crashes. It crashes immediately if I leave it on the full Tracker screen. 
Hope they get the bugs worked out.


----------



## bikeguy0 (Sep 23, 2007)

Working fine this morning for me. Kind of choppy on my Windows computer but works very smoothly on my Mac which a much faster computer. Had problems last night but it was related to the speed of the windows computer......it worked perfect on the mac.


----------



## bismo37 (Mar 22, 2002)

Had some choppiness in the video feed until the last 5 minutes of the race when the video screwed the pooch. Still had audio commentary. Completely locked up the during the crashes and sprint finish. I saw nothing but got to hear Phil screaming about it. 

Spinning pinwheel of death on a macbook with 4gb ram using wifi at 12 Mbps. Using Firefox browser. Have had no problems with other video streaming. Not really happy with how it worked today. It worked fine for the prologue.


----------



## pedalruns (Dec 18, 2002)

Questions for Mac users or maybe just in general.... how do you get the video go to full screen? 

Mine was working great for stage 1, while it was live.... but I left to go for a ride and left it on pause and when I resumed it, it only played for a few seconds and got hung up... I finally went out of it and back in and they haven't posted the video replay of todays stage yet, does anyone know how long it takes to post the replays? 

I was pretty happy with it this morning and I think it will be worth it... I don't have cable and I'm hoping with this I can just watch the stage when I have time.


----------



## bismo37 (Mar 22, 2002)

Replay is on now. But I'm not sure we can fast forward or rewind...? You need to download Autobahn to be able to replay stages according to the website prompts.


----------



## JimT (Jul 18, 2007)

Mine was choppy on my slower computer but fine on the faster one running google chrome. I wish the FFWD/rewind capability worked...


----------



## Argentius (Aug 26, 2004)

REpllay is up and on demands / ff / rwd works, but spinning loading icon doom after a few mins.

Worked better In chrome than IE but still not useable.

My computer is not all that fast, but I am not asking for 1080p here, just SOMEthing to work.


----------



## bismo37 (Mar 22, 2002)

JimT said:


> I wish the FFWD/rewind capability worked...


Apparently you can FF, but it's ghetto:

"To those having trouble fast forwarding: click where you want to skip to, then let it wait one minute (or longer). then click the pause button. the slider should have skipped forward. if not, click the play button (NOT the one in the middle of the screen) again, wait another 30 seconds or so, click pause again, and the pause/unpause."

That was written by some guy on the CHAT screen of Tour Tracker. It eventually worked for me to FF to the end of the stage.

On the replay version, I was able to see the finish and crashes with no loss of video. Still some video stutter but I think it's the "normal" stutters you get that on the TV feed as well.

I may try Chrome instead tomorrow for the live feed. The replay seems to work much better for me than the live feed... so I'm not too p.o.'d. Yet.


----------



## Chef Tony (Mar 2, 2004)

The live feed was choppy today on an older P4/XP computer, but worked great on a dual core/windows 7 machine with direct HDMI output to my TV. The feed froze up for about a minute with 5k to go, but came back in time for the finish. No problems replaying yesterday's stage.
So far, so good for Versus, but I wish they could mix in some some background audio from the race- sounded so sterile with just the studio commentary from Phil & Paul.


----------



## Guest (Jul 4, 2010)

Ridiculous. Wish Universal was covering Le Tour.

Or ESPN, somehow they broadcast close to 20 sporting events a day from all over the world live and on-demand and I've yet to have a single issue. No one else seems to be able to crack that code.


----------



## bismo37 (Mar 22, 2002)

yeah, there was audible crowd noise during the prologue when I watched it live. But no crowd noise today. Yesterday the prologue commentary was missing until the last 1/2 hr or so. VS is having trouble getting it right.:frown2:


----------



## Peanya (Jun 12, 2008)

Are you running the new OS on the phone? I've noticed many issues with the new OS. Wish I hadn't "upgraded" so soon.


----------



## BobH (Jul 6, 2006)

I have HDMI to my TV and the picture looks great although a bit chopy sometimes.


----------



## pedalruns (Dec 18, 2002)

I like it quite a bit so far... I watched the replay, FW to the last hour, enlarged it to full screen, and kicked backed and watched. I thought the video quality was great and the commentary was with Phil and Paul, the only thing was no background noise, I'd prefer to hear that. But overall I'm happy!


----------



## petalpower (Aug 10, 2009)

I don't know if I'm going to call my credit card company and dispute this.

The video quality isn't that great ( perhaps I don't have something adjusted on my laptop - but it's a Intel core 5 machine, 4gb RAM, with 512MB dedicated video ). Perhaps it's my DSL connection?

Also, the control ( FF and Rewind ) of the video sucks.


----------



## moabbiker (Sep 11, 2002)

Quality is incredible if you got the bandwidth, 12mbps connection here. You also need some serious computing horsepower else you will get pauses since it seems that autobahn stuff uses complex compresion and is not multithreaded so multiple cores does you no good. 

FFW only works sometimes. Worked fine last night for me, but now I cannot get it to work. seems to be a problem on their backend system. I really wish they had used Microsoft silverlight for this.. proven solid technology. I'm not even a MS fan but you got to admit silverlight is light years ahead of everyone else when it comes to streamed HD video.


----------



## root (Sep 13, 2007)

moabbiker said:


> Quality is incredible if you got the bandwidth, 12mbps connection here. You also need some serious computing horsepower else you will get pauses since it seems that autobahn stuff uses complex compresion and is not multithreaded so multiple cores does you no good.
> 
> FFW only works sometimes. Worked fine last night for me, but now I cannot get it to work. seems to be a problem on their backend system. I really wish they had used Microsoft silverlight for this.. proven solid technology. I'm not even a MS fan but you got to admit silverlight is light years ahead of everyone else when it comes to streamed HD video.


Autobahn is a Java application and it is multithreaded (at least it is on my Mac). However CPU usage is not really that high and hovers around 9% (I'm on 8 core Mac Pro with 32 GB of RAM). 

I really do hope they never use Silverlight. That crap never worked for me with Universal sports on either windows or OS X.


----------



## petalpower (Aug 10, 2009)

moabbiker said:


> *Quality is incredible if you got the bandwidth, 12mbps connection here. * You also need some serious computing horsepower else you will get pauses since it seems that autobahn stuff uses complex compresion and is not multithreaded so multiple cores does you no good.
> 
> FFW only works sometimes. Worked fine last night for me, but now I cannot get it to work. seems to be a problem on their backend system. I really wish they had used Microsoft silverlight for this.. proven solid technology. I'm not even a MS fan but you got to admit silverlight is light years ahead of everyone else when it comes to streamed HD video.


I guess my 1.5mbs DSL is probably the problem. I'd be surprised if it even breaks 1mb on the d/l.

Ahh well, I guess that's the price I pay for living in small town Colorado.


----------



## erj549 (Jul 26, 2008)

*fast forwarding in Tour Tracker*

Hey guys, I was previously unable to fast forward in the Tour Tracker (when I tried to drag the progress slider it would just lock up the video and never progress). A guy on the chat screen suggested uninstalling Flash and reinstalling an older version. This worked for me, and now I can fast forward to any point in the video, which is good because I don't have 6 hours every day to watch that. 

You can find a Flash uninstaller on the Adobe website, and after you have completely uninstalled it, then install Flash version 10,0,42,34 (this is for Mac, not sure if Windows has a different version number). You can find the download for that version by just searching for those numbers with Google.

Hope that helps out some of you.


----------



## gray8110 (Dec 11, 2001)

tethernaut said:


> The Tracker is crashing mobile Safari on my iPad. If I set the video to full screen immediately, it run for 5-10 minutes, and the video looks great, but then it crashes. It crashes immediately if I leave it on the full Tracker screen.
> Hope they get the bugs worked out.


Not that I have an iPad to verify this on... but I'm confused how you can get it to work. The Tracker requires flash which the iPad definitely does not support :?

There are suggestions out there to revert to an older version of flash to solve the problem. Unwise. The big reason for the recent updates to flash are significant security vulnerabilities. Versus needs to fix the flaw in their player not ask users to downgrade flash to a less secure version.


----------



## moabbiker (Sep 11, 2002)

Seems that they have enabled the ipad to work w/o flash with the tracker. 

Overall, for PC users, the issue seem to revolve around the autobahn garbage. Extremely inefficient, and only single threaded causing all kinds of performance issues. I hope Versus can dump this immediately and come up with an alternative.


----------



## locobaylor (Mar 11, 2008)

Random question about Versus: what time zone is their schedule online? I'm trying to figure out how early I need to wake up to watch le tour online in the morning.


----------



## Chef Tony (Mar 2, 2004)

locobaylor said:


> Random question about Versus: what time zone is their schedule online? I'm trying to figure out how early I need to wake up to watch le tour online in the morning.


Live coverage starts at 8:30 EDT, 5:30 PDT.


----------



## mccia (Sep 13, 2006)

Is anyone trying to watch Stage 2 right now? The video is blank - but there is a note below that says "live video of Stage 2 has begun". The Live news, tracker works - but NO VIDEO!!


----------



## penn_rider (Jul 11, 2009)

Best $30 bucks I never spent....


----------



## root (Sep 13, 2007)

moabbiker said:


> Seems that they have enabled the ipad to work w/o flash with the tracker.
> 
> Overall, for PC users, the issue seem to revolve around the autobahn garbage. Extremely inefficient, and only single threaded causing all kinds of performance issues. I hope Versus can dump this immediately and come up with an alternative.


People keep repeating this, but it's not actually true. If you know what you are doing you can manually run autobahn.jar (you don't actually have to install anything, and if you do find it and uninstall everything).

Run the jar with

java -jar autobahn.jar

and if you really want to prove to yourself that it is multithreaded and all, run 

jconsole

and attach it to the running autobahn.jar process. On my Mac Pro it runs 74 threads the whole time video is playing. 

On my work computer, where I'm currently watching stage 2 in high def, running on Windows 7 64 bit, it runs 67 threads. My overall CPU usage is only 5% (2 CPUs with total 8 cores and 12 GB of RAM). 

View attachment 204613


So, if you do have issues it could be your connection speed or you might have really old single core CPU that is straining to play HD streamed like this?


----------



## vfxken (Jul 5, 2010)

Video streaming to my brand new iMac goes pretty well until the last few minutes of the stage, then freezes repeatedly. Stage two froze completely about 6k from the finish with only audio continuing. Had to force quit FireFox to close it. 

I'm guessing that the increased demand towards the end of the stages may contribute to the bottleneck, since it does not seem to be an issue early in the stage when I presume a lot less people are watching...


----------



## rickm (Oct 24, 2005)

*Versus Tour Tracker*

OMG, my eyes were tearing and my ears were bleeding after just watching the tour for one day on regular versus TV coverage. there was 5 minutes of commercials for every 3 minutes of tour coverage. the versus website is one the worst websites i have ever seen, and i felt like i was being robbed when i signed up for the tour tracker 29.95 package because of the lack of information about it prior to handing over your wallet, but i thought, what the hell, i have lost 30 bucks on much less annoying things. so i got out the eyedrops and and tried to clear the bloodshot, and found some q-tips to clear blood drooling my ears, and bought the package.

after a rough start, and downloading some silly broweser plugin, i must say... love it love it love it!

worth every penny, full coverage 6 hours of non stop tour live, no commercials, full coverage after live is over too. plus highlights and interviews. 

this was my last hold out reason for keeping cable television, but no more. cable will be disconnected tommorow. i am tired of paying cable for 60% commercials 40% content. thats crazy


----------



## jacman (Jun 27, 2010)

couldn't get tracker to load using Safari (worked fine yesterday), switched to Firefox, the picture froze constantly, though the commentary went uninterrupted. 
not happy.


----------



## rickm (Oct 24, 2005)

you probably have to have an internet connection and a computer that is beefy enough to handle huge streaming video. so a really good fast internet connection and a computer with fast processor and lots of ram.


----------



## BobH (Jul 6, 2006)

Question for geeks:

Does streaming really require a fast CPU and a lot of RAM?


----------



## jacman (Jun 27, 2010)

cable modem, Mac Snow Leopard, 3.06GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 4 gigs of ram.


----------



## root (Sep 13, 2007)

BobH said:


> Question for geeks:
> 
> Does streaming really require a fast CPU and a lot of RAM?


No, not streaming. Streaming refers to moving data packets through network interfaces. However, what happens after the packets are received is important. The packets represent video of pretty high resolution and quality and it has to be reconstructed frame by frame and played back to the user. Depending on how this is done it can be CPU intensive, unless the software offloads some of the work to the video card. 

Since the video is actually played in the flash plugin this also depends on the plugin version and OS it is made for. Windows version of the flash plugin supports video card acceleration, however it does not yet do so for OS X, so OS X actually uses more CPU power to render the video. 

Normally, when you watch the video online in the flash plugin, the flash itself connects to the stream server and downloads content and renders it. However, what versus.com has done is to offload the streaming to a separate java application (autobahn) that acts as a proxy in effect. Autobahn is really both a client and server. It starts up as a server listening for connections from flash plugin requesting a video stream. It then connects to the versus.com website and downloads and buffers the video stream and serves it to the local flash plugin sitting in the page. So, basically there is a middle man (autobahn) here that acts as intelligent buffer. This probably has very little effect on CPU usage.


----------



## jacman (Jun 27, 2010)

replay is running fine. there is a message below the viewer that says:

Stage 2 video is now available along with changes to improve streaming. Previous stage videos will return soon.


----------



## petalpower (Aug 10, 2009)

Seems like they are listening to us, and from what I've seen ( just checked some videos ), that most of the bugs are either worked out, or being resolved.

Here is a email I received from Versus earlier:

Dear Tour Tracker user,

First of all apologies for the problems over the last few days with the Tour 
Tracker service. We know that many of you have experienced problems and have 
contacted us through our support email or posted your feedback online. We've 
responded to many of you, but while we've worked on fixing these problems we 
know many of you have not yet received a response.

Due to the problems with the Autobahn plugin, after today's stage we removed the 
video player and replaced it with one that does not require Autobahn. Initial 
reaction is that this has fixed the streaming problems. This was also why the On 
Demand video of todays stage was delayed.

Another issue (particularly for the prologue) has been the start time of the 
coverage. We start the coverage when the International TV broadcast starts, some 
days this includes the start, some days it does not - it depends on when the 
host broadcaster in France decides to start the broadcast. The feed goes up on 
the Tracker at the same time as anyone in the world gets a TV feed.

The daily schedule of broadcast times is now published on the FAQ page: 
http://tracker.versus.com/faq

The other issue that many of you have commented on is the audio feed and the 
lack of background noise. We're frustrated with this as well. We're working hard 
on a resolution to this with the host broadcaster in France to correct the 
problem.

We're cycling fans too and understand that the problems over the past few days 
have been extremely frustrating, we appreciate your understanding and hope you 
will enjoy the rest of the tour without any further streaming problems with the 
service.

Regards,
The Tour Tracker Team.


----------



## hobgoblin (Jun 26, 2009)

I'm running FF on my MacBook, and I had no problems at all with the live feed, the replay, or anything else. It's a very different story with the iPhone Vs app, which is nearly worthless. That app won't load most of the screens, and it tends to freeze up whenever it feels like it.


----------



## Guest (Jul 7, 2010)

Stage 3 was much better than their early efforts, hopefully that will hold for the rest of the race. New player with pretty standard controls and interface and as far as I could tell it was available quickly.


----------



## kyrider (Apr 28, 2007)

*Versus tracker, what a waste*

I tried to watch stage 3 last night and after 10-15min my computer stopped responding and then rebooted. Tried few times then gave up... Never had problems with my PC restarting before and I watch live streaming from Universal and other online sites all the time. I wish Versus would invest in better streaming software. Will ask for a refund and find a better site to watch TdF.


----------



## kegbert1 (Feb 21, 2005)

*What silly browser plugin?*

Rickm - please share with us what silly browser plug in you utilized to get a seamless downstream from Versus Tracker?

Many thanks. kegbert1






rickm said:


> OMG, my eyes were tearing and my ears were bleeding after just watching the tour for one day on regular versus TV coverage. there was 5 minutes of commercials for every 3 minutes of tour coverage. the versus website is one the worst websites i have ever seen, and i felt like i was being robbed when i signed up for the tour tracker 29.95 package because of the lack of information about it prior to handing over your wallet, but i thought, what the hell, i have lost 30 bucks on much less annoying things. so i got out the eyedrops and and tried to clear the bloodshot, and found some q-tips to clear blood drooling my ears, and bought the package.
> 
> after a rough start, and downloading some silly broweser plugin, i must say... love it love it love it!
> 
> ...


----------



## dana109 (May 1, 2009)

Works fine for me on a Macbook using Safari. I have no complaints.


----------



## BobH (Jul 6, 2006)

I've got a slow DSL at home. Watching stage 4 replay last night went very well. Looked great on my 40 in. HD TV.


----------



## 4cmd3 (Jul 14, 2007)

I really appreciate how Versus.com has the Live News section today right next to the video player...

Knowing that XXXX XXXXX won the stage today saved me countless hours of enjoyment watching the on-demand video stream that I paid for.

[email protected]#[email protected]


----------



## Argentius (Aug 26, 2004)

*Better now*

When they made the change to move away from the Autobahn player, it worked fine for me.


Agree with 4cmd3, though, about the news -- I have to have my girlfriend load the page for me, and hit fullscreen, so that I don't see what happens over there. Not sure why they'd have that be the default.

Then again, it has been pretty difficult to sequester myself from the results as a whole...


----------



## jmess (Aug 24, 2006)

When will the sound show up? I am getting tired of watching rider interviews with no sound.


----------



## moabbiker (Sep 11, 2002)

Works great w/o the autobahn -- certainly one of the biggest hunk of junk plugin I've encountered in a long time.


----------



## tomcho (Jan 30, 2010)

Been working great for me the last few days, and like someone else mentioned the Versus coverage makes my eyes bleed. Rewatching stage 3 as I type this, and working very well.


----------



## nims (Jul 7, 2009)

jmess said:


> When will the sound show up? I am getting tired of watching rider interviews with no sound.



Yeah same here, I don't get it because every where else I see tour coverage online or on TV has background noise. It's just extremely distracting to only have the commentators voice during the whole ride. I can even hear him breaths arrrrgh... ;p


----------



## pedalruns (Dec 18, 2002)

We'll it had been working great for me, but the last two stages the playback starts hanging up and then stops... It just won't last longer than a few minutes. The live feed has been fine, as I watch some of it before I go to work or go ride and try and watch the end with the playback later and now the freaking playback won't work... I've tried clearing and reseting safari several times, I'm on DSL so I don't know what is going on... or what changed? Very frustrating.


----------



## rickm (Oct 24, 2005)

kegbert1 said:


> Rickm - please share with us what silly browser plug in you utilized to get a seamless downstream from Versus Tracker?
> 
> Many thanks. kegbert1


 well, on day one I installed the required plugin, the autobahn one. I am on FF on a Mac. Then they sent out that email that you see above on this thread and they apparently changed the autobahn plugin to something else, and it had been working fine until Saturday.

Saturday, I started having trouble with the recorded feed. The live feed was working fine but the recorded feed hangs every 30 seconds and requires restarting constantly. Then again today, Sunday the recorded feed is un-usable again as it hangs constantly and restarts from the beginning.

I can guess exactly what is happening. Their servers are getting pounded during the weekend stages and because we are in the mountain stages. Their servers cannot handle the load that is hitting them at the same time over the weekend. During the week we probably wont have this much problem with the recorded feed until later in the day when most folks get home and are ready to watch.


----------



## 4cmd3 (Jul 14, 2007)

And the fun rolls on
Versus.com is great when it works, but...

Today on-demand video does not play for stage 9
http://tracker.versus.com/tracker/stage/9

- there is a progress bar, which changes to a black screen with Play symbol
- pressing either Play symbol/button does nothing

By comparison, video plays fine for stage 8... 
I opened a ticket.

I'd like to extend my thanks to probikekit.com for spoiling today's stage results on their front page so now I have no need to watch the stage that I paid for and cannot watch anyway. But I guess that was dangerous territory so I deserved that. Had Versus.com worked I wouldn't have been aimlessly trawling the frickin' internet...

UPDATE: quick response from tech support! 

"We encountered unexpected delays while encoding it to be posted online and are currently working to post it"

On the Chat section of the Stage 9 page (which seems Facebook-driven), all kinds of people complaining about it. Haven't Versus heard of a maintenance page? Would save some tickets to their help desk...


----------



## pedalruns (Dec 18, 2002)

Well.... I'm just glad I've got some place tonight to go watch the cable version.. 

When it worked it was great, but it pretty much sucks right now for me..... They should give everyones money back and go back to the drawing board... until they can get it right for all stages and all OS, especially with them advertising it all over the place.


----------



## JimT (Jul 18, 2007)

I have to second ^^^that^^^ I asked for either a partial refund or discount for next year. I am sure they will say no but it's worth a try...


----------



## bismo37 (Mar 22, 2002)

Lame. How is it they had it working a couple days ago and now they can't? Problems encoding?! WTF does that mean? How about they "encode" my hard-earned money back into my bank acct and apologize for wasting my time? 

What pisses me off the most is that it's a mtn stage that I'm missing. I purposefully didn't watch the live race today so I could get out to an early morning ride thinking I could watch it later this evening. They really need to consider refunding everyone's money for their ineptitude.


----------



## moabbiker (Sep 11, 2002)

I came home early to watch stage 9 replay but now it's not even up. Ridiculous with that problem encoding BS. Even a 10 year old kid with a P4 computer can encode faster and quicker.


----------

