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Forum Discussion
Improving Dropbox video preview quality - thinking outside the box
The poor quality of the Dropbox transcoded preview has been discussed over the years, particularly between 2015-2017.
Over the last six years, internet speeds have changed remarkably and online streaming is now commonplace.
So our clients are unforgiving in their distaste for the Dropbox preview product.
Dropbox has made it plain, that as far as they are concerned the solution is just download. However many many clients want to be sure the product is right for them before they download.
Thinking outside the box, if we load two versions of each video, one optimised for preview, of smaller file size etc.(so clients can be sure its the product they want- but we can be certain that for instance, the preview won't be out of audio/vision sync) and the full res version for them to download.
Surely the Dropbox engineers who work on the auto transcoding know the optimum specs for the preview file?
Can that please be shared with your clients? ( after all we are supposedly on the same team)
87 Replies
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- That message should be all the time, not if you pause the video of 15 minutes have passed. My videos are no longer than a few minutes so that should be displayed all the time.
- Sanchez
Dropbox Community Moderator
- What I need is preventing the user to open the video. Only download should be allowed. Not giving the opportunity to watch this rubbish is essential.
- Mark
Super User II
Hi Derloopkat - when you send the link alter it so that it is forced to download
https://help.dropbox.com/desktop-web/force-download - Thanks for the solution. It's hilarious this is even an issue. When you share a file with someone, you expect that they're going to receive, bit-for-bit, the exact file intended—not some transcoded, inferior garbage version. If I wanted someone to mangle my video files, YouTube already does a perfectly acceptable job of that. Dropbox is basically using people's ignorance as a way to try to save bandwidth under the guise of a feature. Sure it's possible to share videos in full quality...that is, if you're willing to take the time to figure out how to do it. Silly. Glad I'm not paying for this abomination.
- Rich
dojima wrote:
Sure it's possible to share videos in full quality...that is, if you're willing to take the time to figure out how to do it.Doesn't take much time to click "Download."
Clicking download has nothing to do with 'sharing' it in full quality. To 'share' it in full quality, you have to use Mark's solution.
Let me break it down for you: let's suppose I'm trying to share a video. I create a link and give it to someone. Unless they have previous knowledge of how Dropbox works, they have no idea they're watching a transcoded video on the link I provided to them. Indeed, as people in this thread have mentioned, their clients thought something was wrong when they were provided a video that cut off after 15 minutes. It wouldn't occur to the ordinary person to download the video in that situation, and it doesn't occur to the uploader that their file will be altered, since it's not mentioned anywhere, and that's not the default behavior on any cloud storage site that I'm aware of other than Dropbox. I just happened to find out because I checked the link. Further, even if I know that the file has been altered, there's no intuitive way to find a link that I can share with someone without Googling. I first tried removing '?dl=0'. That doesn't work either.
In the Dropbox "About us" page, they state, "When people put their files in Dropbox, they can trust they’re secure and their data is their own." People are rightfully upset about this issue. A transcoded video is certainly not my own data.
- Sanchez
- Sanchez
I have asked this question via Support lines twice and zero response
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