Improving Dropbox video preview quality - thinking outside the box

[Robert K JSS Tech]

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) 

[Leo6]

If they would just implement the stanard thing every normal Browser does when opening a ftp server link.

It's just streaming the normal size of the video, that is it. Nothing fancy. 

It's definitley not easy for me to defend Dropbox against the opinion of our CEO ... "Why do we have to pay 10 Dollar for each one of our company if our FTP server can do a better job there..." 

Again, we love Dropbox for what it can do. But this is a everyday use case! Not only for us!

[Rich]

As has been stated, there is nothing to fix here. The preview of a video is just that; a preview. It is not intended to be the high-resolution original video that you uploaded. It is a transcoded preview of the original file, limited to 15 minutes of playback. If you want to see the original video in its original quality, you need to download the file an play it locally.

Simply put, Dropbox is not a video streaming service. If that's what you need, then you should be using a service that's meant specifically for streaming.

[Leo6]

Rich,

then why would you say that the quality of the stream depends on the speed of your internet connection?

if dropbox is thinking about different qualities of a stream for different bandwithes, why are they only making the preview worse and not better with a faster internet connection? 

Just trying to understand...

And also, it is not about wanting to use another service just for streaming...it is about sharing stuff and of course(!) also videos with you colleagues to describe a certain scenario for example, and they just do not want to download the video to their computer for that.

I do not undertand why you talk against that so much mate. It's not like you want to use dropbox like youtube or netflix or whatever.

[KF]

Rich, but you can add switch "dl=1"/"dl=0" in settings?

[bgpictures]

Hello. It makes sense that the video quality would be chosen based on quality of the internet conntecton. If it worked like this all the time, it would be great. However, I have a reliable 100 Mbps connection, and I regularly get an overly-compressed version of my videos when I test dropbox links in a browser. A manual override (HD) button... or better yet, a (SD) or slow/low signal override button would be better than the automatic detection for the times where some combination of dropbox, OS, browser, and hardware are not communicating properly. Thanks! B

[bgpictures]

The thing to fix would be the preview-quality. I often output short 4K sequences (final delivery), and make 720p h264 versions (previews) for clients. They are small files with low data-rates which look great locally, and stream well on every device I've tried when posted to my website... but are inexplicably, unacceptably re-compressed when a dropbox link is shared. I would never expect to print these previews to film or encode to DCP, but do expect them to at the very least, pass-through my original web-friendly encoding, or re-encode in a way that isn't demonstrably ridiculous.

Not looking to share a feature film, just a quick way to share an element for review by a client who might not be as tech-savvy as you or me.

At some point, it's just about organization. I have paid vimeo and dropbox accounts, and work to develop pipelines which best serve group communication. I assume dropbox is doing or would want to do the same. In the long run, if sharing video links through dropbox becomes a liability, users like me will streamline away from dropbox. So yes, I would say it is definitely something to fix.

[groom]

I'm +1 on this issue.  More than once I've questioned keeping my Dropbox account for this purpose.  I'm now looking at what apps sync through Dropbox and if there is a separate way to sync them then I am giving up on Dropbox.  All of the people who make excuses on behalf of Dropbox on this thread are making good arguments, but the real issue is that the service is only as strong as it's users.  If it's users want a feature, then I think it's important for the company to consider it and respond accordingly.  If it's not part of their business model and they are staunch about that then that is fine, but tell us - the users - so that we can decide to stay with your company or find something that works for us.

[Sanchez]

Hey @groom, welcome to our forum! 

Thanks for chiming in about this… we appreciate it. 

As Rich mentioned earlier, we provide previews for your videos on our site, and as such, they will not be shown in full resolution/quality unless you download them. 

I can’t say what our plans are for future services, but I can say that our user’s feedback is invaluable, and it does reach the desks of our developers. 

Cheers

[bgpictures]

Thanks for the confirmation. There is still no explination of why the existing previews are of such poor quality. Previews are not binary. There is a range of image degradaton with any lossy encoding. Move the sliders... so to speak, giving us more image quality, please.

[uEduard]

Well, in this case, Dropbox at least should consider, informing the users, to download the video in order to get the full HD quality. 

Here is my case:

1. I record various tips and tricks using QuickTime

2. I save the video directly to my Dropbox folder

3. Share the video with my clients

Now they will see a very low quality of that screencast, with no way to inform them that they can download the video to see in HD quality - I get that they don't want to provide this way directly into the player itself, but still, they should consider taking into consideration their clients feedback.

For example, Google Drive - still the same service as Dropbox, offers ways to see the video in HD.