OMG gaiz no graphix it lags the cam!

[Jupiter551]

I rarely visit chaturbate, but now and then I do and I invariably see people getting banned, chewed out or warned (in quite heated tones I might add) NOT to post gifs (ie emotes) into chat because it lags the cam

Now I'm not in any way a computer or bandwidth expert, but it would seem to me that loading animated gifs would put negligible stress on a connection compared to watching a live, moving, probably speaking person continuously in a much much larger resolution. So in short; if your connection can't handle a 200kb gif on screen then it sure as hell can't handle live webcam streaming.

The second issue is I suppose old computers, could likewise slow things down if there's a bunch of stuff (any stuff) happening on screen graphically but again, negligible compared to keeping a livestreaming cam feed open.

So what is this? Superstition? I can understand that a bunch of shit going on would certainly slow down individuals who have particularly bad connections and are watching on particularly bad computers - but it would seem to me the onus is on them to upgrade. What I think it CAN'T do is slow down the entire room and feed for everyone watching - which is what seems to be implied and/or believed by a large number of models and members on that site. Also, it's mostly particular to that site! I don't see this 'issue' on MFC, I find that odd.

Afterall, the ads on each side of the chaturbate screen are going 24/7 and no one complains about them causing lag...

Discuss.

 

[Nordling]

I'm guessing you're probably mostly right, that emotes cause relatively small amounts of lag (especially when they load, with none when they're running), but I think saying that is a strategy to get people to quit posting them too often, which is simply annoying in other ways--especially dick emotes. I've seen members attempt to communicate solely with emote loading, or when a model is doing a particular thing, like wiggling her tush, someone will load a GIF of a totally different woman wiggling her tush... which is kind of an insult to the model... it's like saying, "yeah, nice ass bb but look at this one."

 

[JerryBoBerry]

I have seen emotes cause severe lag on mfc. Usually it's when a model is doing an outside show with a cellular hotspot or in a library or coffee shop where the the speed is lower.

As a rule of thumb to stream netflix movies at regular 'okay' quality I needed 3mbps speed. To do HD quality or to be able to do anything else at the same time I had to upgrade to 6mpbs. (This is when I first got high speed, I'm faster now). So if we use 3mbps or 6mbps as the low side video standard then a 3G connection hotspot in a park is well below that speed. A lot of coffee shops, libraries, McDonalds, hotels, they put in the cheapest plan they can get to call it 'Free High Speed,' so they are also below that threshold. It sounds good on the sign out front, but they couldn't care less beyond that it seems. And of course not all models have better speeds at home. The smart ones do, but many are still at bare minimums.

Now emotes, SOME of them are at 200kb. Most of those are the simple little emoticons we are use to, eg: :-D ray: and so on. However MOST of the user submitted emotes are much bigger. I believe mfc had a cap on the size limit set to 3mb for a submitted picture. They might have changed that recently, last time I noticed one getting rejected for size was a year ago. So if someone is posting a 3mb picture, or worse yet a bunch of people are submitting several it can severely cause lag in video quality. That size picture would take 8 seconds to download at 3mbps. I know that doesn't sound like much at today's standards but keep in mind some of the more extreme cases. When a model gets a big tip or orgasms during a show people do a lot of emotes then. I looked up a random sample of the more popular emotes posted in every room. These below are a combined 10.9 megaBytes in size. So at a 3mbps (that's mega 'bit' per second) connection that would take 30 seconds (15s at 6mbps of course). And that's downloading JUST these files. In reality the computer is downloading other information so these would be slowing down that other stuff for even longer.

​

The real bottleneck is the upload speeds for most connections, it's usually much lower than the download speed we all like to brag about. But it's not only sending her video feed back to MFC or chaturbate or whatever site she's on, it's also sending all the other information back. Every packet that comes into a computer has a small amount of information also being sent back as confirmation of having received each packet of info. Say she's maxing out her upload speed trying to get the best cam quality she can then those little packets (the more emotes the more packets uploaded too) take that much longer to send back a receive acknowledgment. The result is if the model already has a slow connection, then all those pictures, especially the bigger files, really do take their toll and can cause lag.

The next time you're in a room where the model is out in a park or something and her connection is not that great to begin with pay close attention to the emotes. You'll probably notice the video feed lag more or just downright freeze up a few seconds after people post them. That's why a lot of models, even on mfc, tell people 'no emotes' when they are out doing public shows.

 

[Anonymous]

I like animated GIFs and use them in my ACF posts sometimes, but I don't need GIFs to do all my talking for me. When it gets to a point where a member won't even speak in his own words anymore (he communicates strictly through GIFs), it's odd and annoying.