Video tips

とてもためになる視聴アドバイス → [youtubeowaraitv]

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One of the main purposes of this fanblog is to provide links to videos that feature Oriraji. But watching the videos can sometimes be a challenge because they're not as straightforward as YouTube.

1) PANDORA: Unless you have Pandora Premium, the video will stop playing every 5 minutes or so. Once it stops, it will go blank, and then come back again. Sometimes the video playback shifts when it does this, and then you'll have to readjust it to the right place. Also, sometimes when the video goes blank, there'll be a rotating circle in the middle of the screen. This means that when it starts back up, it won't start automatically. You'll have to manually push the "restart" button. And in this case sometimes it will start back up at where you had started the video the previous time the video started. So yes, Pandora can be a bit frustrating.

***UPDATE (1May2011)***
NOTE: Okay I don't know what happened, but one of our most reliable Pandora uploaders, "bimbom," has suddenly started requiring people to register his/her channel if we want to see his/her videos. I have gone ahead and done that, and have access to all his/her videos again. Maybe this is a phase and things will return to normal in a few days, but in the meantime, if you're as desperate as me, I recommend you make a Pandora TV account (it's free) and register "bimbom." FYI: You can change the viewing setting to Global / Korean / English / Japanese / Chinese if you're having trouble navigating the site.
***UPDATE (8May2011)***
Update on bimbom: Although you still can't see bimbom's older videos anymore unless you register their channel, anyone can see the newer videos. Yay^^
***UPDATE (10May2011)***
Yet another update on bimbom: Okay so, I guess the idea is that only the newest videos are available to everybody. But unfortunately, some videos I just can't find anywhere else other than on bimbom's channel. So... if you haven't already, just suck it up and make a Pandora TV account and register bimbom's channel.

2) YOUKU: Sometimes, Youku will load pretty quickly and you can watch the video straight through just like YouTube. But sometimes, Youku takes forever to load, stopping and starting every other second. And you can't just pause it and wait for it to load like YouTube because the video only loads up to a certain point after the scroller. It won't keep loading till the end like YouTube. Therefore, one strategy is to mute the volume and let the video play to the very end. Yes, the very very end. (If you don't let it play till the end, when you move the scroller back, whatever had been loaded can get reset.) And then you can watch the video from the beginning. If you do this, be careful when you move the video scroll because if you move it too close to 00:00, it can reset the loading and you will have to reload it all over again. Also, the strategy above doesn't always work, especially with longer videos (anything over an hour). Sometimes, the video will load till the end, but when you try to scroll back, for some reason it only works for about half of the video. In this case, it would be advisable to break the process up into two halves. Other times, the video just stops loading, like it just gives up for some reason. In this case you might want to just watch whatever has been loaded and then refresh the page and then move the scroller to wherever you left off and repeat the process. In any case, yes, Youku can be frustrating as well.

3) TUDOU: Tudou is the most straightforward and works just like YouTube. You can let it play straight through, you can pause and let the whole video load, etc.

4) FC2: FC2 is also pretty straightforward. It loads a bit slower than Tudou, but the video quality tends to be better.

As for pros and cons, Youku usually has the best video/sound quality. Tudou has pretty good video quality too, but poor sound quality. FC2 has pretty good video/sound quality but loads pretty slow. Pandora doesn't have great video/sound quality, but at least you can watch right away. Oh, another advantage with Youku/Tudou is that they have more videos with the commercials taken out. But this also means that Pandora usually has videos out quicker (right after the airing) than the other two. In terms of frustration level, Tudou is the easiest to manipulate. Pandora and Youku are case-by-case.

Last words: In the end, none of this might make sense to you until you actually start experimenting with the video platforms. If you care about Oriraji enough and have no other means of watching their shows other than these links, then you will find a way to make Pandora/Youku/Tudou/FC2 work for you.