Unusual video download patterns.

(28-12-2010 18:07 )aaron Wrote:  There is a guy on the megaupload forum who says he uploaded a film in 4 parts and was told by several people that part 4 was unavailable. When he went to check on it he found that parts 1 to 3 of the film had 100 downloads each and part 4 which had been unavailable for a while had 600 downloads. Since people had told him that part 4 of the film was unavailable it should have had less downloads than the first 3 parts, not 6 times as many. The conclusion seems to be that you can't rely on the megaupload stats and sometimes the figures are simply way out. The unusual video download patterns that you report are almost certainly not real downloads.

Interesting. Did he say if that occurred recently because up to the start of this month there was no hint of any unusual download numbers. TheWatcher pointed out that the Megaupload filemanager page was given a different format at around the same time. Perhaps some sort of bug was introduced when they were making the changes.

It's a pity nearly all of my videos are >100Mb so I am not accumulating many bonus points as a result of this.

(28-12-2010 20:33 )Dan Volatile Wrote:  Interesting. Did he say if that occurred recently because up to the start of this month there was no hint of any unusual download numbers.

His post was dated 9 Dec 2010 but he didn't say when exactly the odd figures were from, so it's not sure that it occurred recently.

(27-12-2010 18:14 )Dan Volatile Wrote:  

(27-12-2010 15:00 )aaron Wrote:  The answer is that sometimes certain files on megaupload are unavailable for some reason and people click multiple times on the links trying to download them, thereby creating completely false download figures.

I can't believe that it registers as a download when you just click on the download link.
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I was wrong about this. Choosing "download this file" in MU filemanager starts the 25 second countdown like when a download link is clicked. If you abort while the countdown is happening it still registers as a download, it just seems to take a few hours to register. I haven't been able to test whether this occurs on a "temporarily unavailable" video but from what aaron says it seems likely to be the case. Having said that I have not seen the "unavailable" message for a few weeks so perhaps they have resolved that issue.
So Megaupload users, instead of twiddling your thumbs whilst waiting for your forum page to load, get clicking on your own videos and rack up a few reward points (I managed twenty "downloads" between Chris Tremlett deliveries )

(03-01-2011 08:36 )Dan Volatile Wrote:  

(27-12-2010 18:14 )Dan Volatile Wrote:  

(27-12-2010 15:00 )aaron Wrote:  The answer is that sometimes certain files on megaupload are unavailable for some reason and people click multiple times on the links trying to download them, thereby creating completely false download figures.

I can't believe that it registers as a download when you just click on the download link.
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I was wrong about this. Choosing "download this file" in MU filemanager starts the 25 second countdown like when a download link is clicked. If you abort while the countdown is happening it still registers as a download, it just seems to take a few hours to register. I haven't been able to test whether this occurs on a "temporarily unavailable" video but from what aaron says it seems likely to be the case. Having said that I have not seen the "unavailable" message for a few weeks so perhaps they have resolved that issue.
So Megaupload users, instead of twiddling your thumbs whilst waiting for your forum page to load, get clicking on your own videos and rack up a few reward points (I managed twenty "downloads" between Chris Tremlett deliveries )

That's a nice idea, but it only registers once per file per day. And the file in question has to 100 MB or less. But if you have a group of friends that click on your downloads once per day, you can rack-up quite a few points.

I bet they fix that bug kinda fast, as people will be racking up points like there's no tomorrow.

(04-01-2011 19:18 )aceman65 Wrote:  That's a nice idea, but it only registers once per file per day. And the file in question has to 100 MB or less. But if you have a group of friends that click on your downloads once per day, you can rack-up quite a few points.

I bet they fix that bug kinda fast, as people will be racking up points like there's no tomorrow.

That's not right aceman. I tried it on a video I had just uploaded but not posted. I literally started the download proceedure twenty times in about thirty seconds and a few hours later it had registered as twenty downloads for that video. It was only 4Mb as well so if could stand the tedium 40 reward points per minute are feasible. That's for us oldsters with unsupple mouse fingers, young vidslingers with hot mouse skills could do much better.

I'm thinking of alerting them myself because I don't like my stats being mucked about with, but a pound to a penny they will ignore me if I do (my experiences with Scottish Power and Virgin Media lead me to this cynical conclusion)

Well if that's true, then there own rules which are listed are actually wrong then.

They say that reward points are only awarded once per file, per IP address, per 24 hours. If the file is 100 MB or less. If your telling me that you can click on the download link for the same file more than once in a 24 hour period, and all clicks register a reward point. Then they have only got themselves to blame.

Now lets see if I can rack-up a few more free months.

(04-01-2011 21:18 )aceman65 Wrote:  Well if that's true, then there own rules which are listed are actually wrong then.

They say that reward points are only awarded once per file, per IP address, per 24 hours. If the file is 100 MB or less. If your telling me that you can click on the download link for the same file more than once in a 24 hour period, and all clicks register a reward point. Then they have only got themselves to blame.

Now lets see if I can rack-up a few more free months.

Ahhh I see. From their point of view it is irrelevant how many downloads are registered as long as the reward point total only increases by one. I bet that's what is happening but I will try it again to make sure.

Well I clicked to download my first 50 smallest files twice yesterday, I registered the 100 downloads, but gained 50 reward points. So I guess there rules are correct.

I didn't actually download a single file, just clicking on the download link is enough to register a download.

(05-01-2011 19:09 )aceman65 Wrote:  Well I clicked to download my first 50 smallest files twice yesterday, I registered the 100 downloads, but gained 50 reward points. So I guess there rules are correct.

I didn't actually download a single file, just clicking on the download link is enough to register a download.

Yeah, I found the same. They don't really have much incentive to fix it but I will try and let them know anyway.

I told MU about the bug in their system but no reply despite their boast that they will respond within two days to any enquiry. No surprise there.

I thought at one point the download numbers were going to fall back to normal but the last three weeks figures have actually increased:





We now know that just clicking on a download link registers as a download in the MU filemanager but is that sufficient to explain the increase illustrated above? If that is so then we would have to accept that for every person that actually downloads a video there are 2-3 people who just click on the link (assuming the baseline represents true downloads only). Why would they do this? The obvious answer is that some videos are "temporarily unavailable" so that some keen downloaders will repeatedly click on the link. One nagging doubt that I have regarding that theory is that the issue with videos being temporarily unavailable seemed to be resolved at around the time that the download numbers increased. I have tried a fair number of links in the last few weeks and all have been available. I would be interested to hear whether that tallies with what other members have experienced.
To illustrate what I mean, one video from March that was subject to the recent download frenzy again racked up 163 more yesterday. I checked the link and the video was available. And it's not as if the bug results in random increases to some videos as similar increases were notched up by two other videos from the same babe which were uploaded several months apart.
Anyway the upshot is that I would still like to hear of any similar occurrences and/or theories that might explain them.