Some Tips for You

Hi all,
In our troubleshooting, we’ve come across a few things that have been getting people a bit tripped up it seems.

First, if you used to use Windows Media Player on an Intel based Mac, and you’ve now installed the mosaic, you know that Flip4Mac is a requirement to run the Mac based Mosaic. If you’d still like to use windows media player in the browser to play games off the site, instead of in the mosaic, you should go into system preferences, click on Flip4Mac, go to the Plugin tab, and uncheck the first option that Enables Flip4Mac for Internet content.

Second, we’ve received reports from users that UPnP support on home routers/firewalls has been causing our next-gen streaming software (swarmcast) to act up. To clarify, swarmcast will communicate with other swarmcast clients locally (if you’re on the same home network, and running 2 or 3 copies of Mosaic, the computers will more efficiently use upstream bandwidth – by combining forces to pull down the stream they are watching). However, this feature is currently disabled in the short term, and we’ll be doing more testing on it before we turn it on wholesale. It was however enabled in some of our early releases, and so some of you might want to try and going to your configuration for your home router, and enabling UPnP support.

Hope these help, we’ll be adding more as we find things that those of you whom are still having trouble have in common.

Thanks again,

Justin

New Build Available

UPDATE: If you’re on a mac and on the new build, and having newfound audio trouble, we’re terribly sorry for the inconvenience and will have it resolved by tomorrow morning at the latest. In the meantime, a workaround is to change the volume level, then change it back to where you want it, and you should be fine.
Hi all,

We just released a new build, which should address the following:

– Additional Blackout/Credit Card Verification screen related fixes
– Fixed a number of Vista related issues
– PC and Mac Audio not playing on startup – this should be resolved
– Audio Freezing on Mac when changing focus
– Mac clock stops running
– Vista Install
– Clickable Linescores

Going Forward, we’re continuing to focus on the following (as well as triaging install issues on a one-on-one basis):

– Blackout issues
– Video Quality Enhancements
– PC Version video startup on high quality streams stays black before video comes in for ~10 seconds
– Video scrubbing
– Continued audio/video playback issues
– Other bug fixes across the app

For those of you still having trouble, if the self-updater doesn’t seem to be working, i’ll ask that you uninstall and reinstall. I know that this is a pain, but in reviewing our logs it appears that a number of you are still running quite old versions of the client and as we’re fixing bugs causing the problems you’re noting, you should be using the latest build. We’re continuing to refine our self-update process to make this as seamless as possible, and promise that you won’t have to reinstall often. If things are running well for you without a reinstall, then go right ahead and continue.

Again, the whole team here thanks you all for taking the time to come and provide feedback and comment. We have a team of engineers going through the threads here and responding, and while I apologize i’ve been off the air here a bit more than usual in the past 24 hours, please trust that I’m not going to rest until we’ve identified all of your problems, and either resolved them, or given you suggestions about upgrading your machine and network connection. The whole team has been working days and nights, and will continue through the weekend to make sure we’re addressing issues as efficiently and quickly as we can.

To that end, I’ve also been getting a lot of mail from you all, which i appreciate, and I’m doing my best to respond to as quickly as possible. However, if you could limit your questions to Mosaic specific issues, and when i see repeated questions, I’ll blog about answers to them, it will help me actually prioritize and keep the team working on fixing bugs in the software.

Thanks again,

Justin Shaffer

Install Related Issue

Hi all,
we’ve found that the XP and Vista ‘Can not find file or Can not read file” errors may be caused by the setting in the install to “Launch The Mosaic”. This screen at the end of the install allows you to run the mosaic, but the files are stored in the temp folder and not the install directory. You should not select this option in the install, but instead close the install and run the Mosaic from the desktop Icon.

If you’re having this issue please uninstall, and a reinstall should fix the issue. We should have a fix available shortly.

Thanks,

Justin

New Build Available

Hi all,
We just recently posted a new build for today, so if you’re already running the mosaic please close and re-open. Especially if you’re having rebuffering issues on the 4/6 game streams, this should help you significantly. If you have install troubles, id suggest trying a reboot, though this won’t always be the case. This build addresses the changes i mentioned in my post last night we’d be fixing overnight, and should clean a bunch of things up for today.

Btw, for mac users only: if you’re not getting the update, please just redownload the image and drag it over to your application folder.

Thank you all again for your patronage, we’re looking forward to a more successful day for those of you who were having buffering issues. Everyone still struggling with the install, we’ll be working through all of you today.

Thanks,

Justin

Updates for tomorrow High Quality Streaming Update

Some updates for you all coming before tomorrows games:
We should have fixes in for the following:

– Any remaining isolated player tracker issues.
– Mac Version: Audio switching causing the video playback to stutter/freeze intermittently
– Linescore not showing the 9th inning
– Mac clock intermittently stopping
– More Vista install fixes
– Game status updates around the UI

Issues we’ll be working on tomorrow:

– PC Video showing as black for about 15-20 seconds on startup, before it starts playing. The audio plays from the start.
– Helping those still struggling with installs, audio/video playback, hardware, and video driver issues
– Vista Stability
– Application stability overall
– Additional work on international/edge case credit card verification issues
– A tutorial overview of the features and functionality that may not be overtly obvious. Lots of neat tricks that some of you are finding, but others may not.

In addition, we’re continuiing to optimize the high quality streaming in the 4/6 game view of the Mosaic for tomorrow’s games, which we believe will clear up the majority of the rebuffering issues that some of you have seen. A side effect may be slightly longer initial buffering, with one or two rebuffers early on, but it should stablilize and not rebuffer at all going forward.

We’ll be working through those of you that are still having trouble getting video/audio to play at all tonight and tomorrow morning.

Thank you all again for all of the time you’ve been putting in to help us make sure we’re delivering for those that are having trouble, it’s very much appreciated. I’m going to try to get a few hours of sleep, but will be back in about 4 hours as we’re going to do some network upgrades to better handle traffic load for tomorrow’s day games.

Thanks again,

Justin

Setup Initialization Failed

For those of you trying to run a new download, for each release we’ve been updating the installer with new code to address changes we’ve been making. as of now, the correct size for the installer is: 13393584 bytes. If you’re getting a setup initialization failed error, please delete the setup file, and redownload from the mosaic page here.
Thanks again for all of the time you all have put into this.

Best,

Justin

Vista Issues Today

Hi all,
We’ve just posted up a new release that we believe should fix the majority of the Vista issues introduced today. The self-updater should work (just close and re-open the mosaic, and it will self-update), and you should be able to get back in if you were able to before.

We have reports of this running well on vista pro and vista home, but need admin access on vista home premium. We’ll be continuing to work through these issues to make for more consistent behaviour over the next few days.

If you’re still having trouble after this update, please try the following:

1. For both the install and when running the app afterwards, right click on the icon and select Run As Administrator
2. If you’re still having trouble after the self-update, please try and uninstall and then re-install, as administrator.

Please also note that both the Mosaic and the Swarmcast app that gets installed need access to the internet, so when the Windows Firewall pops up and asks, you should let them have access.

Again, many thanks for all of the feedback. Please let us know if this latest release helps those of you that were able to get in before.

Thanks,

Justin

Credit Card Authentication for Blackout

Hi all,
We’ve had some reports, and have confirmed that a few of you may have had issues with multiple credit card auths for purposes of address verification, possibly as a result of some of the early issues we had with the form. We’re working on identifying you all now, though if you’re having repeated issues with Credit Card authentication, i’d very much appreciate you reaching out to me via email at justin.shaffer@mlb.com. Please, if you are having other problems, there are appropriate threads here on the blog – and i’d very much appreciate you commenting here and the team will get back to you asap.

To put you somewhat at ease, we’re not actually charging your cards, we do whats called an auth, which essentially holds $1 per transaction, so that we can check your address. The money is released back to you within a few days.

We can fix the problem on a per account basis and make sure it doesnt happen again, so if you’re having trouble or have noticed this activity (its definitely NOT happening to all of you), again please reach out to me via email and we’ll get you sorted out immediately.

New Release for Windows Users

UPDATE: We’re aware of the issue with install on Vista introduced by the new release, and are working to resolve it. Check back here for updates. Thanks!
Hi all,

We just posted a new release that should fix the startup audio issue on the PCs (audio not on when you first start the app or when you switch streams). In addition, we doing some things differently with video on the PC version now, which should significantly improve playback quality on the streams. Some of you had accurately commented earlier that it didnt look the same as it does in the media player on the site, and it now should.

Again, thanks for all of your comments. We have a dedicated team of engineers going through the threads here and responding (in addition to me) to issues that are raised here. I’ve also spoken with a ton of you all today, and am doing my best to get back to emails as well.

I’ll be putting up in a bit a summary of where we think we are and provide an opportunity for you guys to give us some feedback on new features and functionality we introduced this year.

Thanks again,

Justin

Player Tracker Issues

For anyone still having trouble with player tracker, i understand and appreciate the frustration with putting in a roster, and not having it appear. as of yesterday afternoon, we believe we’ve resolved this. In simple terms, there was an issue on the website when we popped up the window, that caused it to cache some of the data, and essentially potentially edit another person’s roster – hence the missing players.
To guarantee this is resolved, though it should be cleared from all of the caches today, please force refresh the popup window once it opens (control F5 on the pc, click refresh on the mac), and this should then have you editing your own roster.

To double check that this is working for you, before putting in your whole roster, you can try and add one or two players, then save the roster and close the browser window. If you then click update in player tracker in mosaic, and you dont see the players you added, please write in here on this thread, and we’ll get in touch with you directly.

Thanks,

Justin