Welcome to the Cake Decorators Q&A

Hi I am new to this site and just wondering how long it should take to load up each lesson. I am trying to watch the cute duck cake and I have to start each lesson loading and go and do something else while it loads up, Is this normal, if I just play it plays for a few words then freezes. I am watching on an apple desk top is it to do with that or the site? Please help.

Hi Caroline

I’ve just played the lessons through and they are playing fine without freezing and loading quickly. I don’t know whether it is to do with your Apple desk, if you go to this section http://www.cakeflix.com/help-and-support Scroll down to the technical section to the part which mentions videos not playing and you’ll see a few suggestions which you could try.

Mmm I think it may be the speed of our internet connection did the speed test using the link in the technical section and it came out at 0.5mb which I think seems very low, we do live out in the country so not surprised! Can anyone advise if I should try installing Google Chrome or latest version of flash player, will that help if the connection speed is the prob? I dont know enough about these things but dont want to go installing lots of things that I don’t need. Is it easy to uninstall again if it doesnt help? of do I just have to accept its slow to load and press pause leave it for 15 mins and come back to it, so frustrating to wait like this in between lessons on a project.

Hi Caroline

Your internet connection seems to be slow in the extreme. The more bits you add the slower it will get. I think you may have to look at different internet providers to see which one will give you the best speed. You can also phone your internet provider to run some tests and speed your service up. I don’t know anything about google chrome but installing the latest version of flash player might be a good idea. It must be very frustrating to keep pausing. The site may be able to advise more if you’d like to write to [email protected] and hopefully he may have better suggestions. Sorry I can’t help more, I’m not very technical either. x

Hi Caroline, I thought I’d respond on here too as it’s better for the community to be able to reference too.

Madeitwithlove is exactly right and it certainly sounds like your connection speed is extremely slow (half a mbit compared to the countries average of at least 5mbit) It is certainly worth calling your provider for some troubleshooting on your connection speed as you’re most likely paying for an up to 8mbit service and receiving a very small percentage of that.

Have you tried right clicking on the video and selecting ‘sd only’ this will force the video to a slightly lower quality and should speed up the buffering times – unfortunately you may still have to pause and wait for this.

Andy
Customer Support

Thanks very much for your responses. I have contacted BT but there is nothing can be done and there is no other provider in our area so I will try the sd only option and see if this helps otherwise i will just continue with doing some housework when its loading! Not prepared to miss the benefits of the site, thanks you all again.

Hi Caroline,
you may have your problem sorted now but I had this problem too and I am with BT.
I used to watch the tutorials with explorer now I always use Safari and never had problems.
Hope you get it sorted.

Hello Caroline

Have been giving your problem some more thought. We had a similar problem a while back and it took several attempts to get BT to resolve it. Some of the personnel at BT have more experience than others and it may be beneficial to have another go at them. If you contact customer service again ask them to do a complete analysis of all the available ports, there are normally 11 ports. Get them to report back to you with the band width and download speed of each of the ports. They will then be able to select the one that suits your connection best. I wouldn’t give up on it, ours was ongoing for a period of about a year. I use Firefox and all is good. x

Thanks again, I will try BT again and will ask about the ports, I would not have known to do this. We currently have Safari, The SD option has made no difference. It is such a shame the videos are not download able as it would take a long time to do this but could then play it back no problem. Again even having instructions that I could print would help when actually decorating as if i just want to see something again I dont want to wait 20 mins. Not sure what to do was so excited on finding this site but disappointed I am not getting the best of it, not hopeful with BT as they say that we are getting what they estimate in terms of speed for our line and exchange.

Hi Caroline, are you using a wireless router? If so, you can buy a gadget that connects your PC into your normal plug socket and uses the existing electrical wiring system to connect the broadband to your PC. This should give you a better connection than the wifi signal.