# Continuata sample library delivery system



## continuata (Feb 11, 2012)

We've been providing ultra-fast and reliable methods for sample library distribution for nearly 2 years now.
Now used by some of the industry's leading sample library developers.

Over those 2 years we've been perfecting and honing our solution so that it is the best solution available for delivering sample libraries. 
Here are some of the features we provide:-


Specially designed multi-part S3 uploader application
Complete backend management system
Manage updates and customer profiles 
Robust and undetectable Kontakt NKI, NKR, NKM watermarking
Multi-threaded cross-platform downloader and installer application
RAR and ZIP file extraction integrated with downloader
RAR file error detection and automatic re-download of corrupt parts
Full reporting of download activity and sales trends

Go to our website for more information
Or just email Stu Kennedy on [email protected]


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## Frederick Russ (Feb 11, 2012)

Welcome to VI, Continuata. 

Just a thought, but a digital file delivery system for composers and musicians might also be a cool option to offer as well. These days, composers and musicians all seem to want to use some kind of electronic delivery system for very large packets of data. If it can be as accurate and fast as the sample library delivery side of things, it could turn out to be quite popular.


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## Peaslee (Feb 11, 2012)

Hey Frederick, I believe Stu's actually got that in the works now. 

I just want to say that as a developer, Continuata's system is a godsend and we at Soundiron have really have enjoyed working with Stu.

The system's primary method for delivery is very fast and reliable and in the rare case that it can't work with a customer's situation by default, the back-up and error-correction solutions in place are fantastic at quickly handling the odd cases where it doesn't play nice with a user's system or local network. 

It's challenging to create a system that can elegantly handle the nearly infinite number of scenarios you run into with customers from around the world. They can be running a variety of different operating systems, ISPs, firewalls, security software settings, network hardware and technical skill levels. Yes, I've had to explain how to do things like "copy and paste" a few times now. Sadly, the Paste button in the downloader is something I requested specifically to address that. Stu's system has been fantastic on all of those front. The error logging is great too. 

More importantly, he's been very accommodating with our need to provide our customers multiple reliable back-up solutions to handle even the weirdest problems that come up. He's also constantly improving an already great system. The time we need to spend on download-related installation and technical support issues has dropped to almost nothing.


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## playz123 (Feb 11, 2012)

Re: "I just want to say that as a developer, Continuata's system is a godsend"

And, as a customer of the developers already using Continuata, I too would describe it as a godsend.


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## Andrew Aversa (Feb 11, 2012)

I've used this tech myself as a customer, and it's great. Can you tell us more about pricing? Seems like it would be good info to have on the site.


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## rayinstirling (Feb 11, 2012)

Frederick Russ @ Sat Feb 11 said:


> Welcome to VI, Continuata.
> 
> Just a thought, but a digital file delivery system for composers and musicians might also be a cool option to offer as well. These days, composers and musicians all seem to want to use some kind of electronic delivery system for very large packets of data. If it can be as accurate and fast as the sample library delivery side of things, it could turn out to be quite popular.



+1 I'm just in the middle of collaboration where this would be very useful.


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## continuata (Feb 12, 2012)

Mike, thanks so much for your recommendation 
... it's an absolute hono(u)r to work with you guys.
Thanks playz123 and zircon_st ... it's really great getting feedback from end-users.

Okay ... I was going to hold this one off for a bit while I tested it more thoroughly,
but if you're willing to give it a go and let me know if there are any problems, go here

http://continuata.com/dl/create_filetransfer.php

This is a 30 day free trial, I haven't even had time to put up the prices yet or put it
on our site, so it's hot off the press.
The cost is this:-
- £10 per month for a 20GB upload and storage limit
- £45 per month for unlimited upload and storage, plus customised downloader 
(skinned with your graphics) and customised email template for recipients.

I don't take any payment information from you until the trial period has expired.

It uses S3 and the same download engine that our commercial system uses, 
it also uses an ultra-fast multi-part uploader to S3 which makes sure your files get 
uploaded without corruption. 
Compare it to any FTP or web-based transfer system ... uploading and downloading are much faster.

I'll post this in a new topic too


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## wst3 (Feb 12, 2012)

I'll be giving that a spin next time I have a project where I can use it... 30 days isn't a lot of time if I have no real application for it!

A couple of thoughts - from an end user perspective...

first, I'm thrilled that you are not locking it to a single platform! While a couple of the other services do offer some interesting bells and whistles, keeping it open and adhering to web standards will serve everyone better in the long run.

second - cloud storage and transfer is so new that you might want to consider the trial systems offered by folks like Dropbox - where the trial is some very small amount of storage space but it is not time limited.

It takes time to gain comfort with cloud services (this from a recovering IT geek who has believed that Scott McNealy got it right back in the 70s).

Of course yours is a very specialized service, and I can also see that defining that small space so that it is useful to customers but doesn't break the bank could be really tricky.

In any case - best of luck, not that you'll need it!


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## Peaslee (Feb 12, 2012)

One thing to consider about the S3 cloud is that if you've bought any downloadable sample libraries in the last couple of years, odds are you used either Stu's system or something else that relied on the Amazon S3 servers at least once. His list of clients is pretty much a whos-who of sample devs.


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## wst3 (Feb 12, 2012)

Peaslee @ Sun Feb 12 said:


> One thing to consider about the S3 cloud is that if you've bought any downloadable sample libraries in the last couple of years, odds are you used either Stu's system or something else that relied on the Amazon S3 servers at least once. His list of clients is pretty much a whos-who of sample devs.



Hi Mike - thanks for the pointer - but yeah, I'm well aware of the many companies using S3. And I am maybe 90% comfortable with cloud services, but then I got to see the start of the cloud way back when... 

There is still tremendous resistance to "the network is the computer" - beats me why, but it's real.


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## continuata (Feb 12, 2012)

We're not using cloud computing (not entirely true, because watermarking gets done on EC2) ... we're just using Amazon S3 servers to store files on.

This is just the same as storing files on any server, except the servers are very reliable and on ultra-fast networks.

The reason we don't offer a free option for a low-use Filetransfer system is that we have to pay the S3 fees on all usage ... whereas Dropbox and box.net use their own servers. 
And the market for our tool is more niche than for the other services.

However we are a lot faster than Dropbox and box.net as we're using multi-connection uploading and downloading. (as well as archive extraction)


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## Andrew Aversa (Feb 12, 2012)

So basically this is a service to be used in CONJUNCTION with something like e-junkie, right? Like right now, e-junkie links to our Paypal/google checkout account and also manages customer database, coupons, etc. Then we host the files on our own servers, which are pretty good. It would be good to see THIS service also add e-commerce features so we're not paying for three things (our own hosting, e-commerce and delivery.)


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## continuata (Feb 12, 2012)

zircon_st: we provide a delivery system and download manager that uses your Amazon S3 account and integrates with whatever webshop you use.

You can implement e-commerce for free on most CMS websites and E-Junkie is very cheap, so it isn't a high priority for us to invest in this as a solution, 
as most of our customers want to carry on using what they already use.

We only support Amazon S3 as a file host, due to it's reliability, speed, international consistency and low cost.
http://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/
If you're wanting to make a comparison with your site, get a copy of our 30-day trial Filetransfer system which uses the same download technology.


http://continuata.com/dl/create_filetransfer.php

Upload one of your product files there and send it to yourself, use our downloader to download it and note how long it took, then do the same from your website.
I'd be interested to know what the results are.


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## Andrew Aversa (Feb 12, 2012)

OK, uploaded one 165mb file. I'm on a FIOS 30/5mbps connection at home so most sites run pretty quick.

Elapsed time for Continuata download: 45 seconds. Average download speed was around 4 megabytes per second. That's about as fast as I would expect from S3 of course 

Elapsed time for DL from our current host: 3m19s seconds, average transfer around 800kbps to 1mbps. A little lower than I normally see, honestly, but 1.5mbps is about the highest.

So, a pretty nice difference, particularly for customers on FIOS or high bandwidth cable.


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## continuata (Feb 13, 2012)

Thanks for posting those results.

That's pretty much the maximum download speed possible from your connection.
In fact if you run a broadband speed checker, I reckon you'll get the same speed.

People with slower connections can even experience a greater difference, as their ISP normally throttles the download too.

If you had downloaded a bigger file (e.g. 1GB) you may have seen your browser-based download start to slow down after a few minutes ... this does not happen with ours.
I frequently get reports that our system is running 10 times faster than downloading in a browser, as you can imagine it makes a big difference to your customer if it takes 4 hours to download a mammoth lib, or nearly 2 days.

The other big advantage with our system,
is that you never lose data when pausing, if your connection drops
Or even if your machine crashes, it's completely resumable.
End users often complain about jammed downloads, dropped connections and corrupt
files using browser-based downloaders. As you can imagine, asking your customers to start
again on a 20GB download doesn't make customers happy 

As a matter of interest, did you try comparing the upload speed?


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## Mike Greene (Feb 13, 2012)

Let me see if I have this straight - Even if I'm already using S3, your system would still give significantly faster download speeds? In other words, your download app somehow downloads faster than if a customer just clicks the download links that e-Junkie sends them?

I'm not doubting you, I just want to be sure I'm understanding this correctly.

Andrew, is your current file host the Amazon S3 service in that comparison you did?


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## continuata (Feb 13, 2012)

Yes ... correct.
Our system is quicker than just using S3 links.
Not only that but it's more reliable, as a lot of browsers can fail downloading a large file from S3. 
I had a guy just yesterday who's manual download from S3 failed consistently at about 80% ... I gave him a way of doing it with our system, it downloaded first time and a lot quicker.

Our download manager app gets the full speed from your end-user's connection and bypasses a lot of the restrictions that ISPs (their network provider) put in to prevent them from getting high speeds on large files. 

We also handle error detection and re-downloading of corrupt parts, which can happen occasionally especially with certain ISPs who interrupt the download, this interference can corrupt the file being downloaded.
On top of that we install the archives and allow full pause/resume of the downloads.
It's a MUCH better experience than using a downloader to get files.

The other issue with browser-based downloading is that you're limited to how many files you can download at once (usually 7) ... this is a pain when you have 20 RAR files to download for a multi-part RAR sample library, as you have to wait for the 1st batch to finish until you can start the next 7 and so on until it's finished.

With our app, you enter a code, hit go, and it downloads and installs everything without you having to be there ... it's perfect for leaving overnight.


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## Andrew Aversa (Feb 13, 2012)

Mike Greene @ Mon Feb 13 said:


> Let me see if I have this straight - Even if I'm already using S3, your system would still give significantly faster download speeds? In other words, your download app somehow downloads faster than if a customer just clicks the download links that e-Junkie sends them?
> 
> I'm not doubting you, I just want to be sure I'm understanding this correctly.
> 
> Andrew, is your current file host the Amazon S3 service in that comparison you did?



No, we use a host called Lunarpages. We'll switch over to Hostgator soon though. For our current volume and average product size I'm not sure this platform would make the most sense for us yet, but I could see it being something we'd switch to down the road. Our very biggest product is ~5-7gb split among several RAR files.


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## Peaslee (Feb 13, 2012)

Mike Greene @ Mon Feb 13 said:


> Let me see if I have this straight - Even if I'm already using S3, your system would still give significantly faster download speeds? In other words, your download app somehow downloads faster than if a customer just clicks the download links that e-Junkie sends them?



Oh yes, MUCH, MUCH, MUCH faster and with a VASTLY lower failure rate than you get with Ejunkie delivery (which also use s3). Back at Tonehammer, we originally started out using Ejunkie's delivery system. It was a fairly constant nightmare of sluggish delivery speeds and dropped downloads, until we worked with Stu to adapt his downloader to our system. It made an enormous difference, both in terms of speed and in terms of the number of download support emails we were dealing with. Ejunkie routes through S3 in a really inefficient way, in order to mask the links, which causes all sorts of problems. 

Continuata's system provides multi-threaded downloading, so you're grabbing up to 10 difference pieces of the file at once and downloading them all simultaneously. It optimizes the user's available bandwidth and puts it to work seamlessly. There's also no bouncing around abd link masking is handled internally and efficiently. 

Even just straight downloading from S3 in a web browser isn't nearly as fast as Continuata's system, unless the user is on a very slow connection anyway. If the customer has anything better than a 300 KB/s connection, you'll see a real difference. Having been there and done that, I can say without any hesitation that yes, you will see much faster delivery speeds to clients using Continuata than Ejunkie's delivery system. We use Ejunkie for cart transaction processing, but that's it. With all due respect, I'd rather take a boot to the groin than go back to the old method.


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## Andrew Aversa (Feb 13, 2012)

FWIW, just to be clear, we don't use e-junkie's hosting - just cart processing. Since yeah, I imagined it wasn't too good


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## Peaslee (Feb 13, 2012)

zircon_st @ Mon Feb 13 said:


> FWIW, just to be clear, we don't use e-junkie's hosting - just cart processing. Since yeah, I imagined it wasn't too good




Yeah, even if you're delivering directly from S3 without routing through Ejunkie (or anyone else), you won't get the speeds that the multi-threaded Continuata system provides for most users. We use direct s3 links for the manual browser download option that some users like and those are not nearly as fast.


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## continuata (Feb 14, 2012)

zircon_st @ Mon Feb 13 said:


> For our current volume and average product size I'm not sure this platform would make the most sense for us yet, but I could see it being something we'd switch to down the road. Our very biggest product is ~5-7gb split among several RAR files.



Using a hosting package or even dedicated host won't be anywhere near as good as using S3 to store your files. 
Amazon S3 is really cheap as well as very reliable and fast, I would be surprised if they weren't cheaper than Hostgator for storing your files. http://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/
Plus if you just store your files on a server and send people links you need to figure out a mechanism to mask the links (so one customer can't just share the links with others)

Our monthly license is based on how many units you sell through the system, so you only pay for what you use ... send me an email to [email protected] if you're interested in getting prices etc.


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