Web Video Buffering

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Just a general question - is there an embeddable player (Flash or otherwise) that does its download/buffering without having to actually start playing the video?

My thinking is this: the stop-n-go playing of videos on the web drives me crazy. The players never seem to be able to download/buffer enough to keep ahead of the playing.

If a player started downloading the video as soon as you opened the page, by the time you read the blurbs and reviews and dismissed all the stupid ads, there'd be enough video alreday buffered to play smoothly and keep well ahead. Hopefully.

Good idea? Bad idea? Even possible?

Posted 16-Nov-10 3:47am

GenJerDan

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Dave Kreskowiak · Accepted Answer · 2010-11-16T04:09:00

The problem with that is all the current players actually do what you expected. How they figure out how to start playing is buffer some of the content and measure how long it takes to download the entire video vs how long it takes to play what is already buffered. The problem comes in when the video isn't coming down at a constant rate. For some reason, the player will usually get the first few seconds of the video faster than it gets the rest of it, so the player will think it's going to get the rest much faster than it actually does.