Feature request - initial buffering behaviour (1 Viewer)

[tony72]

So in the OnlineVideos settings, the minimum you can set the buffer to currently is 1%. This is fine in most cases, however where you have a very long video, and the server rate-limits so that you can't download at a much faster rate than is required for playback, it becomes a problem. I was watching a five-and-a-half hour 720p Commonwealth Games program from BBC iPlayer, and it took several minutes to start playback; 1% of 5.5hours = 3.3 minutes worth of video to buffer, it's a lot. I don't know what rate limit was in effect, but it took over two minutes before playback started. And the thing is after playback started, the first thing I did was seek forward an hour, and playback at the seek position started almost immediately, so it obviously doesn't rebuffer the same amount after seeking, and all that initial buffering time was to no end. I know this is quite an extreme case, but watching 2+ hour movies is not that extreme, and the same issue can apply.

I'd like to suggest that a maximum buffering time is implemented, so playback will after a maximum of n seconds initial buffering, regardless of how much data has been buffered. Either that or just allow smaller settings than 1% to be set for the initial buffer. Having to sit there for minutes before playback starts is no good.

 

[offbyone]

If you press P (or Play on the remote) during buffering it will start immediately if possible.

 

[tony72]

Oh, I did not know that! Thanks offbyone.

I guess that largely works around the problem, although limiting the amount of buffering time might still be a sensible idea.

 

[offbyone]

In order to implement that we would need a new interface to the Splitter Filter asking how many seconds it has buffered, which is not a quick and easy thing to do

 

[Ministerk]

If you press P (or Play on the remote) during buffering it will start immediately if possible.

I didn't know that! That's great.

 

[avee]

In order to implement that we would need a new interface to the Splitter Filter asking how many seconds it has buffered, which is not a quick and easy thing to do

How about just limiting the time spent buffering, so it will always start playback after a maximum of x seconds?

What's the logic of a percentage buffer? When the connection is too slow, you'll need a huge amount of buffering, and when not, how much of a gap are we trying to cover? On a connection that has adequate speed, the time spent buffering will be equal or less to the runtime buffered. And the buffer will normally grow when playing, the minimum buffer will only affect the first bit of watching.

 

[offbyone]

What's the logic of a percentage buffer?

Simple: If you were to implement it! Counting the number of bytes downloaded compared to total is easy as both is given by webserver and no need to decode (which required to know the duration).

 

[avee]

disregard