How to increase video cache buffer ? (1 Viewer)

[jezra85]

Hi,
Is there a way to delay the buffering? Im trying to watch online TV and every few seconds it starts buffering. Are there plugins I can install to delay it abit?
Thanks

 

[el Filou]

What do you mean by "delay" ?

If you have that problem on all or most of the sites that means it's coming from your connection. Try to increment the initial buffer % offbyone was refering to (it's under "playback buffer" in the options screen) until the pauses go away.

If you have that problem only with some sites/some videos, that means the problem is on the server side (I sometimes encounter that problem even with YouTube: some rare videos simply can't be watched in realtime as they're pausing every 5 seconds to rebuffer, must be a server load-balancing issue on their side), and that means you would have to set an incredibly high initial buffer % in order to eliminate pauses, and that would negatively impact other sites that are working OK and you would wait an eternity each time you want to watch something. I think the best to do in that case is to download the video in the background and watch it later when it's finished. You can still watch something else in the meantime.

 

[jezra85]

thanks for your response. where in the options can i set the initial buffer %? I cant see it anywhere.

 

[el Filou]

It is at the bottom of the "General" tab, it's called "Playback buffer" and has two settings: one in milliseconds for Windows Media streams, and one in percentage of total video lenght for HTTP streams.

At least it's in that place in version 0.20, I can't say for subsequent versions as I've not updated to MP 1.1 yet so I'm stuck at v0.20

 

[jezra85]

i see. i guess ill have to find the older version then .

thanks

 

[el Filou]

i see. i guess ill have to find the older version then .

thanks

Did you even look at the config screen ?!

See attached picture, it's right there in the config screen even in latest version !

 

[jezra85]

interesting...mine looks completely different and doesnt have that.

this is what i have when i look at config settings.

 

[el Filou]

I did my screenshot with 0.23, which is the current latest release (the fields are all empty because it doesn't work on MP 1.0.2 but I installed it anyway to do the screenshot).

Make sure you use the latest version, that's all I can say to help.