Hello Dopers! Been reading these forums with great enjoyment for a while now, and finally have a question I need help with. Apologies if this is the wrong section, it may also seem quite mundane and pointless but I am looking for a factual answer here.
Ive recently moved to a rural area and the internet is soo painfully slow here, in fact about 1/15 of the speed i had been used to. Ugghh. When watching streaming movies and videos and whatnot I like to watch in HD but the buffering always “runs out” and the video stops while it bufferis again. Quite annoying.
I will probably never implment this in any more than an approximate way obviously, but the question I am vexed with is this…How can i calculate how much initial buffer it would take to play all the way through without this happening? Assuming I know my download rate, , and its playing time, and can let it buffer indefinitely by pasuing right at the start can I(you) figure this out? As a carpenter and pilot kinda guy I feel like my math skills should be more than adequate to solve this but its hurting my brain! My thanks in advance for any replies!
In my experience, pausing streaming video often makes it more, not less, likely to hang, or have other problems, subsequently. You can’t rely on the assumption that it will just keep on buffering the incoming stream until you want it. Most likely, what actually happens (and what might go wrong) depends on how the server is set up.
I’d recommend a browser plugin that works with the video services you use most - and your browser of choice of course. There are at least a dozen or so for firefox.
You need to have enough in the buffer so that the download finishes at the moment you finish watching the video, or sooner. If the download rate is 1/x of real time, you need to have buffered (x-1)/x of the video.
E.g. if it takes five hours to download a one-hour video, you need to have buffered 4/5 of it, 48 minutes’ worth. The remaining twelve minutes of video will take another hour to download, which is the same amount of time that it will take to watch the whole thing.