[html5] Autoplay and preload insufficient for proper video playback.

[Herman Hassel]

  On 26.08.2010 06:58, Eric Carlson wrote:
>    A static attribute that specifies a minimum buffer size or duration will only help users with exactly the bandwidth the for the attribute value - anyone with less bandwidth will still run out of data, and anyone with more bandwidth will have to wait longer than necessary.
Yes, but this also depends on how a developer would use the buffer 
attribute, for our use we wouldn't set it too high. (3-5 seconds or so 
is what we would favor at this time). A low bandwidth user would run out 
of data, but he would get at least 5 seconds of video before this would 
happen. From my experience with how users interact with video an end 
user will notice the loaded bar not moving as fast as the scrubber, but 
at least we've given him a teaser of the full content before he needs to 
wait. For a user with exact or higher bandwidth, the 3-5 second buffer 
loads fast enough to not break the experience. :)
>    If you want to prevent users from starting playback too early, use a custom controller and wait for the 'canplaythrough' event. It is fired when the UA estimates that the amount of time it takes to play the movie is less than the time it will take to download the rest of the movie. How can a static attribute be more accurate than this?
That would be more accurate if our goal is for the end users to start 
the video when they can view the whole video at once, but this would 
also mean a much longer wait for any video at all for the low bandwidth 
users. We want to show video as fast as possible to our users, but we 
wish to stop the initial stutter that occurs if we start playing a video 
at the same time as it starts loading. Giving a low bandwidth user a few 
seconds of video should suffice in most cases, and it would then be up 
to the low bandwidth end user if he wanted to pause and wait for more 
video or move on. We'd get too many users just moving on without any 
video if we were to impose the full video on them before allowing 
playback. My proposal is to make the buffer attribute optional, not a 
requirement, and it would not break listening to the 'canplaythrough' 
event for those cases where you don't want to present a video until the 
user can watch the whole thing. :)

-- 
Herman Hassel
Agrabush Design

mail:    herman at agrabush.com
twitter: http://twitter.com/agrabush