[plex]

Most if not all online flv players (those written in actionscript) will allow you to seek to a position farther in time in a streaming flv video. Some let you do it without pre-loading the video, others quickly load the video while you're watching it and allow you generous points farther down the timeline to seek to, quickly after playing begins.

You can barely fast forward 5 seconds with mplayer's flv player!

With more people turning to flv as their definitive source for streaming online video, and flv videos getting longer and longer (shows, films..).. Seeking ahead in long flv videos is pretty important! Compared to the actionscript counterparts, it's shameful that mplayer isn't at all comparable with its seeking algorithms!

Check this one out, its a relatively short flv video (you can try with longer ones if you want), but this actionscript flv player can load the video very quickly and allow you to seek just as quick.
http://www.h4x3d.com/flvplayer.swf?url=h...46ddc4d17/


You think its a bad idea/good idea? Let's talk about it! I certainly think its a good idea.

[plex]

Another thing to point out about the flv player I gave as an example is that whatever portion of the flv that is loaded, nothing is lost and all the loading is not done in vain if you want to rewind it or seek to an earlier position. If you rewind or seek to an earlier position with mplayer, all is lost and you can't easily get back to where you were before and have to re-load and re-watch the whole video again.

[elupus]

we support seeking aslong as http stream is seekable. if not give me a sample url where you can't skip around where the flv player succeds.

If you rewind or seek to an earlier position with mplayer, all is lost and you can't easily get back to where you were before and have to re-load and re-watch the whole video again.

what do you mean all is lost

[spiff]

he's pointing to the flash based flv players caching the entire file to disc as it streams. hence you can rewind seemlessly

[TheBoxMan]

I think that's possibly what he's talking about yes.

However a place where we can't currently seak and other programs is is realplayer streams (both audio and video).

For example those on http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio

I notice they've changed their layout a little bit since the iplayer (they now embed realplayer rather than using a separate prorgam.

It's still seekable though. (click on 'Listen to BBC Radio' then a radio channel (eg radio 4) then any program. You'll find you can drag the progress bar forward five or ten minutes and it will seek).

I use bbc listen again a lot and being unable to do anything but start from the begining every time really does make things more difficult :-)

applies to real player video as well I believe.

[plex]

How can you tell if an http stream is seekable, and isn't it more pertinent to the filetype (flv) that determines its seekablity?

While it may be true that xbmc does support seeking in remote flv files via http streams, one of the reasons I could hardly notice it, was because it was so bad. I mean 5 to 10 secs ahead... My main objective was to point out how a simple actionscript flv player can allow you to seek much farther into the file and much faster, while xbmc's mplayer isn't at all comparable to this. I wish it could be better.
I've tested several flv streams on the same internet connection, comparing the seekability of flash based flv players to mplayer, mplayer always loses.

I'm no expert on these types of algorithms, but can't you employ similar methods like internet download accelerators, and open multiple simultaneous connections to the same file to be able to cache/download it much quicker, thus allowing more seekablity?