[brianmcgee]

Issue:
Sometimes you do not have a fast enough access to your fileserver (e.g. WLAN connection and you want to watch HD content) or you want to select certain videos that you want to be able to watch on the road (e.g. when using XBMC on the laptop) or you are using an embedded device like the Raspberry Pi that is not equipped with enough storage for all your media files.

Solution:
In such situations it would be nice if you could mark files from your central media repository to be cached on local storage. Like if you want to rent videos online, you could mark the videos, you would like to watch next and in the background the folders get synchronized to your local cache dir.

The cache should get monitored for the amount of free space. Optionally, older files and watched videos should get deleted automatically, and the next files that are in the to-be-copied list should get cached. If the source is not available, the copy should resume, the next time it is available again (e.g. for the mobile XBMC on a laptop).

A special button should select content at random so that only a selection of all video content gets cached and you have always a filled cache with new content to watch.

Different users should have different queues.

What do you think about this feature? As I can write Python, I also like to help to implement this feature.
However I would like to discuss first, what the best way is, to implement the caching.
Also I would need some time to get to know the XBMC API...

[mftvrocks]

nice to have

[AnalogKid]

I've always wanted this functionality - although just as a starting gambit I believe it should do the following:

1) There are at least two approaches to this - a) When the user selects a media to play, they are prompted with the option to 'download before playing?' b) A default option to always download before playing (but this might be slightly tricky if just navigating through a few media items and playing them for a short period of time

2) What happens with additional files like subtitles - would they be cached too?

3) How long to keep the cache? is it limited by time, number of items, size? ... in the most simplest form it could just be a single media item downloaded (along with subtitles) and simply played locally - and overwritten when the next media item is downloaded (so that a user can resume playback providing they don't play another media item in between)

4) Would ALL of the file be required prior to beginning play, or could playback begin after a few megabytes (effectively making the local 'cache' a FIFO buffer - with the obvious issue that overall throughput still needs to be faster than the remaining media size/duration.

Overall, a very simple implementation would work for me....

1) Keep the normal 'play' ability (live from the source)
2) Add a 'Download then play' ability which would download the file + subs to a local folder, and play from there.

Like so many users, I have a decent wifi speed, but temporary throughput issues can ruin the playback experience. I'd be happy to wait 5 mins before watching a movie just to know it would play back perfectly thereafter!

[celtics101]

pls do this! it would be awsome

[davilla]

sounds like a good use for an addon.

[scutzi128]

I would love this feature as now I have to ftp home and play all my media files from vlc.