Re: Buffered bytes for media elements

Knowing bytes really doesn't help you unless you know how relevant 
those bytes are, also.  Are they bytes 'immediately in front of the 
playhead'?  You just don't know.  Also, are they 'dense'?  Maybe we 
have 200 kb buffered -- but it's all bytes of the video and none of 
the audio.  Or it's the first 3 seconds, then there is a 10-second 
gap, and then 4 seconds more.  Or, or, or...

We really need to define questions that have a clear semantic as to 
what you are trying to do, I think, that can be correctly and 
helpfully answered by most or all media systems and for most or all 
delivery technologies.

Consider a system which is playing directly from a DVB stream (e.g. 
you have a digital radio receiver in your hand-held device).  You 
don't need more than a frame or two buffered, as delivery is exactly 
real-time and jitter-free.


-- 
David Singer
Multimedia Standards, Apple Inc.

Received on Monday, 20 October 2008 00:59:33 UTC