[MPlayer-users] Intelegent buffering

[rioting pacifist]

Given that bandwidth often varies, setting a percentage / size to determin how much of a film gets buffered isnt very effective, could a mplayer try and guess how much how much of a video to buffered. Something along the lines of:
Length = size/bit rate
Download time = size/download rate
give
time to buffer= size/download rate - size/bitrate + extra*size
size to buffer = size (bit rate/download rate + extra*bid rate - 1)

extra being a variable to make sure that the video is just over buffered so that bandwidth variations dont cause buffering at the very end (it doesn't need to be multiplied against) so it could be simplified to
size to buffer = size ( bit rate/download rate - e) 
[where is between 0 (complete over buffering) and 1 (no over buffering)]

1 day i want to watch a 1 minute clip ( 512k) , when im on a 300k conection:
the best situation is to buffer for just over  42 seconds ( 21709k 71%)
the next i watch a 1 hr clip (256k) but this time my conection has droped to 200K:
the best situation is to buffer for  just over 17 minutes (258048k 28%)
well using random wikipedia number doesnt really make this look sensible, but i think its something worth taking a look at.

have no idea how much of a difference this will make, so it may not
be worth it, but it would definatly be a nice touch if it is.

p.s thanks for the greak media player, i didnt think id ever find anythng to replace vlc (the plugin crashed my firefox too much), but mplayer has more than replaced it, and as a bonus it plays alot nicer with other programs too. :D



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