Bug 46242 – Video element does not use Http Range Header

• Status: UNCONFIRMED
• Component: Media

[Shiv Kumar]

When the video element in Safari makes a request for a video it does not make a Http Range Request. As a result it takes a very long time for the video to start playing (5-10 seconds sometimes).

Further, there is no ability to skip ahead. That is being able to skip to a portion of the video that has not yet been downloaded. This is such a strong feature of the Html 5 video element but sadly does not work at all.

This feature also cripples another feature we provide in our html 5 video player and that is the ability to switch between different versions of the same video. For example, if a viewer is watching a medium quality version of a video and decides to switch to the HD version in mid play the player needs to make a range request so the viewer can continue to watch the video without having to re-start the video from the begining (which is what happens currently).

Both of these are compelling features of the Html 5 video element but sadly they do not work in Safari.

[Eric Carlson]

(In reply to comment #0)
Safari does use range requests on OS X when the movie is opened with the QuickTime X backend, but "classic" QuickTime on Windows and OS X does not use range requests.

> When the video element in Safari makes a request for a video it does not make a Http Range Request. 
> As a result it takes a very long time for the video to start playing (5-10 seconds sometimes).
> 
Why does it take longer for the video to start playing when range requests aren't sent? The only reason I can think of is that the files are not flattened (are not saved with the 'moov' atom at the beginning of the file). Is this the case?

[Ahmad Saleem]

@Eric & @Jer & @Dana - is this applicable? We don't have 'AppleWin' port and only have 'win-cairo', which might be using different range header and might have separate bug (if it has an issue separately).

Can we mark this as 'RESOLVED CONFIGURATION CHANGED' or 'RESOLVED WONTFIX'?