How to play and seek online flv videos without buffering the entire content before?

[LCF-AT]

Hi guys,

I was playing around a little and found out that some sites still using flv video format.The problem is that those videos needs to be buffered and it seems not to be possible to seek for/backward like other online videos formats (mp4).So that means when I have a flv video online what has a runtime of one hour and I just want to start the video from minute 50 then the entire video content before needs be loaded/buffered first.In most cases it will fail because the buffer is already full or some other issues happen and the video gets aboarded.Thats super bad.Also when using desktop players like VLC the same happens.VLC needs to buffer to the seek point I did choose and mostly its just working one time and on next try to seek more forward or backward its just aboarding.All in all to watch FLV videos online is pretty bad and like gambling.I also tried to find and check out some online FLV players / scripts but they aren't working else or better or more canstant.Do you know any other players or techniques to playing / seeking without tons of buffering?

greetz

[kao]

If your FLV is just missing metadata, you could try using tools like yamdi: http://yamdi.sourceforge.net/

If that alone doesn't help, there is nothing you can do without the re-encode of the FLV file: https://superuser.com/questions/587557/ffmpeg-add-keyframes-without-reencoding

 

[LCF-AT]

Hi kao,

thanks for the infos so far.So my goal was it to watch/seek the FLV videos online without to download them.So if I download them then they work fine in VLC etc and I can seek for/backward like I want but this I can not do in the online player.The most bad thing is when the video completely aboards and you can start again to load it new.So I do remember few years ago I was playing around with rtmp streams using rtmpdump and play FLV streams and there I could also use the option to start the stream from position X what was working better as now using the online HTML5 player.

Question: Does it only depends on buffering FLV itself?As I said, when trying to seek the FLV video in online player then it needs to buffer the whole content before what can take a long time if you jump 10 minutes forward and you must have luck that the process dosen't gets aboarded (buffer full etc).Also same happens when using VLC player itself to stream the URL of the FLV video.VLC starts playing and when seeking forward it can work one time or two and then its just aboarding.All in all same bad thing happens when using online player or extern VLC player.No diffrents.Only diffrent is when I do download the video and play it then in VLC and now all is working fine.I can seek the hell I want and VLC does play & jump straight without any problems also when the FLV video has just ONE keyframe.Whats the diffrent?Just because the buffer process isn't needed anymore?

Here is a example player script I found...

https://bilibili.github.io/flv.js/

http://bilibili.github.io/flv.js/demo/

....which has a log window.There is also a "SeekTo" button with an edit control you can enter anything.I think you can enter the seconds only and no timecode like 00:10:00.

PS: One more question about online players and that buffering process.How does it work?Mostly those player do buffer few minutes forward and then they stop.If I now seek to close at the end of the buffered point then it starts to buffer go on for next few minutes but in some cases it just stucks there and dosen't buffer go on and when reaching the end of the buffered bar then it stops and does nothing anymore and I can reload the video from the beginning etc.Just wanna know whether there is any player where I can force to buffer process to buffer NOW go on etc?Just wanna know why its sometimes working to buffer a whole video (buffer/seek/buffer/seek) and sometimes not (buffer/seek/buffer/seek/NoBufferingAnymore=Stops).

greetz