Oh. Well that's disappointing. I was hoping this would be about a modern video/audio decode, synchronize, and display pipeline... not that knowing how video streamed on the web isn't interesting, but it's really about how modern video streaming works.
Not that its particularly casually browsable but there are some details in the programmer reference manuals for the Intel integrated graphics encode/decode hardware. If you head to volume 8 the MFx introduction section has some sample flows before it starts getting into command packet details: https://01.org/sites/default/files/documentation/intel-gfx-p...
It talks about modern streaming indeed, but if you take a closer look, most of the video consumption today is done by streaming: on Desktop you still have a small portions of download then watch, but on mobile, Set Top Boxes like AppleTV and Roku, connected TVs, etc. You watch everything from the web.
Besides, the decoding/sync/rendering part didn't really change in the last 10 years, the innovations mostly arrived from the Web streaming use cases, with adaptive bitrate formats, that partly solved the multi-devices streaming problem we started to have with the rise of Mobile and OTT (over-the-top) video streaming.
All this fancy software and yet watching videos on the web is just as painful as it was 15 years ago if you don't have a fast enough connection. The download won't keep up with the play speed and they don't accommodate that nearly as well as they could. In the early 2000's with dial-up, you could just press pause then come back a few minutes later to watch what had been buffered. Nowadays that trick often doesn't work - pause also pauses the download. Not only that but the play/pause button sometimes doesn't work at all! If the playback is stopped because it's waiting to download more, the pause button usually does nothing - so you have to rewind to a previously buffered part (if you're lucky enough and it kept the buffer) then let it play, then press pause.
Related gripe: WTH is there no full-track buffering mode for any web players (looking at You, Tube!) and apps like Pandora or Spotify, for low- or sparse- bandwidth travel?!
I don't care if you limit it geographically or only make it work with bandwidth throttling or whatever...
...just make it work.
Then your apps would work and I would not be cursing and throwing my phone out the window every road trip.
Yes! Pause&wait was my default behavior on slow connections (i.e. smartphone in the middle of nowhere) and removing it is a huge step back. I mostly can't use Youtube on my phone anymore and forced to look for videos somewhere else, where this "old-fashioned" method still works. Is there any technical reasons that won't let the video download while paused?
Actually as the article mentions, most broadcasters today are using adaptive bitrate formats like HLS and DASH, that are solving this issue by serving you a bitrate that is low enough for you to handle.
Today the major broacasters often have 6 or 7 different qualities, going from 300kbps up to 4000Mbps for HD.
zzalpha|10 years ago
smalley|10 years ago
eldod|10 years ago
Besides, the decoding/sync/rendering part didn't really change in the last 10 years, the innovations mostly arrived from the Web streaming use cases, with adaptive bitrate formats, that partly solved the multi-devices streaming problem we started to have with the rise of Mobile and OTT (over-the-top) video streaming.
Nutmog|10 years ago
aaroninsf|10 years ago
Related gripe: WTH is there no full-track buffering mode for any web players (looking at You, Tube!) and apps like Pandora or Spotify, for low- or sparse- bandwidth travel?!
I don't care if you limit it geographically or only make it work with bandwidth throttling or whatever...
...just make it work.
Then your apps would work and I would not be cursing and throwing my phone out the window every road trip.
This is costing me a fortune in phones.
kbart|10 years ago
eldod|10 years ago
Today the major broacasters often have 6 or 7 different qualities, going from 300kbps up to 4000Mbps for HD.
eldod|10 years ago