Question

I want to allow my users to “Skip” to points in the video without needing them to buffer it before. For example, take a look at a Vimeo video in their HTML5 player (Open a video and click “Switch to HTML5 player”). As I see in a sniffing tool, they load the video normally, but when you click on a point in the timeline, it sends a request to the server, and it responds with a link that contains a special token.

Megavideo is doing it too.

Any ideas how to implement this into a HTTP video server?

Answer 1

You need implement ‘range’ support in your HTTP server. Most modern web servers have range support, ‘out of the box’.

Relevant headers:

• Accept-Ranges
• Content-Range
• Range
• If-Range

Relevant response codes:

• 206 Partial Content
• 416 Requested Range Not Satisfiable

Relevant data types:

• range units
• multipart/byteranges