Name is required.
Email address is required.
Invalid email address
Answer is required.
Exceeding max length of 5KB

Forcing HLS stream to start with lower/lowest quality to reduce buffering at player load


Hello,

We are experiencing an issue with our HD videos buffering when the player (premium edition 6.8) is loaded. For the user the buffering causes a delay of up to 7 seconds before the video is ready to play (depending on their connection). The stream is an HLS stream and we see that the player is always loading the highest quality stream segment available,(as described in your documentation) rather than a lower or the lowest quality segment, when the player is initially loaded. Some of some segments are as large as 2 or 3 MB.

What we would like to achieve is that the video is playable as quickly as possible. We believe that beginning with a lower or lowest quality segment first, rather than the highest quality segment, can reduce the buffering time and improve the user experience. (this is from the Kaltura best practices page Often the player is designed to start on the lowest possible bit rate so that playback starts immediately at http://knowledge.kaltura.com/best-practices-multi-device-transcoding )

Is there a way to force the loading of another quality other than the highest quality of the HLS stream? If that is not the solution, is there a way you could suggest to reduce the buffering and achieve a "ready to play" state on player load?

Here is a test page with embedded videos using the 6.8 player with an HLS stream http://random-testing.azurewebsites.net/?page_id=81

Thank you very much,

Robert H.

3 Community Answers

Ethan Feldman

JW Player Support Agent  
0 rated :

It will always be auto, on load.

JW Player

User  
0 rated :

Ethan,
Thank you very much for your quick reply! We'll keep working on it.
Kind regards,
Robert

Ethan Feldman

JW Player Support Agent  
0 rated :

Np

This question has received the maximum number of answers.