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When did anyone last download a a quicktime or video clip
that didn’t build in interest towards the end? Often it’s the
last two or three punchline seconds of a clip that determine
its value. (No, not just porn clips, there’s lots of other things)
Unfortunately, all clip viewing and serving
software downloads
the clip from the beginning. And who hasn’t sat through an
interminable preamble only to find that the end doesn’t merit
the wait.?
Now clips are just files, the notion of one end or the other
being the top or bottom is the purely arbitrary convention of
a serial universe. So is there any reason why we can’t
optionally download clips backwards, so they build up from
the end to the beginning? Imagine being able to guillotine
those crap clips before they let you down!
Surely it’s not beyond the wit of geek to produce such a
piece of software. I for one would stump up a crisp buck for
the pleasure of knowing that what I was waiting for was
WORTH waiting for.
Whitey..
[link]
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As well as predictive and difference-based encoding, Real Media interlaces frames (shuffling data and spreading data for each frame across a number of transmitted blocks) to allow for packet loss. |
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Nonetheless, since the granule size you'd be interested in would be something like 5 or 10 seconds at least (could you tell the quality with less?), there's no technical reason for this, if you didn't want to play the file backwards, just to watch the last 10 seconds. All compression formats reset difference-based and predictive data every few seconds at least, to allow for error recovery, so waugsqueke's objection wouldn't apply. Many streaming formats (e.g. MPEG) are actually designed to allow you to cut into the middle. |
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This is still a really bad idea though, because once you'd watched the end, it'd ruin the rest of the video. |
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Taglines are usually pretty flat unless you see the setup. The "Wedding Night" clip that got around a few years ago would mean a lot less if you just saw a man in a wedding dress, piddling in an hotel room toilet. |
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