

Ask HN: A start-loading button for videos? - cool-RR

I thought of an idea: Online videos should have a button, "Start loading", which makes the video start loading.<p>Personally, when I come across a video I want to see, I usually hit play and then immediately pause, then go read something else, so the video will be completely loaded when I start watching it. And it's annoying to do that, especially because sometimes it takes time until the pause button shows.<p>So I suggest a "Start loading" button that will cause the widget to start downloading the video. It will disappear the moment it is pressed or "play" is pressed.<p>What do you think?
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thristian
What really annoys me is video-players that automatically start playing when
the page loads, or that assume that if I pause, then drag the playhead back to
the beginning of the timeline, that means 'start playing from the beginning'.

I've always assumed this was because sites with video are generally designed
by people in the US with so much bandwidth available that videos reliably play
stutter-free with no buffering required. Sometimes it's easier to break into
the page with Firebug and extract the .flv URL and download it manually for
later viewing, than to wrestle a Flash player into behaving sensibly.

If your "Start loading" button takes off, I shall be very grateful, but wide
support for HTML5's <video/> element would be even better.

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chaosprophet
_> Sometimes it's easier to break into the page with Firebug and extract the
.flv URL and download it manually for later viewing, than to wrestle a Flash
player into behaving sensibly._

Or you could let it buffer fully, and then use Nirsoft's VideoCacheViewer to
save the video to a permanent location.

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cool-RR
Nighttime in the USA... I reposted here:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=957358>

