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points by ivanjermakov 3 days ago | 0 comments

Technically watching a video only streams video chunks into memory. But of course there are tools pretending to be a youtube client to stream it to a file.

[–] superkuh 2 days ago

Technically now, but that ignores what was and what is easiest. The simplest, best, most reliable, less fragile system is just storing the file on disk as it comes. But streaming software bends over backwards to avoid this simple solution for the lawyers. It always re-evolves with each new streaming mechanism.

In fact when youtube started the entire file would be downloaded to /tmp/. And it was this way for a long time. Then the lawyers heard about it and instead youtube would download the file then delete it and read from the filehandle of the deleted file. Then flash went away. And the replacement video streaming services would send chunks that would be on disk and then the lawyer pacification process repeated and now everything is only stored "in ram" but often, and on many systems, that isn't true either. But it's enough to keep the lawyers calm.

[–] ivanjermakov 2 days ago

There are technical reasons to choose streaming vs on demand download without involving lawyers. I'm sure regular user would prefer to save bandwidth when opening a 1 hour documentary and only watching first minute.

[–] superkuh 2 days ago

You've misunderstood. It's entirely technically and easily possible to use the current streaming model of only downloading the file bit by bit (as if there is any other way) but instead of wasting RAM and making things more complex just add each bit to the file on disk as it downloads. You've set up a false dichotomy.