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phl0w
11th August 2007, 11:47 AM
I couldn't find a clear answer on Google so I thought I'd ask here, seeing that there are a few WOZ members that seem to know this kind of stuff.
My question is quick and simple: Does buffering videos cause net traffic on my side?
I ask this because I got a pretty steep traffic limit (1gb/m) and need to watch what I'm downloading. A friend of mine said that watching buffered videos, like on YouTube or Gametrailers you don't download the full video, but only information that enables the playback through a video player, like Media Player. Now I think that's somehow illogical and do believe that buffered data gets downloaded fully, it's just buffered to have access to the partial file.
So who's right? On the one hand I hope it's me, for you know, intellectual reasons. However I do like the thought of watching buffered stuff without stressing my traffic limit :p

rdmx
11th August 2007, 12:57 PM
Stuff like youtube - the videos are put through an flv encoder, meaning you save on downloads and don't download the massive 100mb file they uploaded. The encoder drastically cuts down the size. Mind you, if all you do is watch youtube videos, you can eat through your bandwidth alarmingly quickly.