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I've been working with video_player package from Flutter. I'm mostly testing videos taken from the url. My code is very similar to the ones from the examples.
Everywhere I read about it, I can see that this library does not support caching of the videos. But what this exactly means? What exactly is happening behind the scenes and how the behaviour would change if the caching would actually be implemented? How this is different from buffering? Are the video files simply downloaded to our device?
If yes, then were those files are kept?

One additional question is, how can I check the network consumption caused by using such connection? I've tried using Dev Tools but the network tab is always empty.

One last thing is, is it possible to pre-initialize next videos, so when we would like to switch between them, they are already partially pre-loaded?

David
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Karzel
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2 Answers2

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U can use a package that helps you manage caching futter_cache_manager https://pub.dev/packages/flutter_cache_manager

U can use this in combination with video_player. However, u would have to download the whole file first to be then be able to retrieve it for video_player to consume it.

An idea would be to stream the video and also download a copy locally. This however would consume more data than just downloading and caching the video first, then playing it locally.

As for how to check for network consumption, i am not sure.

Mozes Ong
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Starting with the theory:

1.Cache is a high-speed storage area while a buffer is a normal storage area on ram for temporary storage.

2.Cache is made from static ram which is faster than the slower dynamic ram used for a buffer.

3.The buffer is mostly used for input/output processes while the cache is used during reading and writing processes from the disk.

4.Cache can also be a section of the disk while a buffer is only a section of the ram.

5.A buffer can be used in keyboards to edit typing mistakes while the cache cannot.

When it comes to video buffering just look at youtube app. You can see the buffer being made when grey line grows bigger before the red line. Mostly information stored this way cannot be accessible at all as Android uses combination of RAM allocation for both caching and buffering as it sees fit for current active process.

Technically you could try pre-loading different videos by starting and pausing all of them at once but I cannot imagine how much tampering with system memory control it would take, even youtube doesn't work like that.

Piotr
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