Progressive Netstream. Seek to a point not yet downloaded

[digitalpencil]

I've written a video step carousel that allows you to slide through multiple videos and playback. Also integrated are a chapter system that allows for seeking to specific points in a currently playing video.

The issue obviously is inherent to progressive download vs streaming and that you cannot seek to a chapter time that has not yet been downloaded.

I remember (years back, prob as2 days) someone came up with a clever php hack that allowed you to do just this using progressive download but i can't find any docs on the subject.

Does anyone know of a way this is possible? The client does not have the resources necessary for hosting on an RTMP server so i'm looking for a workaround that doesn't require the entire video to be buffered before allowing seek to specific cue points.

Videos are around 5 mins in length each so not a huge amount of data to buffer but obviously takes a good 30 secs before the last chapter point is reached and thus, seekable.

Any ideas as always are much appreciated. Thanks

[neznein9]

If you're bound to progressive download I'd look at cutting up the chapters into individual files, maybe using a low-bandwidth version that you overwrite later (the same way netflix does streaming - where they start you on low quality and then kick up the bandwidth).

If you find that php solution I'd love to see it.