when a video you’re streaming is buffering, why does it load faster when you rewind a little as opposed to just letting it buffer on its own?
In: Technology
Internet is a whole bowl of spaghetti of new technologies built on top of old technologies built on top of older technologies. One of those is finding a route between your device and your video location, for example.
Imagine sending your friend to a store, but neither you nor your friend know the neighborhood. So your friend just starts driving, at some point he finds a random person at the crossroads, asks them how to get to the store and the person can only vaguely motion to some direction. Sometimes there might be a traffic jam, sometimes a road might be closed off, sometimes your friend will get lost, all sorts of problems can occur on the way there or back. And you will only know how it went when your friend returns. You might be just better off sending your other friend, with any luck he will find a faster path.
Video buffering is really dependent on the video player, but if rewinding a bit restarts the buffering – you might get lucky and get your results faster.
Sometimes, computers get stuck. Things can glitch, and maybe it gets caught in a loop that it’s never going to exit. The rewind forces it to try again, and hopefully it’ll do the right thing.
Humans do this too. Ever tried to tell someone something, realising your just spouting nonsense, and then you pause and start again? Same idea.
Id imagine 1 of 2 things is happening.
1. Your restarting the buffer/download and it could be getting a better connection the second time.
2. Its an illusion and its not faster you’ve just wasted enough time rewinding/waiting for it to buffer that when you watch the thing the content is now loaded far enough that watching the movie won’t catch up.
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