The Worm Hole

HTML5 Media, Seeking and the Buffered Attribute

Mark Boas

It can be very exciting playing with new technologies, HTML5 media being a case in point. The spec is still evolving and although native audio and video have only been about for little over a year in any useable form, we are already seeing browsers makers pushing the envelope and developers rushing to create new libraries.

We aim to incorporate features into the jPlayer library as they become available. Recently we have been looking at browser’s ability to jump to a point in a track that has not yet downloaded. A seeking of sorts. All the major HTML5 supporting browsers allow this type of seek (with the exception of Safari for Windows), but at the moment it seems only Chrome and Safari (both mobile and desktop versions) have taken this a step further by implementing the buffered attribute, although Firefox 4 also does, it is still in beta.

The buffered attribute allows us to determine what parts of a media track have been buffered so that we can seek or skip directly to that part without the need to pause.

More info on the buffered attribute can be found in this article HTML5 video ‘buffered’ property available in Firefox 4

Mark B

Tags: Audio, buffered, chrome, firefox, HTML5, opera, safari