[Webkit-unassigned] [Bug 221622] [GStreamer] Cannot play mp4 videos in Element: Received unexpected 200 HTTP status code for range request

[bugzilla-daemon at webkit.org]

https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=221622

Alicia Boya García <aboya at igalia.com> changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
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                 CC|                            |aboya at igalia.com

--- Comment #1 from Alicia Boya García <aboya at igalia.com> ---
Note:

* An HTTP server serving media files should support range requests and Content-Length. Otherwise data seeks are impossible, which media players and browsers (not only WebKit) expect to be able to do.
* Safari will outright mark these videos as broken for this reason.

Implications of supporting broken servers that lack range requests:

* The only way to support this is by downloading the entire file from byte zero, either to memory or to disk.
* This adds extra complexity to WebKitWebSrc.
* Because of the layout of very common media files (e.g. non-fragmented MP4 files with a trailing moov, the most common kind of MP4 files) many files won't be able to play until the entire file has been downloaded.
* Users will assume this is a correct configuration seeing how small videos work, but later complain that playback or seeks are very slow, or about strange disk/memory usage.

Therefore, please note that the real problem here is in the server-side. This is at its core not a WebKit bug, but a server bug.

A workaround in WebKit to accomodate broken servers is technically possible, with all these caveats and some open questions, such as what to do if the video is "too big" (which in the case of a missing Content-Length it may not even be known in advance). Personally I wouldn't give it a high priority unless there were important websites with broken configurations like this.

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