Difference between watching and downloading?

[Mirdon]

What is the difference between watching and downloading from say, youtube or about any other website with the similar nature. I'm curious if I could determine if someone is just watching the content or downloading it from a site I wanted to create.

[vorticalbox]

When you steam you store the video in a temp file that gets deleted later where so in the end the space used is about the same but when watching you don't have to have all of the video to start watching which you do when your download.

[Mirdon]

2 minutes ago, vorticalbox said:

When you steam you store the video in a temp file that gets deleted later where so in the end the space used is about the same but when watching you don't have to have all of the video to start watching which you do when your download.

Thank you, although, how about from the developer's point of view? Will I know if the client was just watching my video or downloading it through some plugin/application grabber?

[TetraSky]

3 minutes ago, Mirdon said:

Thank you, although, how about from the developer's point of view? Will I know if the client was just watching my video or downloading it through some plugin/application grabber?

I don't think such a method exist. Downloading and Streaming are basically the same thing, except that Streaming content gets deleted afterward.

As far as I know, there's no way to determine if someone downloaded instead of Streaming your content, or if it even count as a view on Youtube.

[ForsakenLive]

If you want them to watch the video, you give them a video player in the browser, you can determine how many people used the player.

If you want them to download, you give them a link. You can determine how many times they used the link.

For the server the load looks pretty much identical.

On the user PC a download creates a fake file which gets updated with the data each second until the download is finished. Then this file change to the full complete file which can be the downloaded video (file.mp4).

When watching online, it depends on how the player handles it. But usually a temp file gets created and it saves some of the video data (through a download), if it's too large it usually deletes already watched video.

[Mirdon]

10 minutes ago, TetraSky said:

I don't think such a method exist. Downloading and Streaming are basically the same thing, except that Streaming content gets deleted afterward.

As far as I know, there's no way to determine if someone downloaded instead of Streaming your content, or even if even count as a view on Youtube.

Oh, I see, so they would just both reflect data going from point a to point b regardless of the method used. Thank You.

 

7 minutes ago, ForsakenLive said:

If you want them to watch the video, you give them a video player in the browser, you can determine how many people used the player.

If you want them to download, you give them a link. You can determine how many times they used the link.

For the server the load looks pretty much identical.

On the user PC a download creates a fake file which gets updated with the data each second until the download is finished. Then this file change to the full complete file which can be the downloaded video (file.mp4).

When watching online, it depends on how the player handles it. But usually a temp file gets created and it saves some of the video data (through a download), if it's too large it usually deletes already watched video.

That makes sense, since if you think about it, you're just moving the file from point a to point b and stream/downloading just determine where the file would end up after reaching point b. Thank You.