/StreamingProxy

a specialized proxy for streaming content

Primary LanguagePython

This is a specialized proxy for streamed content.

== Motivation ==
I disliked mplayer's buffering behavior, and wanted a local player-independent
cache, so I took this opportunity to learn the excellent Twisted framework.

== Use Case ==
Most media players provide only buffering, but no caching functionality. This
means that even a small seek outside the buffered range will invalidate the
entire buffer and establish a new connection.

However, a http proxy is usually supported, which is very suited for providing
a local player-independent layer of caching. In this proxy, we have entire
control over all caching, without changing the URI that needs to be called.

This has several benefits:
 - for a little disk space, we get instant seeking in the entire cached part of
   any streamed content
 - this cache is shared among players
 - we can pre-cache videos for fast, stable and network-independent access at
   a later point
 - our cache is written in python, we can make it do what we want :)

== Status ==
At this point, the software is mostly working. There are some essential
features missing though (see TODO), and the stability is early beta at most.