Difference between streaming and downloading

[Anonymous1a]

Hello.

Is there any difference between streaming a video (just watching it online) and downloading it, in terms of the size. I live in Africa and my internet is capped to a certain amount of download data and, so, it would be useful for me to know if just watching it online takes the same amount of data as downloading it...

[Ai Haibara]

Not really. Even with streaming, the data still has to be downloaded to your computer in order for your system to process and watch it. It's not necessarily kept afterwards, but it's still downloaded in some form.

[yoda313]

Buffering would be the main difference. If you have a fairly fast connection or its lower quality sd or smaller video than buffering shouldn't be much of a factor. But start getting to high bitrate sd and into hd material than buffering can be a significant issue. Having the same file downloaded on your physical machine versus streaming would eliminate any buffering issue.

Of course if you start talking hd material you need to be concerned with computer specs. Anything within the last few years should at least handle 720p ok but you'll need something more substantial for 1080p. Basically don't think about hd without at least a dual core computer. And getting a graphics card that can decode h264 will certainly provide a lift in the processing department.

And if you watch just a few videos over and over downloading makes more sense. I'd rather download 3 or 4 videos and watch them over and over than stream the same 3 or 4 videos over and over. You are taking more of a hit on your cap for the exact same thing.

Edit - sorry didn't realize you were getting at file size not playback. But who knows maybe if you have buffering issues you might be pulling down more bits to try to play the file correctly thus using more cap space. Thus if you download once versus a buggy buffering playback issue you might be saving cap space that way.

I really don't know if streaming a 10mb video is exactly equal to downloading the original 1omb video. I image it is but I am not a network expert so I can't comment on that.

[Cornucopia]

Think of it this way:

There are 3 kinds of media downloads...
1. Non-web-ready, full download files (some kinds of AVI, MOV, and Mpeg1, and some odd formats)
2. Web-ready, partial/progressive download files (some ASF/WMV, other kinds of AVI, MOV, MKV)
3. True streaming files (Real, MP4, FLV)

The first only has an index at the end of the file and so needs to have the whole file downloaded before one can view it.
The second is the most common. It is packetized & interleave to make it easy to (nearly) independently play small chunks, and the index of frames is at the beginning so it can start playing as soon as enough of a buffer has filled to avoid skips. It still may have trouble with FF/REW and chapter or Tc jumps. And when you are done, you still have a local copy of the file in your cache (like the first).
The third is even more optimized for packet transport. It is like the 2nd, but has bitrate playback management hints to allow for greater possibility of jumps and trick play. Depending on how it is encoded, it may be able to start up quickly at any point, or not. Also, it has the option of being a non-cached, Just-In-Time (to buffer, decode and play) download, or not (this usually is based on the choice of server/protocol rather than file format.


Edit: so after you finish watching, the 1st, and 2nd, and some 3rd formats will have a local copy of roughly the same size. The 3rd may instead be either a small stub or empty.


Scott

[Anonymous1a]

Think of it this way:

There are 3 kinds of media downloads...
1. Non-web-ready, full download files (some kinds of AVI, MOV, and Mpeg1, and some odd formats)
2. Web-ready, partial/progressive download files (some ASF/WMV, other kinds of AVI, MOV, MKV)
3. True streaming files (Real, MP4, FLV)

The first only has an index at the end of the file and so needs to have the whole file downloaded before one can view it.
The second is the most common. It is packetized & interleave to make it easy to (nearly) independently play small chunks, and the index of frames is at the beginning so it can start playing as soon as enough of a buffer has filled to avoid skips. It still may have trouble with FF/REW and chapter or Tc jumps. And when you are done, you still have a local copy of the file in your cache (like the first).
The third is even more optimized for packet transport. It is like the 2nd, but has bitrate playback management hints to allow for greater possibility of jumps and trick play. Depending on how it is encoded, it may be able to start up quickly at any point, or not. Also, it has the option of being a non-cached, Just-In-Time (to buffer, decode and play) download, or not (this usually is based on the choice of server/protocol rather than file format.


Edit: so after you finish watching, the 1st, and 2nd, and some 3rd formats will have a local copy of roughly the same size. The 3rd may instead be either a small stub or empty.


Scott

Thank a lot for the detailed explanation but I am not so knowledgeable about these deep things and, therefore, I am sure you must have answered my question but I didn't really understand much of what you said. Simply put, does the fact that FLV videos (which, if I am not wrong, is the common format used on YouTube) are more better for "packet transport" mean that it's more compressed when I download it, as in, for example, if I tried to download the video, it would be, say, 200 MB but if I just stream it, it's only 175, for example?

[lordsmurf]

FLV is just a container.
Inside it's usually On2 VP6 format video.

"Packets" have nothing to do with compression. (Well, not directly. Indirectly, maybe.)

A 200MB video is going to be 200MB, regardless.

[intracube]

Short answer; probably not.

Longer answer; (assuming you watch the entire streamed video) there will be some differences in the way the data is sent to your computer when downloading vs streaming - but this won't typically have much of an effect on the total amount of data transmitted.

But if you only watch parts of a streamed video, you'll only be downloading the data for those sections. With a downloaded file, you'll have to download the whole video regardless of how much of it you watch.

- Some online video services detect the speed of your connection and stream different versions (bitrates/quality) of the video - so you can watch in realtime without any stuttering.

There aren't the same constraints when downloading a video - it doesn't matter if a half hour program takes 4 hours to download over a slow net connection.

So depending on these factors and the way you're downloading vs streaming, you might end up with different versions of the same show. The downloaded version could be of a higher bitrate/quality/filesize.

[Anonymous1a]

Ok, thanks a lot everyone for all the help! I really appreciate it. Why doesn't this forum have a like button?!