Buffer icon/percentage doesn't work in JW Player 5

I have looked through the forums and found that this issue has been previously posted about in this thread:

http://www.longtailvideo.com/support/forum/General-Chat/21040/Buffer-Percent-Not-Shown

Are there any plans to add the buffer icon and buffer percentage back into JW Player?

This feature hasn't been available since 4.6+

Is there a reason that the feature was removed?

It's removed because it was not a good representation of the buffer value:

*) When streaming MP4 files, the header data is often bigger than the bufferlength, which means one sees 0% for a long time and then the buffer shoots up to 100.
*) When streaming RTMP, we adjust the buffer after a start (dual-buffering), to prevent users from rebuffering on a network hickup. This is seen in the buffer %, since it first runs up to 100 and then goes back to 25, running up to 100 again.

For those two cases I can see why the buffer percentage would be a problem though from what I have seen it is a useful feature for progressive video downloads. As such to completely remove the buffer percentage from JW Player seems like a case of throwing out the baby with the bath water and couldn't the buffer percentage be controlled by a flashvar variable to turn it on or off?

Also for what reason was the buffer icon removed? Even in the two cases mentioned it seems like having the JW Player show a buffer icon instead of a black screen would let the person viewing the video know that the video was loading.

The buffer icon was not removed - http://www.longtailvideo.com/support/jw-player-setup-wizard if you press play, there is clearly a buffer icon.

There is a difference though between the versions of JW Player on whether the buffer icon stays up until the video is done buffering. With JW Player 4.5 the buffer icon stays up until the video is done buffering but with JW Player 5 it goes away after a second and shows a black screen until the video is done buffering.

Clear your cache and compare http://www.longtailvideo.com/support/jw-player-setup-wizard?example=204 to http://www.longtailvideo.com/support/jw-player-setup-wizard-4?example=4, v5 to v4, you will see that the buffering is slightly different, but they are very close, almost the same.

With the video you linked to using JW Player 5 the buffer icon does stay up until the video starts playing. I don't know if that is because it uses a different video format or because it uses a streaming server. With MP4 video files and progressive downloading though the buffer icon goes away after a second with JW Player 5. I have tested this on 3 different computers and with IE7/8, Firefox, Safari, Opera, and Chrome.

The developers can take a look into this, thanks.

I have put up a test page that uses the beta version of JW Player 4.7:

http://www.etowahonline.com/city/videotest4-7.html

The buffer icon in the beta version of JW Player 4.7 stays up until the video starts playing so the buffer icon issue is definitely related to JW Player 5.

I have put up a test page that uses two of the recent beta versions of JW Player 5.1:

The good news is that both versions show the buffer icon while the videos load. The bad news is that in version 816 the buffer icon just keeps on going until you stop and start the video. With version 817 it has the same problem and the progress bar makes it look like the video has fully loaded.

Thanks, will take a look.

To make it a bit quicker I have reduced the bufferlength to 10 on all the test pages.

Thanks

I have put up a test page that uses the most recent beta version of JW Player 5.1:

http://www.etowahonline.com/city/videotest5-1-819.html

The buffer icon keeps going until you pause and play the video. The progress bar now works when the video is playing but the progress bar doesn't show that the video is loading until you pause and play the video.

Thanks, 5.1 will be out officially later this month.

I have put up a test page that uses the most recent beta version of JW Player 5.1:

http://www.etowahonline.com/city/videotest5-1-824.html

I have tested this with IE7/8, Firefox, Safari, Opera, and Chrome and the buffer icon is working correctly now. Thanks for fixing it.

Np.