video time sync

has anyone gotten the parcel time command to work ok? i stream fine,but when i try to use the time,it just plays from beginning of stream. ive been using archive.org for testing.

if anyone can suggest a better stream to test the time command,or if im using the command wrong,or if it just plain doesnt work please let me know. thanks in advance

(clipped code as general example)

float fTimeSkip = 60;
key id=llDetectedKey(0);

llParcelMediaCommandList([PARCEL_MEDIA_COMMAND_AGENT, id,
PARCEL_MEDIA_COMMAND_TIME,fTimeSkip
PARCEL_MEDIA_COMMAND_PLAY
]);

I've experimented with the Time option.

When you set your parcel video to a clip (not a live stream), the embedded Quicktime player immediately begins to download and cache the file. Thanks to progressive downloading, you can usually start playing back the file immediately even as it continues to download in the background.

What is most likely happening is that you are using the Time option to position the playhead at a point in the video that has not yet been downloaded/cached. If this happens, Quicktime will give up and just start from the beginning.

Because video is entirely client-side, there is no way for SL to know when the entire clip has downloaded on your computer thus it can not know when it is safe to "jump" the playhead to where you want.

thanks for the reply.

i understand what you mean about the caching of a clip, but from what i understand from the wiki and forum posts, is if its a rtsp stream i should be able to jump to a time with the time command like i can with the quicktime player.

the ultimate goal is to allow a new person to come in and start watching video at same point as a group. ive heard some can sync that way,but ive not seen it first hand,or know if its the time command or a hack workaround.

thanks again for reply tho!

I've managed to get this to work in the past. You need to PAUSE the stream when the new person comes along, then later use a command list with both PLAY and TIME. I think the order in the command list may matter, and perhaps the phase of the moon too. I didn't use the PARCEL_MEDIA_COMMAND_AGENT thing you're using.

The time you set can be determined by dead reckoning, but I found it useful to "rewind" by a few seconds as well, that seemed to improve the reliability a little. Even then, you sometimes get effects like the new person seeing a speeded up version of the stream from the start with no sound until they catch up; sometimes re-pausing and re-PLAY/TIMEing the stream fixes that.

Oh, and tell everyone not to use the video controls in their client but to rely on the in-world one.

followup for using parcel media time command. i found it works only if i dont use it all in one list,but seperate it. maybe it needs time to process the commands,who knows. but it was only way for it to work for me. thought id post the solution if anyone needs it in future

  llParcelMediaCommandList([PARCEL_MEDIA_COMMAND_AGENT, id,
                           PARCEL_MEDIA_COMMAND_PAUSE]);
  
  llParcelMediaCommandList([PARCEL_MEDIA_COMMAND_AGENT, id,
                           PARCEL_MEDIA_COMMAND_TIME,fTimeSkip]);
  
  llParcelMediaCommandList([PARCEL_MEDIA_COMMAND_AGENT, id,
                           PARCEL_MEDIA_COMMAND_PLAY]);

thanks for those that replied