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Cut-to-the-chase video clips

End timewasting waits for clips that don't deliver
 
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When did anyone last download a a quicktime or video clip that didn’t build in interest towards the end? Often it’s the last two or three punchline seconds of a clip that determine its value. (No, not just porn clips, there’s lots of other things)

Unfortunately, all clip viewing and serving software downloads the clip from the beginning. And who hasn’t sat through an interminable preamble only to find that the end doesn’t merit the wait.?

Now clips are just files, the notion of one end or the other being the top or bottom is the purely arbitrary convention of a serial universe. So is there any reason why we can’t optionally download clips backwards, so they build up from the end to the beginning? Imagine being able to guillotine those crap clips before they let you down!

Surely it’s not beyond the wit of geek to produce such a piece of software. I for one would stump up a crisp buck for the pleasure of knowing that what I was waiting for was WORTH waiting for.

Whitey..

whitey, Nov 14 2001

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       As well as predictive and difference-based encoding, Real Media interlaces frames (shuffling data and spreading data for each frame across a number of transmitted blocks) to allow for packet loss.   

       Nonetheless, since the granule size you'd be interested in would be something like 5 or 10 seconds at least (could you tell the quality with less?), there's no technical reason for this, if you didn't want to play the file backwards, just to watch the last 10 seconds. All compression formats reset difference-based and predictive data every few seconds at least, to allow for error recovery, so waugsqueke's objection wouldn't apply. Many streaming formats (e.g. MPEG) are actually designed to allow you to cut into the middle.   

       This is still a really bad idea though, because once you'd watched the end, it'd ruin the rest of the video.
pottedstu, Nov 15 2001
  

       Use ClipClip.   

       I just showed my parents a youtube with a comedian. But it happened to be a digest and not the full show. All the humor was lost by going directly to the punchline.   

       Sometimes readers digest isn't such a good idea.
pashute, Jun 15 2012
  

       You might like 5secondfilms on YouTube...
Eugene, Jun 17 2012
  
      
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