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playbin: read ahead files, better support for network shares and other slow inputs

Submitted by Andrea Corbellini

Link to original bug (#679708)

Description

Playing files and devices located in not-so-low-latency locations with Totem currently is not always optimal. Examples of such locations include slow DVDs, SSH shares and NBD devices.

When playing a movie from those locations I can observe the following:

  • the first N minutes of the movie is played perfectly well;
  • after those N minutes, the movie stops for a while;
  • the movie continues again for N minutes;
  • the movie re-stops and so on...

It seems to me (though I might be wrong) that Totem fetches only when its read buffer is exhausted. To play files reliably, Totem should instead continuously fill the buffer, trying to always keep it at a reasonable size.