Anybody found a fix for the netstream.seek bug?

Question

The bug I am talking about is only being able to seek to a point in a video that the play head has been before.
Here is how the bug is described at :http://www.brooksandrus.com/blog/2005/12/17/5-reasons-netstream-sucks/
"Seeking is super slow until all keyframes are cached. No bull, if you have a file which you’ve completely preloaded, the keyframes aren’t cached until the video playhead reaches that point in time for the first time. If I load a file and seek to the end, the player has to chug through all of the keyframes prior to my seek point. This is slow, slow if I have video of even several minutes."
That was posted 5 years ago. I have found the bug referenced in the following posts:
http://forums.adobe.com/message/1917914#1917914
http://forums.adobe.com/message/692394?tstart=0
I would assume that since this bug has been around for at least 5 years, there would a bug report filed for it or a work around found. But I can't seem to find either.
I have tried multiple codecs and encodings with no luck. I'm having a hard time accepting that there is not fix for this problem. Flash has to read and cache the key frame information of the entire video before being able to seek to the end. Does anybody know where the flash player writes this information? Let me be clear, this is not streaming video, this is video that is running local off the hard drive. The flash player stores this key frame information somewhere until the computer is restarted. At that point when the video is played again, it has to read the entire file again. You can close and open the player multiple times and it will only perform the caching the first time and not again until a computer restart.
again, I am not trying to seek to a point that has not been loaded yet. This is a swf that loads a video off the hard drive.
One that that I have noticed is that when H.264 files are loaded, the player immediately performs the caching scan before it begins to play. When it is finished, you can seek to any point quickly. The time it takes for the caching scan is dependent upon the size of the file and the number of keyframes it has. Whereas the rest of the video codecs will play immediately but will only seek quickly to cached keyframes.
I have only seen this problem discussed in a few spots, with no solutions. it is a very old bug. Has anybody found a fix, work around or bug report on it?
Thanks for your help
-Mike

Answer 1

package {
    import flash.display.Sprite;
    import flash.events.NetStatusEvent;
    import flash.events.SecurityErrorEvent;
    import flash.events.TimerEvent;
    import flash.media.Video;
    import flash.net.NetConnection;
    import flash.net.NetStream;
    import flash.text.TextField;
    import flash.utils.Timer;
    import flash.utils.getTimer;
     [SWF(width="400", height="600", backgroundColor="#FFFFFF")]
     public class SeekTest extends Sprite
          private var videoURL:String = "test.flv";
        private var connection:NetConnection;
        private var stream:NetStream;
          private var tick:Timer;
          private var startTime:int;
          private var skipCount:int;
          private var duration:Number;
          private var txt:TextField;
          public function SeekTest()
               txt = new TextField();
               txt.wordWrap = true;
               txt.height = 300;
               txt.width = 400;
               addChild(txt);
               tick = new Timer(0.1);
               tick.addEventListener(TimerEvent.TIMER, checkLoad);
               connection = new NetConnection();
            connection.addEventListener(NetStatusEvent.NET_STATUS, netStatusHandler);
            connection.addEventListener(SecurityErrorEvent.SECURITY_ERROR, securityErrorHandler);
            connection.connect(null);
          private function netStatusHandler(event:NetStatusEvent):void {
                //print("Net Status:", event.info.code);
            switch (event.info.code) {
                case "NetConnection.Connect.Success":
                    connectStream();
                    break;
                case "NetStream.Play.StreamNotFound":
                    print("Stream not found: " + videoURL);
                    break;
                    case "NetStream.Seek.Notify":
                         print("--- Seek Completed in", (flash.utils.getTimer() - startTime)/1000, "seconds.");
                         seekDone();
                         break;
        private function securityErrorHandler(event:SecurityErrorEvent):void {
            print("securityErrorHandler: " + event);
        private function connectStream():void {
            stream = new NetStream(connection);
            stream.addEventListener(NetStatusEvent.NET_STATUS, netStatusHandler);
            var metaOb:Object = new Object;
            metaOb.onMetaData = metadata;
            stream.client = metaOb;
            var video:Video = new Video();
                video.height = 300;
               video.width = 400;
               video.y = 300;
            video.attachNetStream(stream);
            startTime = flash.utils.getTimer();
            stream.play(videoURL);
            addChild(video);
            tick.start();
        public function metadata(info:Object):void
             duration = info.duration;
             print("Metadata: duration=" + info.duration + " width=" + info.width + " height=" + info.height + " framerate=" + info.framerate);
          private function checkLoad(e:TimerEvent):void
               var seconds:Number = (flash.utils.getTimer() - startTime) / 1000
               if(stream.bytesLoaded == stream.bytesTotal && stream.bytesTotal != 0 && seconds > 3)
                    skipCount = 0;
                    print("Video 100% Loaded. Performing first seek after 3 seconds of video playing.");
                    tick.stop();
                    startTime = flash.utils.getTimer();
                    stream.seek(duration - 2);
          private function seekDone():void
               if(skipCount == 0)
                    //just skipped to the end of the video the first time
                    //jump back to the begining and do it again.
                    startTime = flash.utils.getTimer();
                    print("Seeking back to the begining to time the second seek to the end.")
                    stream.seek(0);
               }else if(skipCount == 1)
                    startTime = flash.utils.getTimer();
                    print("Second seek to the end. ")
                    stream.seek(duration - 2);
               skipCount++;
          private function print(... args):void
               trace(args)
               txt.appendText(String(args.join(" ")) + "\n\n");
The above is a simple test I put together. Use a large FLV for the testing. Remember, the first seek to the end will be the longest and you may not get the same results unless you restart or use another FLV.