Jan Walzer <jan### [at] lzernet> wrote:
> I ever wondered myself, why they have to specify the filesize in the header,
> as (IIRC) the data is already written in chunks so the could simply stop
> loading/playing thhe file when there's EOF (or a bad chunk) ...
> When it happens, that my File has some errors at the end, I still like to watch
> the first part I got... this is only possible if the filesize in the header gets
> adjusted ... thats so senseless/painful ...

  That's not the whole story.
  AVI is bad because it's not streamable. If you chop an AVI from the end,
probably all players will refuse to play it. For some reason you need the
*whole* AVI file in order to play it. (There might be some players out there
which ignore these things and are able to play the AVI even if it has been
chopped off, but at least MediaPlayer does not do this.)
  In streamable formats (such as MPEG) you can take any part of the file
(it doesn't even have to be from the beginning of the file) and you probably
will be able to play that part. This is how net radios work: The mp3 format
is perfectly streamable, and a player can start playing from anywhere in
the middle of the stream, which means that you can "join" the net radio
station at any time. You can also add garbage at the beginning and end of an
mp3 file and it will probably not affect its playing in any way (players
usually are able to search the file for chunks they recognize and they ignore
garbage).

-- 
#macro N(D)#if(D>99)cylinder{M()#local D=div(D,104);M().5,2pigment{rgb M()}}
N(D)#end#end#macro M()<mod(D,13)-6mod(div(D,13)8)-3,10>#end blob{
N(11117333955)N(4254934330)N(3900569407)N(7382340)N(3358)N(970)}//  - Warp -

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