how to avoid small laggy when call player.next () in a playlist

[yangcheng]

I have a play list of videos, which are of irregular length. I want to jump to next() on a fixed interval, otherwise I'd like it loop though a subset of list.

consider the following example, a playlist contain videos between 5-10 seconds long, I'd like to go to a new video at exactly 60 seconds , so it might be possible that some video are just starting, and I need the next one to play. I am using player.next() however, it's causing a small laggy.
Is there a way to make the transition smooth? like at 59 seconds, tell the player to start caching next video

thanks

[AquilesCanta]

Hi @yangcheng,

tell the player to start caching next video

In ExoPlayer there's no way to individually control buffering for each item. You need to put the items in a playlist and let the player handle the buffering for you. And the player will start buffering the next item only after it has finished buffering the current one.

As things stand now, the only way of loading content from a following item without fully loading the current one is by clipping the current item, so that the player doesn't buffer it fully. Clipping content dynamically is tracked by #3163. I am guessing you can't use ClippingMediaSource because depending on user interactions you may want to play the full video. Is this right?

[AquilesCanta]

Thanks to @tonihei for pointing this out. There's also #3327 which seems to track exactly what you are asking for.

Other than implementing some form of local cache manually, I think your best option is tracking #3327.

If there's any aspect of your question unanswered, please let me know and I'll reopen the issue.

[yangcheng]

thanks for pointing out ClippingMediaSource, the only user interaction I need to support is pause and resume, no need for seekbar control. so I guess I can use it?

[AquilesCanta]

so I guess I can use it?

Certainly seems so. Please give it a try!