1134263 - Investigate using the same AudioStream when seeking instead of trashing it and getting a new one

Status: NEW

(Core :: Audio/Video: Playback, defect)

Description

[Paul Adenot (:padenot)]

This is what Chrome does, and seems like it could be worth it, creating and destroying system audio streams is expensive (and can be super super super _super_ long on some platforms, we've seen 8 seconds on OSX).

Comment 1

[Matthew Gregan [:kinetik]]

Yeah, this also allows us to do nice stuff like quickly fade the volume in and out during the seek so there's no harsh pop between sample transitions.

I think the only reason we have the current behaviour is that there's no API-level distinction between pause/resume (where we likely want to stop the audio stream for power/resource savings) and the type of short stream transition caused by a seek.  Maybe we need something slightly fancy, like a timeout on the stream where we only kill it after it has been paused/idle for more than N seconds.

Comment 2

[Luke]

Please add whiteboard:  [games]

Comment 3

[5silentrain]

Oh my God, this problem is already 9 years old?! 😱 🤯 🤦‍♂️

Comment 4

[5silentrain]

Because of this issue, I am currently having serious problems using dongles: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1876668 Moreover, these problems are observed only in Firefox. In Chrome, Safari and other web browsers, there is no such problem. This problem does not exist when using video players such as QuickTime Player, IINA Player and others. That is, only Firefox has this problem.

Comment 5

[5silentrain]

By the way, it would be great if there was a parameter on the about:config page that specifies the interval after which the AudioStream is thrown/deleted.