Save and Restore Current Playback Time in User Session

[joncameron]

Description

Capturing the active playhead position and saving it for the current session, as well as reading this value when the media player is loaded with the same media—for example, allowing users who open hyperlinks into the current tab could click the back button and immediately be returned to the same position in the media as they left.

This could be implemented in local storage like remembering the audio quality selector and volume. However, this could be a much larger amount of data to store.

But some sites, like PBS, also remember this on the server side based on user account (this would work across devices).

Questions

If we are going to remember the user's place in videos, is this every video they start playing?

• The most recent video only seems reasonable, so it doesn't expand to store values for every section a user streams
  For how long do we remember the last location?
• Is there a default for storing this (standard cookie/localstorage expiration)?

Done Looks Like

• Investigate other streaming sites: what is the expected behavior and where are other sites storing this current position data?
• Store this locally, or on the server? Both?
• When do we stop remembering this value?