Prevent Automatic Download of Files

I'd like this too - it needs some way of setting preload to false in the audio or video tags.

I also have this problem, and don't use private files. I am however using the mediaelement field formatter on a Link field, which points to a remote URL. Again, the player controls start downloading the files immediately, but don't start playing until click. While this might be desirable in some circumstances, often it is not, as highlighted by the original poster. Investigating.

Adding support for "preload" would fix this issue, but doesn't solve the general problem of wanting access to the other attributes available to mediaelement:

http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/video.html#video
http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/video.html#audio

poster
preload
autoplay
mediagroup
loop
muted
controls

Should we develop a general solution, or just add support for these?

Here is a patch that provides support for "preload" flag to mediaelement.

Doesn't apply to HEAD right now.

Re-rolled.

Separate issue but does it make sense to exposing those defaults?

I second #9 and #10. This is a major part. I have several audio files on the front page, which I most definitely don't want to preload.

The patch works for us, too.

We had a hard time to realize that the preloading of some audio tracks prevented our site from finishing to load, which as a side effect prevented anything from loading inside a colorbox.
So I would also pledge to make disabled the default option and commit this as soon as possible.

Nonetheless thanks for the patch :)

Sorry, meant to set the issue to needs work.

I believe I've set the patch correctly so that it is set to not load by default, but haven't tested it. I also updated the patch to run against 7.x-1.x branch. Other than that it seems to work great and is ready to commit.

I have the exact same issue as the original poster. This is nothing to do with private files. 25 mp3s of half and hour each in the view, almost stops this site dead when they are all preloading. Thought this module was my replacement for 1pixelout, not so sure now. I absolutely agree that this preloading should be set to FALSE by default.

fixed white space issues as well as added preload information to the field_formatter_settings_summary

   Width: 300 px, Height: 30 px, Preload: none

Thank you for this patch!

It should be added along with autoplay patch to the dev branch.

I had to reinstall a site that was using mediaelements with view.
And I couldn't figure out why everything was preloading again.
Forgot I patch it. LOL

Was trying to mod the code module myself at 2 AM
Bad Idea. ;-)

Thanks Again!!

Shouldn't we commit these patches by now?

It appears that the maintainers are not very active. Last commit over 1 year ago...

Well, if you think this patch is ready to be committed and it applies cleanly, then that is what the 'reviewed & tested by the community' issue status is for. Leaving issues in 'needs review' for a lot of maintainers means that it shouldn't be committed yet.

Tested #8 drewish patch in 7.x-1.2.
I patched in Ubuntu and upload to my site. It works!

I can not apply other patch in ubuntu.
You can try: http://thanhsiang.org/ch/node/3480

Note:
I use this module to replace swftools (d6).
I changed
<swf file='file.mp3'> to <audio src='file.mp3'><audio>

The great thing about this module: it also supports flv files by using video code. An ideal module to replace swftools (only works in D6).

Don't change version. The patch, when/if it is applied, will need to be applied to -dev.

I'm wondering if 'none' is actually the correct default to use. According to http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/embedded-content-0.html#attr-media-preload it looks like maybe we should allow a 'None' option to not output any preload attribute and use that by default?

@Dave Reid Are you suggesting that we use Preload: Metadata? Please clarify what you are suggesting with your comment.
Just looking over http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/embedded-content-0.html#attr-media-preload it seems to me that "Metadata" may be an option to consider, however I still think 'none' is the best option. 'Automatic' is an option that I'm sure some would want to use on their sites, so it would be ideal if there was a global setting that could be set so people could choose which option they prefer. But I think that most of us are more concerned with the bandwidth usage that mediaelement uses when preload is set to automatic. Therefore it should default to 'none'.

Again looking at the above link there is this note that may need to be considered:

Authors might switch the attribute from "none" or "metadata" to "auto" dynamically once the user begins playback. For example, on a page with many videos this might be used to indicate that the many videos are not to be downloaded unless requested, but that once one is requested it is to be downloaded aggressively.

So ideally it would switch from 'none' to 'auto' once playback is requested, but I think that should maybe be a separate feature request. As for this issue, I feel that the patch addresses it well. Marking this as RTBC again, unless someone else disagrees about 'none' being the best option or if there is an issue with the patch.

Silly me, forgot to mark this as RTBC. I also just went in to test the patch a bit more and realized that there IS a global setting for how preload should work under the file display settings. I've attached a screenshot of these settings.

I really think this is ready to commit.

Can a maintainer please commit this patch to the dev version?
Thanks!!!

Patch works fine!
plse commit it...

Patch #16 works well- inspired me to make this:

https://github.com/ablank/imediaelement.module

@Poieo- Good idea :)

The Mediaelement.js library is less than optimal for Drupal, but I can port most of the features without requiring the improved lib.

Rerolled #16 against 1.2. Didn't check it against --dev.

Updated the patch in #32 to work against dev and committed. This should get ported to the D8 version as well. Updating the issue.

This is patch backported to D8 version.

This is not major.

Re-rolling patch for 8.x-1.x. Please consider commiting as this is in 7.x already.

Committed! Thank you!