Relayed media can carry 2-4 byte tracks (video, audio): yt-dlp picks a
split pair when no single-file format exists (h264 first), the source
channel serves each track, the server keeps a buffer per track (budget
split by size, 8 MiB floor) and viewers open an mpv edl:// of the track
URLs. Expired URLs re-resolve once for all tracks. Upstream GETs are cut
into <= http_chunk_size (10 MiB) ranges: YouTube throttles larger ones.
Live streams and DRM are refused; HLS/DASH pieces are a follow-up.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Viewers who cannot reach the media get it through the server: a file on
any member's computer, a link passed on by a member ("Through me") or
fetched by the server ("Server fetches it", password-protected servers
only), and Jellyfin items for guests without an account, sourced by
whoever put them up with their own sign-in (or a pasted link's key),
which never leaves their machine. Fixes guests on a dedicated server
without a Jellyfin login being blocked.
The source dials /r/.../source (works behind NAT) and answers pulls with
an adaptive in-flight window (2 x rate x min RTT, 256 KiB..8 MiB). The
server keeps a memory-only buffer of 1 MiB slices sized like a viewer's
mpv buffer (pinned head/tail, 64 MiB back, 256 MiB ahead), fills it with
one sequential pull at a time (blocked viewers first, newest request
only), fetches nothing while nobody watches through it, and drops it on
the next swap or stop. Measured with mpv through shaped links
(tool/relay_e2e.dart): 400 Mbit/s seeks ~0.03 s; 40 Mbit/s no stalls,
3 viewers cost the source ~1x the bytes.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>