How does video rewind work in YouTube and regular Media Center systems?

Question

Programming

Tell me how video rewind works in YouTube, for example, or AIMP,
does it somehow depend on the video format?
Do I understand correctly that at the beginning of the video file there is some kind of structure that indicates the offset in the file in time,
well, if it’s rude, for example, if you need to show a video with the Fifth minute, is it sewn up in this line where to start?
Well, or just share information on how it's all implemented on the web and on the desktop

Answer 1

If the data is sent via http, then pseudo-streaming
is probably used. For downloading a file with an offset, there are range headers .
If streaming - then there are different protocols . (not all of them are on the wiki)
In the general case, the client (player) can make a correct request (with the necessary headers or request parameters), and the broadcast server can return a file with the necessary offset.
And yes, some metadata is often recorded at the beginning of the file - the total duration of the video, bitrate, information about codecs, etc.