Video playback lagging while buffering

[BorisHansen]

Having a problem with video in my iPad app. The video is loaded from a server into an FLVPlayback component. While the video is buffering, the video playback is extremely choppy (like 1-2 FPS), but as soon as the buffering is complete, it plays smoothly. So obviously, the buffering itself uses too many resources (I've tested both on an iPad Mini and an ancient iPad 1).

Is there any way to reduce the resource usage of the buffering process so I can start playing before buffering is complete? YouTube is able to buffer while playing the same devices, so it should be possible. The videos are pretty low quality and around 70mb, and the bufferTime is default, not that that should make a difference.

[kglad]

you can play and immediately pause your video to start it buffering.  when you've determined enough has buffered to allow smooth playback, play the video again.

[BorisHansen]

But that's not the problem. The problem is that I cannot play the video smoothly while buffering is going on. It doesn't matter how much has actually buffered. It's as if the iPad's CPU is too bogged down by the buffering to play video at the same time, but I don't understand why, since YouTube and other apps (not made by me) are obviously able to do it on the same iPads.

[kglad]

i don't see that problem, but you can always completely buffer the video so no buffering is occurring when you start the video.

[BorisHansen]

I guess that would technically be an option, but not really since the videos would take too long to buffer completely.

Does anyone know if this could be caused by a property of the video itself, or if there's a way to limit how many resources are used by the buffering process?