[FFmpeg-user] Efficiently reading a remote file with ffmpeg

[Yuri Zats]

My use case requires transcoding a remote file that’s can’t be stored locally. I was hoping to use http protocol to input the file into ffmpeg. This works, but I’m observing this to be a very expensive operation, so am looking for suggestions. 

What I see is that ffmpeg starts out with a Range request “0-“ (which brings in the entire file), followed by a number of open-ended requests (no ending offset) at different positions, each of which makes the http server return the large chunks of the file again, from the starting position to the very end. 

For example, http requests for a short 10MB file look like this: 
bytes=0-   
bytes=10947419-
bytes=36-
bytes=3153008-
bytes=5876422-


Is what I’m seeing matching what people thing should be happening ? If so, is there another method that would be better for my use case. I control the server where the video file resides, so I’m flexible in what runs there.

Any help is greatly appreciated