I'm confused, what recommendation are you talking about?  Just enable simplecache on your production environment.

@tunist Well, there is clearly both interest and existing work related to videos so seems like this discussion has been a success. :)

Do you already have some kind of an idea how to proceed with the plugin?

@Matt, just enable simplecache or enable simplecache and register all CSS and JS in simplecache from within the plugins. The first indeed is easy.

@Ura, sorry to go off topic on this issue. I hope you don't mind.

@Gerard : elgg_register_js() and elgg_register_css() are used to register js/css libraries which can be easily removed / replaced via the elgg_unregister_js() and elgg_unregister_css() via another plugin.

@ura : sorry for being off topic.

@moderators : this can be moved to another thread under http://community.elgg.org/groups/profile/1161181/performance-and-scalability

@Team webgalli: I know how to unregister. The question is different and I moved it to a new topic as you recommended.

i don't really see any of this as off-topic.. no problem.

without us all sharing the code we have and communicating (ideally not via text), any ideas that we put forward may be incomplete/flawed. what i sense currently is that there is potential to extract features from all of our code and combine it into a great plugin that may belong in core some day.

i am going to be away from computers/internet from 15th/20th may - so am not able to participate until i return. i would like to, if possible, have a conference call to ascertain what is possible here. maybe 5 days is enough for all involved to look over their code again to refresh memory of the finer points?

Correction to the answer this question:

so are you saying that an instance of the the engine is loaded for every css/js request, except that due to caching schemas this rarely occurs?

Requesting a js/css file loads the Elgg engine ONLY if simplecache is disabled. If simplecache is enabled, the request will be routed through engine/handlers/cache_handler.php which does not require the whole engine to be loaded.

@juho - ok, thanks for clarifying.

i am returning to elgg here now.. this video task is around 3 in my current priority list.

i just replaced projekktor in my video plugin here, with video.js - after a tip-off from @moneya.

this player is much better than projekktor (less bugs and more plugins). see here: 

https://www.ureka.org/file/view/7369/nasa-mars-anomolies-fact-or-fiction

i still haven't configured nginx to support seeking (byte ranges?!) yet.
i have a thread open here on serverfault - if anyone has any solutions to this for me:
http://serverfault.com/questions/608218/why-are-accept-ranges-headers-not-working-with-mp4-files-in-nginx

so after much gnashing of teeth.. i found that mp4 files can be streamed and preloaded even without the Accept-Ranges header being sent... 
and that most likely the cause of me not being able to prebuffer videos is that the moov atom in the mp4 files is not at the beginning.

so i have located this php class to resolve this, which i will integrate into my code:
https://github.com/clickalicious/qt-faststart.php

is anyone here any closer to sharing their video code (via github)?