Video is downloaded twice

[khataev]

What are you trying to do?

I want to understand why react-native-video downloads the video twice. My network inspector (mitmproxy) shows that react-native-video downloads the video twice. I observed this behaviour in the emulator, but it seems to be the same on a real device. This does not look good to me. Can someone please interpret the results I have from my network inspector?

What have you tried?

I inspected the network traffic with mitmproxy.

From the screenshots: the first time the video is fully downloaded, while there is one partial request that downloads only a small chunk and the last one is also partial, but it downloads almost the whole file.

File size does not matter (observed across different file sizes).

Just in case: these requests are sent on component load without even clicking on the play button.

Screenshots:

• https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/16a5436c-ee0d-4653-9e10-77a7bd580e37
• https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/cf750738-f4ec-4e89-ae53-c3fe2cfc6f79

Relevant code

return (
    <ViewContainer>
      <Video
            source={{
              uri: uri,
              bufferConfig: {
                minBufferMs: 4500,
                maxBufferMs: 15000,
                bufferForPlaybackMs: 4500,
                bufferForPlaybackAfterRebufferMs: 4500,
              },
            }}
            playWhenInactive={false}
            playInBackground={false}
            disableFocus={true}
            shutterColor='transparent'
            controls={true}
            controlsStyles={{
              hidePrevious: true,
              hideNext: true,
            }}
            paused
            onError={() => {
              console.warn('Video cannot be loaded');
            }}
            style={styles.videoplayer}
          />
    </ViewContainer>
  );
});

Version

v6

Platforms

Android

[TWG-AI]

Seeing two network requests for the same URL is unusual. A few possible causes:

1. HEAD + GET: ExoPlayer sends a HEAD request first for content-type detection, then a GET for the actual data — these are two requests but for different purposes.
2. Component remount: If the <Video /> unmounts and remounts (e.g. during a re-render), a second download starts.
3. Redirect: If the URL redirects, both the original and resolved URL may appear.

Could you share the full mitmproxy trace including request methods (GET/HEAD), status codes, and whether the URLs are identical or different? That will clarify which case this is.