I use VLC to watch YouTube videos. This way I can avoid wasting my resources (CPU, GPU, memory) and don't have to use bloatware (YouTube in a browser).
Sometimes I also download videos, but I can't always determine if I want to save a video to a disk or not. Other problem is that I have mobile internet (stick) and sometimes it's really slow. This causes videos to stutter, which I try to avoid increasing the value of option network-caching in Ctrl + N -> Show more options -> Edit Options. Unfortunately if I set network-caching to 10 seconds, it will only download 10 seconds into the buffer, so if the connection becomes slow, the buffer will underrun and the video will stutter, while it could have downloaded 20-30 seconds when the connection was fast enough. If I set network-caching to 20-30 seconds, the initial load (playback start) becomes as slow as it annoys me, so it's kind of hell.
A solution would be: when I start playback, VLC should start downloading the video and saving it to the disk to a pre-defined folder. VLC should measure the download rate in comparison with the video bitrate and start the playback when it's safe (or when it reaches N seconds, like network-caching). Then continue downloading it, regardless what the value of network-caching is. It should download as much of the file as possible and save it to the disk. If I don't need it, i'll delete it.
VLC has a lot of options, I kind of lose among them. Can I configure VLC to work like that I described above?
If not, can you recommend me a video proxy that supports YouTube videos and works like this?
Thanks