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Issue 870364 link

Starred by 2 users

Issue metadata

Status: WontFix
Owner:
Closed: Nov 30
Cc:
Components:
EstimatedDays: ----
NextAction: ----
OS: Android
Pri: 2
Type: Bug-Regression

Blocked on:
issue 873837

Blocking:
issue 843636



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Videos frequently don't play in Twitter Lite on Chrome Dev

Project Member Reported by kbr@chromium.org, Aug 2

Issue description

Chrome Version: 69.0.3497.9 (Official Build) dev (32-bit)
OS: Android 8.1.0; Pixel 2

What steps will reproduce the problem?
(1) Install Twitter Lite PWA on top of Chrome Dev
(2) Scroll down timeline
(3) Tap to play videos

What is the expected result?

Expect videos to play.


What happens instead?

Videos frequently get stuck displaying a slightly letterboxed first frame. It almost looks like Chrome won't play the video until the entire video is buffered.

Here's one which isn't long and which for me has repeatedly displayed just the first frame of the video. Just paste this URL into Chrome Dev on Android:

https://twitter.com/BoringEnormous/status/1024894759410847744?s=20

Here's another which displays the loading spinner for far longer than expected:

https://twitter.com/WITHIN/status/1024765587522605056?s=20

This started happening in the last week or so. There are previous known issues with videos on Twitter Lite (see  Issue 843636 ) but this seems different.

Media team: could you please triage this? Feel free to downgrade if this doesn't appear to be a severe issue or is specific to how Twitter is serving their videos, as in  Issue 843636 .

 
Labels: M-69
Note: I tried disabling enable-surfaces-for-videos in about:flags and that had no impact on the result.

Thanks for reporting, will take a look tomorrow, but pinged Twitter in the mean time.
Cc: -tguilbert@chromium.org
Owner: tguilbert@chromium.org
Status: Assigned (was: Untriaged)
=>tguilbert for tracking.
Note I haven't seen this in a few days. Fixed already on our or Twitter's side perhaps? Feel free to close as WontFix if not reproducible.

Can't reproduce on any of the test clips myself. Did you update to P?
I've had the 1st video not load once on 69.0.3497.24, and I experienced the letterboxing on both videos. Taking a deeper look.
The stalling might be  crbug.com/873837 
Cc: tmathmeyer@chromium.org
The letterboxing seems to be caused by the poster image
Blockedon: 873837
With 873837 fixed, I tried to see if this issue went away. It didn't unfortunately.

I instrumented some code, and it seems like it takes MediaPlayer up to 30s to prepare media. There is little Chrome can do about this.

I tried using an old VideoStack Android API test App to directly instantiate a MediaPlayer with the HLS manifest. The app had no problem playing an mp4, but playing an HLS file was as flaky as in Chrome.

Because this isn't the first time long prepare times have resulted in HLS bugs being filed, I reached out to 2 people on the MediaPlayer team.

I will keep this bug open until I hear back from them, but the likely resolution will be "ExternalDependency" + an Android bug number.
Labels: Videostack-HLS
Status: WontFix (was: Assigned)
It seems like Twitter moved to using mp4 instead of HLS. I can't repro this anymore (or I don't have the Twitter Lite PWA experience enable).

Closing as won't fix. Please re-open if the issue persists.

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