Flowplayer: autoPlay: false,autoBuffering: true should not display the video if a splash image is set

[phloxic]

Flowplayer has a special incantation to pause on the first frame after loading:

clip: {
  autoPlay: false,
  autoBuffering: true
}

With flashls the player gets stuck in loading state, see http://flowplayer.blacktrash.org/test/flashls.html
Can this be solved in flashls?

[mangui]

there is a missing else statement here to handle it:
https://github.com/mangui/flashls/blob/master/src/org/mangui/flowplayer/HLSStreamProvider.as#L105-L108
should not be a big deal

[mangui]

Hi @blacktrash it should work as expected now, plz check on your side
Cheers
Mangui

[phloxic]

Almost - one of the use cases is to have an image as first item in a playlist and the above incantation for the second item. This results in a so-called "playlist-based splash image". I've updated the demo - the player should stay on the image after load.
I'm aware that this is rather idiosyncratic and especially difficult with any kind of streaming protocol (for RTMP for instance this was only implemented late) - so don't worry if this is too complicated or risks to break other stuff.

[mangui]

you mean we should not show the first video frame, just fill the buffer and let the display as it was right ?

[phloxic]

If it were that simple ;-) No, without an image as first playlist item the first frame is shown: http://flowplayer.blacktrash.org/test/minimal.html - this scenario is definitely fixed by the change.
Just buffer fill and only show the screen was the RTMP behaviour for a long time; that's why I said, it might get tricky.

[mangui]

Ok i Will have a look @ rtmp provider tomorrow to see how it is handled
Cheers.
Mangui

[phloxic]

Personally I do not deem this a showstopper - if you foresee to many complications, we can document that http://flash.flowplayer.org/demos/configuration/playlist-splash.html (currently) does not work with this plugin - there's always the possibility of the html based splash setup http://flash.flowplayer.org/demos/installation/splash-image.html which imho is the better way[tm] in most scenarios.

[mangui]

it should not be a big deal to implement, if you could tell me how i could detect such conditions from flowplayer flash API perspective.

[phloxic]

I'm only familiar with the JS api I'm afraid - I'll ping a Flash developer; don't hold your breath though, we're very busy with other stuff atm, sorry.

[phloxic]

@mangui - for the time being this can be solved/hacked/worked around with Flowplayer's JavaScript api:

playlist: [{
  url: "mysplash.jpg",
  provider: "http",
  // custom property on load for splash image clip
  init: true
}, {
  url: "myhls.m3u8",
  provider: "hls",
  urlResolvers: "hls",
  autoPlay: false
  // autoBuffering: true // no effect with this hack, and unneeded with hls anyway
}],
clip: {
  onFinish: function (clip) {
    if (clip.type == "image" && !clip.index && this.getPlaylist().length > 1) {
      if (clip.init) {
        this.pause();
        clip.init = false;
      } else {
        this.play(1);
      }
    }
  }
}

Demo here: http://flowplayer.blacktrash.org/test/flashls.html

[phloxic]

Note that the above hack obviously cannot be applied to standalone embedded players, e.g. in configurations for sharing where no JS api is available.

[phloxic]

FWIW, I can't repro this anymore if I don't set autoBuffering: true, but only autoPlay: false for the video.
It diverges from the usual incantation, but I deem this acceptable (less writing ;-)).