Digital Workshop

Hi,

Some time ago I built an educational HTML5 website which uses instructional mp4 videos (H264 Advanced Video Codec). The site works fine on Windows and Apple computers and in the beginning on iPhones and iPads.
Some six month ago the video's stopped playing on the mobile Apple devices after an iOS update.
It appeared that - after the update - on mobile Apple devices video had to be triggered manually.
So I added buttons on the video pages to start , pause and stop video.
Everything worked fine for a while on all mobile devices, but recently the problem started again.
I assume that again updates for the new Apple X are to blame, because on my old iPad – which is so old it doesn’t get updates anymore – the added buttons and the videos still work.

I wonder if anyone has experienced the same problem and if there is a workaround for this issue.
I would be very much obliged if someone could help me out here.

Regards,
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There is indeed a problem with using Ipad's when running HTML5 publications. I have been trying to find a solution myself for using Ipad's due to pressure from a customer.

It would appear that Apple are doing everything they can to stop media such as video and audio being played automatically in HTML5. It's to do with them not wanting their devices you use large amounts of bandwidth on mobile networks or something! I believe that people have found workarounds in the past only to see them fail when there is a new update.

In my situation each page starts with a timeline running narration and music etc and ends with the navigation panel appearing for the user to move to the next page. This fails on Ipad's as you need a manual function to start the page sequence. The only solution I can see is to start every page with a navigation panel appearing and the forward button starting the sequence on that page and then going forward automatically to the next page at the end of the timeline. That would give the illusion of the original sequence and may work.

Any ideas on this would be greatly appreciated?

As iOS has developed, the restrictions on the video element have actually relaxed - so a 'user gesture requirement' as defined by Apple should still work. A while back I produced a cast showing how to directly interface with video from Opus to allow for full JS control. As this uses the standard .play on click, I would assume that this works. The cast is here. Probably best to build a simple prototype first:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_Tgsvg ... WEG4NdJcNt

</mack>

Hello,
I lacked the time to search for a permanent solution, but I found a temporary workaround by advising my users to install the Puffin browser on their mobile devices.
Using this browser everything in HTML5 works as it should work. In the mean time I’ll try and build a working prototype using your advice.
Thanks for thinking with me!
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Hello Mack,

I tried the solution you offered on your youtube lessons in a small prototype, but to no avail.
In windows the scripts work fine, but using safari on mobile devices nothing happens.
I'll have to stick by Puffin I'm afraid.

Regards,

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