Fenix: Videos should autorotate to correct orientation (portrait/landscape)

[ekager]

Why/User Benefit/User Problem

Potrait videos are increasingly common so we should be able to detect potrait/landscape and auto rotate to the correct orientation for users

What/Requirements

Needs GV to give us some information about the video before launching full screen mode, and then probably AC to expose this information to Fenix
Opened Bugzilla: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1600962

Acceptance Criteria (how do I know when I’m done?)

Potrait videos launch fullscreen in potrait orientation, landscape in landscape

[Poopooracoocoo]

There are so so many related issues across GeckoView, Focus, Fenix and reference browser. It's also worth linking the equivalent Chromium issue too.

[willfs84]

So this one will fix the Instagram story issue? (Instagram stories playing sideways, forcing users to rotate their phone every time they want to watch an Instagram story)

[lindongbin]

So this one will fix the Instagram story issue? (Instagram stories playing sideways, forcing users to rotate their phone every time they want to watch an Instagram story)

firefox preview nightly version force potrait mode on all videos...

[darkwing]

@vesta0 @liuche How much do we want to push on this GV bug? We're relying on them to help us complete this bug.

[darkwing]

@boek You may be interested in pushing this forward.

[vesta0]

@boek @darkwing this is a great feature that we should put on GV team's radar but in my opinion it is not as urgent as use cases that break user flow and user cannot do anything about it. In this case user can tilt the screen to go into landscape mode.

[Poopooracoocoo]

https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=326572 (can't believe that was 2013-2016!)

"correct orientation" is a bit unclear by the way. Here's Google's title: "Force rotation to match aspect ratio of full-screen HTML5 video on Android phones" (but even that title isn't exactly clear as it only affects the native player and not custom players such as JW Player who unfortunately turned down my request :( ). And as I said about a month ago (time goes by too quickly!), I'm pretty sure there are more issues related to this.

@vesta0 some users describe Fenix's native video player as "broken" because of this.

[vesta0]

@Poopooracoocoo that's good to know, thank you! Will try to bump it up in priority.

[Poopooracoocoo]

@vesta0 Awesomesauce! Could y'all also update the title of this?

[fluffyemily]

This is scheduled to be worked on and should be available in GeckoView 76.

[fluffyemily]

Question on underlying GV issue needs response. Question asked on 15th April 2020 by @agi90 for @pocmo .

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1600962#c8

[softvision-miralobontiu]

Verified as fixed on the latest Nightly build from 5/22 with Samsung Galaxy Tab A6 (Android 5.1.1), OnePlus 5T (Android 9), Sony Xperia Z5 Premium (Android 7.1.1), and Google Pixel (Android 10).
I've tested on several pages: youtube.com, instagram.com, vimeo.com, twitter.com, facebook.com.

[lindongbin]

not working on http://m.imomoe.in/player/7379-0-0.html

[lindongbin]

not working on https://www.cmdy5.com/play/24417.html?24417-1-1

[lindongbin]

not working on https://www.nfmovies.com/video/?47243-1-0.html

[lindongbin]

not working on iframe videos?

[fluffyemily]

The fix for this issue was handled in AC. Therefore this is not a GeckoView bug.

[ghost]

This is working for me on version 5.2.0-beta.1 and Nightly 200611 06:01 on YouTube and Twitter.

[ekager]

Yeah I believe this works on major sites I tested cnn, youtube, twitter, etc but looks like on certain sites I would guess we aren't getting the height/width metadata correctly (how I am calculating the predicted orientation). We can revisit this, but a future fix might require GV work.

[ghost]

It happens randomly but I have experienced it on YouTube, the videos most of the time auto-rotate to landscape mode ( as most of the YouTube videos are on the channels I have subscribed to) but occasionally the videos don't auto-rotate/go landscape when the full-screen icon is clicked no matter how many time I click the button. The only way to make that particular video auto-rotate/go landscape is to reload the page. Why do you think it might be happening?

Device: Motorola One Power, Android 10.
Fenix: 5.2.0-beta.1 and Nightly 200614 06:01.

[liuche]

@ekager will do a quick investigation and ask GV if we need more GV work.

[ekager]

Okay interesting - it's a slightly different issue than I was expecting. We are getting the height and width metadata, but we aren't getting the onFullscreenChange callback that triggers the orientation code.

I filed https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1647522 with the GV team.

[ghost]

@ekager are you talking to me? Or just replying to this issue's thread.

[ekager]

Just updating this thread generally about those above links never working. Still not sure about the youtube videos intermittently not rotating, but it's quite possibly related.

[fschneidereit]

Is there a way to turn off this auto-rotation happiness? Since the update to the new app version (v79), YouTube videos with a landscape aspect ratio seem to be locked to landscape mode, but sometimes I prefer to watch them in portrait mode anyways. One use case, for example, is playing a video in the background while doing something else, so frame size is not that important, and it can save battery life on OLED screens. I think that full screen mode should respect the current rotation of the device rather than force-overriding it with what it thinks is best for video display. If I'm holding my device in portrait orientation, there's a reason for it. I see the value in auto-rotation, but at least make it optional.

[karlcow]

Another variant https://github.com/webcompat/web-bugs/issues/62199