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N
Nalexander
Inspiring
January 7, 2014
Question

Captivate 7 video playback is taken over by iPhone 5

  • January 7, 2014
  • 1 reply
  • 983 views

Hi guys,

when I thought we had it all mastered we get knocked down again.

So I finally got the multi-slide mp4 video in HTML5 format working after publishing it on most Android devices, but now my iPhone 5 ruins all this hard work.

The purpose of publishing those mp4 videos via multi-slide inside the HTML5 format of Captivate was to use Captivate's wonderful customizable playback options, so that students couldn't fast forward and skip to the end. Everything works GREAT on several browsers on Mac, PC, most Androids tablets and phones, and even iPad!! And if it wouldn't work on an Android than at least it just wouldn't work - which I would be happy to take.

But here is the bummer: iPhone 5 (I don't know about previous versions) lets the internal iPhone player take over ALL the playing options as soon as I hit play, and gives the student ALL the player options in the world, totally annihilating Captivates purpose.

Do you guys have a solution? I know you're probably going to say this is an iPhone problem, but maybe a different publishing setting? A different video setting? Anything? Please?

If you're looking for me, I'll be slamming my head against the wall...

Thanks,

Nat

This topic has been closed for replies.

1 reply

N
NalexanderAuthor
Inspiring
January 8, 2014

Here is another description for my problem:

We publish mp4 training videos as HTML5 content and have the problem that we need to restrict the player to only play/pause.

Adobe Captivate 7 works fantastic for us on almost all devices, many Androids, many browsers, and even on iPad. Captivate, after adding the video as a multi-slide video to one slide and publishing it as HTML5 content, only lets the student play and pause the video - just what we need.

But then we test it on iPhone and the iPhone's internal quicktime player recognizes the mp4 video and kicks in, gives the student all the functions they want, totally overrides the HTML5 published Captivate restricted playback options.

Is there ANY way we can get around that? Any function or box we haven't checked before publishing the HTML5 content?

We would even be happy, if the video wouldn't play on iPhone - just as long as they can't use it to fast forward to the end of the video.

Does anyone here know how to bypass the internal iPhone 5 player?

Thanks,
Nat
josephf14815057
josephf14815057
Participant
August 27, 2015

I am not sure why this has not been highlighted but I have seen very poor documentation of Captivate for iPhone, though the application makes it seem like everything works just fine and allows options of styling video on ios devices.

Unfortunately, on iPhone 5, videos which are launched through HTML5/Javascript on Safari browser always play full screen because of the screen size. An embedded Video in a Captivate course will always take over the screen, and always show all controls in iOS on Safari.

The relevant web page is here: iOS-Specific Considerations‌

The relevant Adobe documentation simply has none of this information at all, and I'm quite surprised. It's very poorly put together by a company worth $38 Billion dollars, perhaps they could afford an extra $5000 for someone to spend at least an hour to see how all the features work with iOS.

Captivate implying that you can in any way style the video playing on an iPhone is false.

Relevant quote:
Optimization for Small Screens

Currently, Safari optimizes video presentation for the smaller screen on iPhone or iPod touch by playing video using the full screen—video controls appear when the screen is touched, and the video is scaled to fit the screen in portrait or landscape mode. Video is not presented within the webpage. The height and width attributes affect only the space allotted on the webpage, and the controls attribute is ignored. This is true only for Safari on devices with small screens. On Mac OS X, Windows, and iPad, Safari plays video inline, embedded in the webpage.

Likewise, there is no way to start the video "autoplay", the play is always user-initiated.

Relevant quote:
User Control of Downloads Over Cellular Networks

In Safari on iOS (for all devices, including iPad), where the user may be on a cellular network and be charged per data unit, preload and autoplay are disabled. No data is loaded until the user initiates it. This means the JavaScript play() and load() methods are also inactive until the user initiates playback, unless the play() or load() method is triggered by user action. In other words, a user-initiated Play button works, but an onLoad="play()" event does not.

This plays the movie: <input type="button" value="Play" onclick="document.myMovie.play()">

This does nothing on iOS: <body onload="document.myMovie.play()">

Adobe should update Captivate documentation to avoid developers wasting a lot of time with ios Devices.

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