iOS loads a maximum of 16 videos then gives a black display

Hello,
Here a strange bug with Hype on iOS. Test and source file here:
http://www.ill.eu/instruments-support/computing-for-science/people/alain-filhol/development/html5/ios-video-bug/

When a Hype project makes more than 16 calls to video elements (either all the same or differents):

  • macOS : all videos will play
  • iOS: only the 16 first will play. The 17th and higher will show a dark screen.

16 = one byte : Does this means that a one byte index still exist somewhere ?
The post “Videos stop loading after visiting many scenes” does not quote the fact that the problem occurs for the exact number of 16 videos.

Is this a known bug ?
Any suggestion for a workaround ?

Iit may be to do with memory allocation.

You may want to contact the OP of the other thread to see if they solved it

I forgot to mention that there is no such problem with Android, therefore there is no reason for such a limitation.
Furthermore, if you call the same video 16 times, you should not allocate 16 times the memory.
Yes I will try to contact the OP of the other thread.
Thank you.

There could be if Apple set it for some reason.

I am doing some tests here, will also let you know what/if I find anything..

So the only way so far I can get it to work is by adding a Rect and putting the video tags etc inside.
I then make it a persistent Symbol across all scenes.

I then use JS to load the Video dynamically by setting the videos src attribute on scene loads.

Hi there,

I’m the poster of “Videos stop loading after visiting many scenes”.
Our project has 15 videos. All videos are in persitent symbols.
Playing video’s is triggered with JS, not autoplaying.

We did extensive testing on this and it appears to be a memory issue:
-playing more than 15 video’s triggered the behaviour
-also, loading scenes containing the videos triggered the behaviour after about 30 scenes, even if the video’s were not playing.
-Going back and forth between 2 scenes containing video also triggered the behaviour after 30 accumalative scene loads

We were not able to fix the issue.

In the end this was our workaround:
-a scene-counter (for mobile only) that reloads the whole project to the current scene after 30 scenes or 14 video-plays
-“create offline application cache” is used, so that reloading times arre acceptable.

Hope that helps (a bit).

1 Like

I went back to our project and updated my post above with more detailed info.

I think I found a workaround :slight_smile:

  • First of all I create an object video using Hype preset
  • Gives an unique ID to the video object
  • transform it as a persistant symbol and copy it on all the scenes I need it
  • Create a function to replace the source attribut of the video object on scene load.

It seams to work on iPad and iPhone …
here is the code :

var video = hypeDocument.getElementById("film");

//get scene name
var scenename = hypeDocument.currentSceneName();
var filmname = "...";

switch (scenename)
{
case "01":
filmname="Video65.mp4";
break;
case "02":
filmname="Video70.mp4";
break;
case "03":
filmname="Video73.mp4";
break;
case "16":
filmname="Video76.mp4";
break;
case "17":
filmname="Video70.mp4";
break;

}

video.src='${resourcesFolderName}/' + filmname;
video.play();
1 Like

Her is the url :
http://qtbridge.com/Download/ILL/bugvideo4/bugvideo4.html

Yep it does..[quote="MarkHunte, post:5, topic:9541, full:true"]
So the only way so far I can get it to work is by adding a Rect and putting the video tags etc inside.I then make it a persistent Symbol across all scenes.

I then use JS to load the Video dynamically by setting the videos src attribute on scene loads.
[/quote]

:grin:

I like the switch usage.

unfortunately it does not work with IE.

Together with Francis we performed the following test of his workaround:

  • iOS 10 - Safari, Chrome, Firefox --> Okay
  • Android 4 - FireFox —> Okay
  • Android 5 (Intel Smartphone) FireFox --> Okay but the autostart does not work
  • Android 6 - FireFox --> Okay
  • Android 6 - Chrome --> Okay
  • Windows 7 - FireFox, Chrome —> Okay
  • Windows 7 - Internet Explorer 8 32 ou 64bits —> only the 1st video works, white screen for the others
  • Windows 11 - Explorer 11, Edge, Firefox, Opera --> Okay

In other words, the bug is probably in Hype.
We shall fill a bug report I guess.

Sorry, Windows 10… not 11

I am not convinced the initial bug is in Hype if that is what you are saying.
I have seen the same complaint from people creating Apps for iOS using Xcode and the Apple APIs for video in Objective - c and Swift. i.e not webkit or HTML

This seems to be an IOS issue.

May be, but this bug appears using internal code of Hype.
May be Hype does not purge from memory instance of video when you move from one scene to another one, if this is true we have too many instances of video object on a single HTML page, and there’s surely a limitation in iOs about numbers of video you can have on a single page.

You may be right in why this is happening in Hype projects.
More a behaviour issue than a bug though. I just did a test of a page made manually outside of Hype. The page had 18 video elements pointing to 1 and the same video. The last two do not load.

There are two workarounds . The one we tested and @willemcc illemcc

In all my days I haven't seen anything like this -- it does appear to be a bug

Probably in iOS, but we can easily protect against this bug to keep people from hitting it. What I think is happening here is that something pertaining to video elements, iOS, and memory limits is keeping the 17th video from loading. This is likely not part of the webkit team's test suite! Usually I see these types of bugs in iBooks' built-in HTML viewer.

I got your bug report, thanks @Francis

Thank you for your answer.
There are now two options for the Hype animations we published online (see below) just before discovering the problem with iOS:

  • either we wait for an upgrade of Hype if this is reasonably fast enough
  • or we ask for a budget for implementing the workaround proposed by @Francis.
    What is the expected delay for a correction of the bug?

https://www.ill.eu/about/movies/animations/instrument-animations/small-angle-scattering-instrument/
https://www.ill.eu/about0/movies/animations/instrument-animations/time-of-flight-spectrometer/

Ok tu me tiens au courant.

F.

I tested the last release of Hype but unfortunately the bug remains the same. As I wrote in my previous post I’ve found a workaround : only use one instance of a global video player and use javascript to replace the source attribut of the video object on scene load.
Can we except a correction soon ?
Thanks