On mobile a bitvid share link opens with no user gesture, so the browser
refuses autoplay. bitvid handled that correctly -- it showed "Press play to
start the hosted video." and armed a no-stall watchdog to wait -- but the 3s
start timeout kept running underneath and fired anyway. For a video with both a
hosted URL and a magnet that meant:
Press play to start the hosted video.
Switching to WebTorrent...
The element was reset out from under the prompt the viewer was about to act on,
and the swarm (often seedless, the webseed being the very URL we just
abandoned) played nothing. Desktop usually hides this because an established
Media Engagement score lets autoplay through, so the same link plays there.
A blocked autoplay is not a stalled source. Suspend the start timeout while we
are waiting on a user gesture and let the attempt settle on its own -- it
resolves when they press play, or when a real media error or stall fires. The
guard is cleared on the `play` gesture so a genuine stall afterwards still
fails over normally.
Reproduced on an emulated phone against the reported video
(v.nostr.build/1eNLjw5el05Uc3KU.mp4, magnet with a webseed): before, statuses
end "Press play..." then "Switching to WebTorrent..." with the P2P path
entered; after, they end at "Press play..." and playback starts on tap. The new
tests fail 2/4 without the guard.
Note for future test authors: createSession() overwrites any
playbackStartTimeout passed in its options with the service's value, so a
per-session override is silently ignored -- set it on the PlaybackService
constructor or the test races the real 3s default and proves nothing.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
bitvid attached every hosted source with `videoEl.src = url`, which only plays
HLS on Safari-family browsers. Firefox 146 fails with MEDIA_ERR_SRC_NOT_SUPPORTED
(canPlayType returns ""), so every .m3u8 note -- e.g. anything published by
nostube/slidestr -- was unplayable there and the URL-health badge showed
"offline". Chrome/Brave 149 happen to play HLS natively, which is why this
looked browser-specific.
Vendor hls.js (npm run build:hls) and route HLS sources through it:
- js/services/hlsPlayback.js owns detection, engine choice and the hls.js
lifecycle. Engine choice keys off MediaSource, NOT canPlayType: Chrome
returns "maybe" for every HLS type, so a native-first branch would hang.
Native is used only when MSE is genuinely unavailable.
- The bundle is the FULL build, not hls.js/light -- light drops the alternate
audio stream controller and real ladders demux audio into an EXT-X-MEDIA
group. It is lazy-imported only when a .m3u8 is encountered, so ordinary
MP4/WebTorrent playback never pays the ~500KB.
- modalCoordinator tears the instance down first; clearing `src` alone leaves
the transmuxing worker and segment fetches running after the modal closes.
- urlHealthController probes HLS by fetching the playlist for #EXTM3U. The old
bare-<video> probe could not load it and on Chrome emitted no events at all,
burning the full timeout on every HLS card.
- HLS_PLAYBACK_START_TIMEOUT widens the 3s start window, which fired
mid-startup: the bundle, master playlist, variant playlist, init segment and
first media segment are four-plus serial round trips.
Also fixes two bugs found while verifying this:
- A stale MediaError was reported as the current failure. Teardown clears `src`
and calls load(), leaving MEDIA_ERR_SRC_NOT_SUPPORTED ("Empty src attribute")
on the element; a later watchdog fallback rendered that as "Hosted playback
failed: source not supported or blocked." over a stream that was playing
fine. Only a MediaError produced by the current attempt is surfaced now.
Sources are also bound before the watchdogs are armed, so hls.js's own
attachMedia() src swap cannot read as a playback failure.
- `audio/x-mpegurl` is a legacy alias for an HLS playlist of any kind, not an
audio-only assertion. isAudioOnlyVideoObject misfiled HLS video ladders
published with it as podcasts and dropped them from every video feed.
Verified end-to-end in Chromium, Chrome 149, Brave 149 and Firefox 146 against
a live HLS stream: Firefox goes from "No playable source found." to playing.
Rollback: stop calling attachHlsSource() and the previous `src` assignment
returns; see docs/playback-fallback.md.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
Two torrent-path robustness fixes surfaced while testing WebTorrent peering:
- streamVideo now sets announce: [...WSS_TRACKERS]. A .torrent-buffer add (Blossom companion piece-map) has an EMPTY embedded announce list, so without this it reached no tracker, found no WebRTC peers, and streamed webseed-only (looked like a stuck '1 peer'). WebTorrent merges these with any trackers already on the source.
- A forced-torrent playback now falls back to the hosted URL when the torrent DEFINITIVELY fails (e.g. a transient companion-lookup failure under relay congestion, or a dead swarm) instead of hard-erroring 'No playable source found'. Only triggers on real failure, not a slow swarm. Rollback noted inline.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <[email protected]>
A bitvid (kind-30078) video with a perfectly playable hosted URL (verified:
archive.org 200 video/mp4 with byte ranges) failed with "No playable source
found." — the video element's src was never even set.
Root cause: the hosted-URL probe (fetch HEAD, mode:no-cors) runs BEFORE src is
assigned, inside the playback-start window — but URL_PROBE_TIMEOUT_MS (4s) is
LONGER than PLAYBACK_START_TIMEOUT (3s). A slow no-cors HEAD (archive.org, and
any host that doesn't answer HEAD fast) consumed the whole start budget, the
withTimeout wrapper aborted the attempt, and the URL was never loaded. A
`<video>` element plays cross-origin URLs WITHOUT CORS anyway, so the fetch
probe was both unnecessary and actively harmful here.
Fix:
- Skip the probe entirely when there's no magnet (URL-only) — nothing to fail
over to, so the video element loads the URL directly. This is the reported
case; verified live: the video now plays (readyState 4, currentTime advancing).
- An ambiguous/error probe no longer VETOES the URL (only a definitively-read
"bad" status deprioritizes it, and even then only when a magnet fallback
exists) — the video element + watchdogs are the real arbiter.
Tests: spec-corrected the always-probe assertion to a dual-source case + added
a URL-only skip-probe test (tests/services/playbackService.test.mjs). 17 pass.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <[email protected]>
The liveness probe already tries all of a video's sources, but actual playback
only ever tried the single primary URL and then fell straight to WebTorrent. Now
playback fails over across hosted mirrors first.
- PlaybackSession builds an ordered, de-duped hostedSourceCandidates (primary URL
first, then the video's imeta `sources`; accepts string or {url} entries).
- attemptHostedPlayback takes a candidateUrl; the url-first execution loop tries
each candidate and advances to the next mirror on probe-fail/stall/timeout,
cleaning up watchdogs + resetting the <video> between candidates, only calling
WebTorrent after every hosted mirror fails.
- `sources` plumbed coordinator -> strategy -> session. Single-source videos
(no `sources`) behave exactly as before.
Tests: tests/services/playbackService_multisource.test.mjs (candidate
construction; the full async fail-over flow is covered by the existing
playbackService_order suite in CI — that mock-timers harness doesn't run in this
sandbox). ROLLBACK: revert the loop to the single attemptHostedPlayback() call
and drop the sources plumbing.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <[email protected]>
File-size decomposition (no behavior change). Move the self-contained
SimpleEventEmitter and extractWebSeedsFromMagnet (+ its WEBSEED_PARAM_KEYS and
the now-sole safeDecodeURIComponent consumer) out of playbackService.js into a
new js/services/playbackHelpers.js and import them back.
playbackService.js: 1350 -> 1274 lines (now under its original 1289 baseline).
Re-recorded the smaller baseline in check-file-size.mjs to lock the reduction.
Build + full unit suite green.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <[email protected]>
The video's hosted CDN URL was added to WebTorrent's `urlList`, but a
standalone hosted-file URL is only a valid BEP19 webseed for a SINGLE-file
torrent. For a multi-file torrent WebTorrent treats it as a base directory and
appends "<torrent name>/<file path>", producing a doubled URL that 404s on
every request — the flood seen on e.g. archive.org videos.
The CDN URL is no longer placed in urlList. It's forwarded separately as
`hostedUrlWebSeed` and attached post-metadata (handleTorrentStream) via
torrent.addWebSeed ONLY when the torrent is a single file, where the URL maps
directly to the file. Multi-file torrents get no file-pointing webseed, so no
flood. Magnet-declared `ws=` webseeds are unaffected (passed via urlList as
before). With CDN-first, dual-source videos play the CDN directly anyway, so
this only affects forced-torrent / URL-less paths.
Tests: a single-file torrent receives the hosted URL via addWebSeed; a
multi-file torrent does not. The single-file guard is mutation-verified.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <[email protected]>
Two fixes for hosted (CDN) playback that users hit on a torrent-first instance:
1. Reliability: clear crossOrigin before direct hosted playback (in
resetVideoElement and right before video.src = httpsUrl). A leftover
crossOrigin="anonymous" from a prior WebTorrent attempt on the reused
<video> forced a CORS request that CDNs / redirect targets (e.g. archive.org
storage nodes) reject, failing with MEDIA_ERR_SRC_NOT_SUPPORTED ("source not
supported or blocked"). Direct <video> playback never needs CORS, so any URL
now plays.
2. CDN-first for dual-source: when a hosted URL exists, play it first for
instant, reliable startup; WebTorrent is reserved for URL-less videos (and
explicit forcedSource: "torrent"). Previously a torrent-first instance made
dual-source videos wait on a P2P cold start before falling back to the CDN.
The torrent-first branch is now only reached without a URL, so it waits
indefinitely for peers (no plan B) rather than on a fixed timeout.
Tests: hosted playback clears crossOrigin and plays; a torrent-first instance
plays the URL first when one exists and never calls WebTorrent; URL-less videos
still use WebTorrent. Spec-corrected two playbackService_order tests that
encoded the old torrent-first-for-dual-source behavior. All mutation-verified.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <[email protected]>
When a video has no fallback URL (CDN), the playback service now waits indefinitely for peers instead of timing out after 3 seconds. This prevents premature failures for WebTorrent-only content.
Ref: `js/services/playbackService.js`
Co-authored-by: PR0M3TH3AN <[email protected]>
Introduces a race condition between the primary playback source (URL or Torrent) and a configurable timeout. If the primary source fails to reach the 'playing' state within the timeout window, the system automatically falls back to the alternative source.
- Adds `DEFAULT_PLAYBACK_START_TIMEOUT` to instance config (3000ms).
- Updates `PlaybackService` to implement timeout logic using `withTimeout` wrapper.
- Ensures proper cleanup of stalled attempts (resetting video element, destroying torrent client).
- Added `DEFAULT_PLAYBACK_SOURCE` to `config/instance-config.js` to allow choosing between "url" (default) and "torrent" priority.
- Updated `js/constants.js` to derive `URL_FIRST_ENABLED` flag from the configuration.
- Refactored `PlaybackService.execute()` in `js/services/playbackService.js` to robustly support "Torrent First" logic with fallback to URL, while maintaining "URL First" with fallback to Torrent.
- Added unit tests in `tests/services/playbackService_order.test.mjs` to verify playback order and fallback mechanics.
- Added source toggle UI in `components/video-modal.html`.
- Updated `VideoModal.js` to manage toggle visibility (only when both URL and Magnet exist), update peer/server counts, and dispatch `playback:switch-source` events.
- Updated `PlaybackService.js` to support a `forcedSource` option, allowing bypassing of the URL probe when "torrent" is forced.
- Updated `app.js` to listen for the toggle event and re-initialize playback with the forced source preference.
- Updated `tests/ui/helpers/jsdom-test-helpers.mjs` to expose necessary globals for JSDOM testing.
- Verified functionality with targeted updates and existing unit tests.
