[Due for payment 2025-03-21] [$500][HIGH] Safari - Unable to play video attachment

[m-natarajan]

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Version Number: 9.0.63-3
Reproducible in staging?: Y
Reproducible in production?: Y
If this was caught on HybridApp, is this reproducible on New Expensify Standalone?:
If this was caught during regression testing, add the test name, ID and link from TestRail:
Email or phone of affected tester (no customers):
Logs: https://stackoverflow.com/c/expensify/questions/4856
Expensify/Expensify Issue URL:
Issue reported by: @rojiphil
Slack conversation (hyperlinked to channel name): ts_external_expensify_bugs

Action Performed:

1. Sign in to an existing account
2. Navigate to a chat which has a video attachment
3. Attempt to play the video.

Expected Result:

The video should play

Actual Result:

The app crashes with Not supported error in dev environment
Unable to play the video in staging environment

Workaround:

Unknown

Platforms:

Which of our officially supported platforms is this issue occurring on?

• Android: Standalone
• Android: HybridApp
• Android: mWeb Chrome
• iOS: Standalone
• iOS: HybridApp
• iOS: mWeb Safari
• MacOS: Safari
• MacOS: Desktop

Screenshots/Videos

Add any screenshot/video evidence

attachment-play-crash.mp4

attachment-play-crash-staging.mp4

Recording.3170.mp4

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/2b502b64-83c3-4b81-bc7b-b57cf6892ab0 (Video used as attachment)

View all open jobs on GitHub

Upwork Automation - Do Not Edit

• Upwork Job URL: https://www.upwork.com/jobs/~021858504313972501020
• Upwork Job ID: 1858504313972501020
• Last Price Increase: 2025-02-19

Issue Owner

Current Issue Owner: @isabelastisser

[melvin-bot]

Triggered auto assignment to @puneetlath (Bug), see https://stackoverflow.com/c/expensify/questions/14418 for more details. Please add this bug to a GH project, as outlined in the SO.

[melvin-bot]

Job added to Upwork: https://www.upwork.com/jobs/~021858504313972501020

[melvin-bot]

Triggered auto assignment to Contributor-plus team member for initial proposal review - @hoangzinh (External)

[me-ZaidAli]

@m-natarajan can you please the video format that's causing the bug coz mp4 is working in safari

[peter-zsigmond]

Edited by proposal-police: This proposal was edited at 2024-11-24 13:13:08 UTC.

Proposal

Please re-state the problem that we are trying to solve in this issue.

A video attachment in the chat won't start playing in Safari on macOS.

What is the root cause of that problem?

Safari don't support AV1 codec playback on devices older than iPhone 15 and M3 Mac. They put a hardware decoder into the new devices in 2023, that can play these video formats, as stated here. But older devices don't support it.

There is further proof of this from caniuse.com:

The video's codec information:

caniuse.com states that Safari don't fully support it:

What changes do you think we should make in order to solve the problem?

First we have to solve the Unhandled Promise Rejection error. That happens because setStatusAsync(status) called on a video, that failed to load. So I would add a catch to this call, that handles rejections:

App/src/components/VideoPlayerContexts/PlaybackContext.tsx

Line 43 in 3ebe852

playVideoPromiseRef.current = currentVideoPlayerRef.current?.setStatusAsync(newStatus);

Second, I would add a fallback image for these situations, when a video couldn't be played. There is an onError hook on the Video component, that calls a method, when a fatal error happened, and the video couldn't be played. I would add an isError state, and render a fallback image when it's set to true.
Furthermore, we can't really find out why the video can't be played, since the browser will not give us any error message, and the Content-Type doesn't contains the codec, that would give us the ability to find out manually, if the browser supports it, so I propose to use a generic fallback image, just like with AttachmentOfflineIndicator.

Generic fallback image, when the video couldn't be played:

What alternative solutions did you explore? (Optional)

Reminder: Please use plain English, be brief and avoid jargon. Feel free to use images, charts or pseudo-code if necessary. Do not post large multi-line diffs or write walls of text. Do not create PRs unless you have been hired for this job.

[melvin-bot]

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[peter-zsigmond]

Contributor details
Your Expensify account email: zspeti02@gmail.com
Upwork Profile Link: https://www.upwork.com/freelancers/~0101f7c93c2c56ada0

[melvin-bot]

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