1313391 - Move "HLS video in an Android VideoView" behind a switchboard flag

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: Audio/Video, defect)

Description

[Ritu Kothari (:ritu) (Inactive, please n-i to RyanVM, jcristau, or pascal)]

SoftVision and release management team would like "Play HLS video" feature to be disabled from Fennec 50 before we go to release channel.

Biggest  Concerns:
* bug|1301053 - A misleading error is received before playing an HLS video
* bug|1301055  - A HLS video cannot be played twice without reloading the whole page

Comment 1

[Sebastian Kaspari (:sebastian; :pocmo)]

Transforming the bug: We decided to ship this feature but we want to move it behind a switchboard flag so that we can do a staged rollout or pull the feature without shipping an app update.

Comment 2

[Sebastian Kaspari (:sebastian; :pocmo)]

@Jason: Can you add another experiment to the Kinto production server?

* name: hls-video-playback
 * buckets:
  * min: 0
  * max: 100

(This is exactly like the 'bookmark-history-menu' experiment)

Comment 3

[Sebastian Kaspari (:sebastian; :pocmo)]

Attachment: Bug 1313391 - Move HLS video playback behind a switchboard flag.

This will allow us to ship the feature to a subset of the users or pull the feature without
needing to release a new version of the app.

Review commit: https://reviewboard.mozilla.org/r/89370/diff/#index_header
See other reviews: https://reviewboard.mozilla.org/r/89370/

Comment 4

[Sebastian Kaspari (:sebastian; :pocmo)]

Comment on attachment 8805624 [details]
Bug 1313391 - Move HLS video playback behind a switchboard flag.

Approval Request Comment

[Feature/regressing bug #]: HLS video playback. We decided to ship the feature regardless of some known issues. However we want to be able to release this feature to only a subset of the users or pull the feature without needing to release a new version of the app. Switchboard allows us to do exactly this. So this patch moves the feature behind a switchboard flag check.

[User impact if declined]: Without this patch HLS playback is just enabled for all users and in case of upcoming problems we will need to make a dot release.

[Describe test coverage new/current, TreeHerder]: Local testing with flag enabled/disabled and HLS test page: https://walterebert.com/playground/video/hls/

[Risks and why]: Low risk. This just wraps the code for video playback in a switchboard flag check.

[String/UUID change made/needed]: -

Comment 5

[Jason Thomas [:jason]]

(In reply to Sebastian Kaspari (:sebastian) from comment #2)
> @Jason: Can you add another experiment to the Kinto production server?
> 
> * name: hls-video-playback
>  * buckets:
>   * min: 0
>   * max: 100
> 
> (This is exactly like the 'bookmark-history-menu' experiment)

Done.

Comment 6

[James Willcox (:snorp) ([e-mail]) (he/him)]

Comment on attachment 8805624 [details]
Bug 1313391 - Move HLS video playback behind a switchboard flag.

https://reviewboard.mozilla.org/r/89370/#review88874

Comment 7

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/ac14755f0f77
Move HLS video playback behind a switchboard flag. r=snorp

Comment 8

[Ritu Kothari (:ritu) (Inactive, please n-i to RyanVM, jcristau, or pascal)]

Comment on attachment 8805624 [details]
Bug 1313391 - Move HLS video playback behind a switchboard flag.

This is the contingency plan for 50 in case we need to turn this feature off due to quality issues when it goes to Release, Aurora51+, Beta50+

Comment 9

[Wes Kocher (:KWierso) (Not reading bugmail; email directly if needed)]

This doesn't apply cleanly to beta (or the now-merged release). Experiments.java has been moved since beta forked, and BrowserApp.java has actual conflicts with the patch.

Could we get a rebased patch for this?

Comment 10

[Wes Kocher (:KWierso) (Not reading bugmail; email directly if needed)]

https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-aurora/rev/8fb333cd1a16041cdcef16fbd06bfca007334a01

Comment 11

[Phil Ringnalda (:philor)]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/ac14755f0f77

Comment 12

[Sebastian Kaspari (:sebastian; :pocmo)]

Attachment: 1313391-hls-playback.patch

Updated patch for beta.

Comment 13

[Wes Kocher (:KWierso) (Not reading bugmail; email directly if needed)]

https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-beta/rev/fa0bf22d15e9cbb6c7acaf91f25d2a71062b0e3e
https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-release/rev/fa0bf22d15e9cbb6c7acaf91f25d2a71062b0e3e

Comment 14

[u549602]

Verified as correctly implemented on latest Beta build, 50.0b12, with switchboard experiment turned on and off. 

This issue was verified on a Nexus 7 (Android 5.1.1) and Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge (Android 6.0).

Comment 15

[u549602]

This issue was also verified in the 50.0 RC and it works as expected. Verified on a Nexus 7(Android 5.1) and on a Xiaomi mi pad 2 (Android 5.1.1)