Replace Flowplayer with an HTML5 video player

[Aaron Wells]

All the browers that Mahara supports, now can handle HTML 5 video: http://caniuse.com/#feat=video

So, I think the time is right for us to replace Flowplayer-Flash with an HTML5 video player.

One obvious option is the Flowplayer-HTML5 verison (which has the added benefit of supporting Flash as a fallback). But I'd like to see if there are any alternatives out there, because Flowplayer's handling of their Flash plugin has not shown that they are particularly interested in keeping the open-source version of their product up to date. So if we could find a product with a more active open-source community behind it, that would be tops.

Or do we even need a separate library for HTML5 video playing? Could we just drop the video in with some tags around it?

[Aaron Wells (u-aaronw)]

Here's a good one: http://www.videojs.com/

[Aaron Wells (u-aaronw)]

Another thing that's worth considering, is that the video player block is a block plugin. If an institution really needs to support Flash video (because their IT department has locked them to IE8) they could commission a port of the Mahara 1.10 Flowplayer video block to Mahara 15.04, and use that instead.

On a multi-tenanted site you could even have both blocks installed and use the local_get_allowed_blocktypes() hook function to show one block to some users and the other block to other users.

[Kristina Hoeppner (kris-hoeppner)]

If we are rethinking the use of Flowplayer, we need to keep in mind that the internalmedia block is not there for Flowplayer alone, but also to display any other formats that certain operating systems support such as MOV, AVI etc. While we may not need Flowplayer if <video> and <audio> can be played without a plugin, we still need to make sure that the other formats can still be used.

[Mahara Bot (dev-mahara)]

Patch for "master" branch: https://reviews.mahara.org/5988

[Mahara Bot (dev-mahara)]

Patch for "master" branch: https://reviews.mahara.org/5987

[Mahara Bot (dev-mahara)]

Patch for "master" branch: https://reviews.mahara.org/6267

[Mahara Bot (dev-mahara)]

Patch for "master" branch: https://reviews.mahara.org/6291

[Mahara Bot (dev-mahara)]

Patch for "master" branch: https://reviews.mahara.org/6292

[Mahara Bot (dev-mahara)]

Patch for "master" branch: https://reviews.mahara.org/6293

[Mahara Bot (dev-mahara)]

Reviewed: https://reviews.mahara.org/5987
Committed: https://git.mahara.org/mahara/mahara/commit/892df189079b0dc92f8a63dfeb9d723ce0022b20
Submitter: Robert Lyon (<email address hidden>)
Branch: master

commit 892df189079b0dc92f8a63dfeb9d723ce0022b20
Author: Son Nguyen <email address hidden>
Date: Mon Feb 1 08:00:43 2016 +1300

Add Videojs - html5 player. Bug #1397131

Replace flow_player by html5_player

behatnotneeded

Change-Id: If067e9723857d5c596a30a52752d44a3c05040a2

[Mahara Bot (dev-mahara)]

Reviewed: https://reviews.mahara.org/6292
Committed: https://git.mahara.org/mahara/mahara/commit/8a6e0c68270d76add577018581d35197561154ba
Submitter: Robert Lyon (<email address hidden>)
Branch: master

commit 8a6e0c68270d76add577018581d35197561154ba
Author: Aaron Wells <email address hidden>
Date: Thu Mar 31 16:13:52 2016 +1300

Bug fixes and cleanup on new HTML5 media block

Bug 1397131

behatnotneeded

Change-Id: I90381d94eae44abae300082a77277b0f5b045f7d

[Mahara Bot (dev-mahara)]

Reviewed: https://reviews.mahara.org/6293
Committed: https://git.mahara.org/mahara/mahara/commit/3603d59b7d3faba7b33e8c5270e3f40254aeccaa
Submitter: Robert Lyon (<email address hidden>)
Branch: master

commit 3603d59b7d3faba7b33e8c5270e3f40254aeccaa
Author: Aaron Wells <email address hidden>
Date: Thu Mar 31 19:34:01 2016 +1300

Allow byteranges all the time

Bug 1397131: iOS needs byte ranges for media files.
We have some very old code that prohibits byte ranges
when cacheing is disabled, which in turn is inherited
from some very old code in Moodle. But it doesn't
appear to be actually necessary to *ever* prohibit
byte ranges.

behatnotneeded: Can't be tested in Behat

Change-Id: Id3bba20305204f87cee50ec664893f53cfb2337e

[Mahara Bot (dev-mahara)]

Reviewed: https://reviews.mahara.org/5988
Committed: https://git.mahara.org/mahara/mahara/commit/a7de923384e4baeaedf6ad996026c9c0b2bea53e
Submitter: Robert Lyon (<email address hidden>)
Branch: master

commit a7de923384e4baeaedf6ad996026c9c0b2bea53e
Author: Son Nguyen <email address hidden>
Date: Mon Feb 1 14:28:30 2016 +1300

Remove mahara flashplayer. Bug #1397131

behatnotneeded

Change-Id: Ia4f0652fbfb96f6154e7f29747f181f682523688

[Mahara Bot (dev-mahara)]

Reviewed: https://reviews.mahara.org/6291
Committed: https://git.mahara.org/mahara/mahara/commit/1041f7644ba4455e5fa41f58219ad568b5551dd9
Submitter: Robert Lyon (<email address hidden>)
Branch: master

commit 1041f7644ba4455e5fa41f58219ad568b5551dd9
Author: Aaron Wells <email address hidden>
Date: Thu Mar 31 16:14:11 2016 +1300

Cleanup how mediaplayers are handled by the page editor JS

Bug 1397131: Some of the old code here is preventing videojs
from working correctly.

behatnotneeded

Change-Id: Id3d24fdffc4d254019ce0b991d3865b15bec0d74

[Mahara Bot (dev-mahara)]

Patch for "master" branch: https://reviews.mahara.org/6316

[Kristina Hoeppner (kris-hoeppner)]

Thanks to ZHAW for sponsoring this feature.