Page: MediaPlayerPage

[mrlacey]

I've worked on many apps that had a dedicated page responsible for playing video. Would others benefit from having this as an option?

[jamesmcroft]

Definitely see this one being useful. Would be great to build this to take advantage of all of the features available for the media controls (similar to most TV/film apps) for example, casting to another screen, CC, landscape fullscreen, and most definitely looking at newer features such as compact overlay.

[mrlacey]

@crutkas where do we stand on adding more than just the basic functionality? Taking guidance from the existing WebView page I was thinking this would be equally simple but point to docs on how to add more.

However, this approach feels like only doing half the work. We're creating something that people will almost always have to add the same things too. It would probably be better to add more than just the minimum if we can identify functionality that everyone will want or need.

My preference is, as @jamesmcroft suggests, to add a media player page which does more than just the absolute minimum. Specifics to be confirmed.

The natural extension of this argument is should we add more default functionality to the WebView Page? I've added #186 to discuss that.

[crutkas]

We should spec out what we think they should do. I think we dance a delicate balance of not enough and too much.

I think a lot of what @jamesmcroft wrote makes sense. I think what @mrlacey talked about in the webview page updates makes sense as well.

I think we just need to do it tastefully and make it useful and not overwhelming.

[mrlacey]

Thinking a little ahead, @jamesmcroft are you (or anyone) aware of any standard iconography for entering and exiting CompactOverlay mode?

[mrlacey]

There doesn't seem to be a universally accepted image for PictureInPicture yet so I guess the best bet is to copy what the Music&Video app uses

[mrlacey]

Adding a PictureInPicture button (like the Movies&TV app) would mean overriding the entire transport controls styling. This is more than I think we should be doing out of the box and so I move to not include this. If someone wanted to do this in their own app it's well documented at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/controls-and-patterns/custom-transport-controls

[mrlacey]

I have a version of this in https://github.com/Microsoft/WindowsTemplateStudio/tree/Issue144-MediaPlayer Not create a PR for it yet though as won't go in until after 1.0

[crutkas]

Matt, you are a machine. I will look at this post Build.

[ralarcon]

@mrlacey You can make the PR against the june branch if you want, using that way we can evaluate it better.

[mrlacey]

I have a PoC of this and have shown it to Clint & Michael. Will add as a branch next week when I get back from build. Will still need a few tweaks before sharing though.

[crutkas]

somewhere there is a really solid media player template. We may want to sync with the background audio guys here as well to be sure we do this properly.

[mrlacey]

I think background audio should be a separate feature. This is different to playing/streaming video

[touseefbsb]

this would be a perfect additions, also if the media xaml element is able to play all codecs that would solve a lot of problems for every media developer out there

[mrlacey]

@touseefbsb adding support for any extra codecs is probably beyond what we can do here. Expect this to work with the codecs supported by default.

[crutkas]

@touseefbsb, only support what is out of the box, we provide a framework for getting started, any other codec support would be something you'd have to add in.

The page would do stuff like compact overlay, a feature complete UX, and system media transport control.

[crutkas]

@mrlacey re: background audio, yes separate feature but i think same team owns SMTC internally.

[mrlacey]

@crutkas I ruled out compact overlay support as adding UI for it requires a lot of code to re-template the transport controls to add the extra button. This feels beyond what we should be adding by default. Maybe a candidate for an "enhanced feature"

[mrlacey]

Created an issue for adding a background audio feature at #346

[mrlacey]

Still needs:

• A reference to an official doc or samples within the generated code.
• A bit more documentation in template "info" (better description)

[mrlacey]

I think that's everything. Can check with nightly build tomorrow.

[mrlacey]

Closing as now in dev nightly and seems to be working fine.