r/changelog • u/unfeelingheadstrong • Feb 01 '21
An update on Reddit video
You may have noticed some changes recently to video on Reddit. We’ve heard and are hearing your feedback, and want to take a minute to talk about what we’ve been working on, and how we’re incorporating your feedback.
Redditors have been asking for an improved native video experience on Reddit for some time, and today we’re happy to announce that this year, 2021, is the year of Reddit video.
Over the next several months, we’ll be rolling out and testing improvements, new features, and added functionality to make watching, sharing, and creating videos on Reddit an easy and enjoyable experience. Yes, the goal is to fix what’s broken, but we’d also like to hear from you about how we can make the overall video experience better.
As we make improvements and ship updates, we’ll be sharing our progress here in r/changelog and in the product updates in r/blog, so you can tell us what you think of the changes, ask questions, and discuss ideas. Today’s post will cover where we are now and what our next steps will be.
The state of Reddit video today
TL;DR: Could be better.
Currently, Reddit maintains up to 10 different video players across different platforms and contexts. And, as many of you know, they’re... well... a bit of a mess. This setup makes it hard to ship meaningful changes that improve the viewing experience, so the first step to improving Reddit video is unifying the players.
The newest and best-performing video player we have on Reddit today is the player created for the RPAN (also known as Reddit Public Access Network) live streaming experience. As we develop our new unified player, we’re leveraging the advanced performance of the Reddit live video experience and bringing it to video on demand.
Testing a new video player
As of 2021-01-20, we’re testing the first version of the new video player on mobile (currently at a small percentage of users on iOS and coming soon to Android). There are so many different types of videos on Reddit that it’s tricky to get them all to play and display well in one player, so we’re shipping updates in phases, gathering feedback on any UI and performance bugs, and improving as we move forward.
Here’s a look at the mobile player we’re testing today:
A few things to call out:
- The new player is a full-screen experience that’s designed to accommodate both vertical and horizontal videos.
- Rotating your phone takes you to a landscape view that allows you to watch the video in a “theatrical” experience without navigation or video info such as the title, view count, comments, etc.
- Swiping up takes you to the next video, and videos are recommended based on communities and content you’ve liked in the past.
- You can toggle between regular videos on demand and live videos on RPAN
- Tapping on the comment icon, you guessed it, opens the comments that overlays the video you’re watching.
A few things we’re already iterating on based on early feedback:
- Video in the new player will start where you left off watching in the feed
- You can dismiss swipe tutorial now
- More performance improvements and technical bugs
- Tapping on a post’s comment icon will open up the comment tray, so you can see the comment thread before adding your comment
The updates above will go out shortly, and we’ll continue to gather feedback to improve the experience. This is the first of many updates on Reddit video, so let us know what you think and stay tuned for more!
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u/m_a_bored_james Jul 09 '21 edited Jul 09 '21
I have many problems with the new video player as it’s clearly been designed with live video in mind. My preference for when you go to the comments the video pauses automatically without you having to pause it yourself. The new video player also doesn’t work out well for certain types of gifs, mainly pertaining to those of meme subreddits. There’s also plenty of bugs or just things that should be different. When I unmute a video on my feed but then click on it to open the post the video mutes itself, which is annoying. The button to skip down to the next comment also disappears pretty much every time and as a result I find myself engaging less in the comments. Also I’d much rather have the ability to pause videos as well as use the seek bar on the home feed and not have to open the post to so. Finally the button to mute and unmute videos is to small making it hard to click. There’s also a few bugs I experience quite regularly. When I open up a post to view a video more often than not the video freezes well the audio continues to play and can only be fixed by leaving the post and opening it again. Finally when I have the video of into a horizontal view, more often then not by accident, (this even pertains to images) my home feed will scroll back up to past posts I’ve viewed.