New video player rolling out today

@alpha_bit said:

Hey @rorie thanks for working with the community on this! Curious as to the progress of being able to "continue where left off" is at?

Also, layout is a tad wonky on w11/10, the time display is slightly weird, like the image

Thanks again for your help! I'm sure there's a bunch to consider right now.

I don't have an ETA on the continuing where left off feature, unfortunately. Lots of stuff going on but might take some time to restore it, if it's possible.

Just want to add my name to the "continue where left off" camp. It was an extremely helpful feature and is sorely missed, especially with how long GB videos have always been.

Ditto to the "continue where left off" gang

I completely understand why the video player was switched out and the situation the staff finds itself in, and I feel for the engineers who now have to field a lot of new requests for our weird but awesome little corner of the internet.

That said, just to add a comment to the pile in case it helps sway The Powers That Be to prioritize some fixes, the Fandom player was very clearly not designed or developed with long (especially hour-plus) videos in mind. The way it doesn't let you scrub through an entire video when you load it is miserable, and as others have noted, not being able to continue where you left off is a really disappointing loss if you can't watch a three hour Bombcast all in one day.

Honestly, even just being able to more reliably and intentionally select the YouTube player would help. Obviously I could just go straight to YouTube, but then I've gotta deal with the mid-roll ads.

Fingers crossed that the engineering team is given the time to look into this stuff and can figure it out.

Editing to add: Big thanks to you, Rorie, for sifting through all this stuff and passing the info on.

@rorie

I'm not sure I'm the only pervert out there that still uses this but I use the Giant Bomb App on Xbox.

About a week ago, probably since this update, any new videos that show up will not play, it shows error message, "Error: Unsupported video type or invalid file path" - Old videos will still play on the app, but new videos do not play.

Is this something that can be fixed or are we SOL on this issue?

Thank you 🙏

(Looking back on this thread it seems like it might apply to this, so sorry if I'm repeating information)

Can you explain this a bit more? I seem to be able to scrub through entire videos as soon as a video page loads.

+1 on the RSS feed going haywire, have a NAS setup to download/sort videos into folders by filename.

The last 6 came in with ~42 copies of the file (same filesize too) and all random numbers/letters.

@rorie: You know what? This might be an iPad/iOS specific thing, which could be interesting. Because I just went to get a screenshot on my desktop computer and I was indeed able to scrub through just fine.

When watching stuff on my iPad (using Safari, latest iOS), I'll pull up a video and it acts like it only loads it in chunks. I can scrub forward a few minutes, then the bar extends, then I'll scrub forward a few more minutes, and the bar extends again... For a really long video it can take forever to get to, say, the middle.

I can try to grab a screen recording if that would be helpful. Just tell me where to send it.

For me the lack of the "fill browser" feature is the biggest downgrade, I used that on pretty much every video I watched on the site. I really hope that comes back soon enough.

Still occurring, here's some pictures

Gallery

I've also noticed some videos are missing download quality options, not sure if it's related to what's going on with the video player or not. For example, Grubbsy 3D - Part 7 is missing the HD and Medium options and We Talk Over: Nintendo Direct 02/08/23 is missing the HD option.

I'm having the same issue. Watching old videos is fine but anything since the new video player was rolled out is impossible to play through the app on Xbox. I know it is an unofficial app so if a fix isn't possible I completely understand.

I too use the Xbox app and am having the same issues. Will be really bummed out if the new video player breaks the app completely. I never watch videos on my computer. I can always watch the free stuff on YouTube, even though the ad breaks every 5 minutes is a nightmare, but if premium videos are limited to only being viewable on my computer, I may never be able to watch.

Yup same here. Used it practically every day and now I'm getting the unsupported video type message. Also some recent videos that are on the site aren't even visible in the app. Hope it's something that can be fixed soon.

Like everyone else, the resume and fill browser options being missing are huge losses.

The other issue, and I haven't seen anyone else report it yet, is that the Roku app no longer loads videos. You can view videos (many have 0:00:00 for their time) and try to play them, but the spinner gets to 13% and never loads past that.

Sorry for all the issues yall! Trying to collate all of these into a spreadsheet for the engineers. I cannot guarantee an ETA on fixes for all of these but we're working on it.

not sure if its been mentioned yet but for me aside from the known issues mentioned in the community spotlight if i'm fullscreen and a video finishes i have to hit esc and fully reload the page cause it doesn't let me right click to exit full screen the way other players do and the video itself locks up without being able to hit a replay/restart video button ... its a pain cause with the exception of the podcast i usually watch videos in bed n usually finish them when i get up or the next day.

The new video player doesn't save my spot in the video and it starts with the sound off.

For me, the video player layout is pretty busted. Here is what I see:

Link

The frame is so tiny compared to the page width. When I click the play button, it does work, but in that tiny frame. However, none of the drop-downs below the video work.

These are my specs

• OS: Windows 10 Build 19045
• Browser: Firefox 109.0.1
• Display Resolution: 3840x2160
• Display Scaling: 300%

I thought maybe it was just Firefox, but it's the same in Chrome and Edge for me. I have ad block disabled for the site.

I'm seeing a bunch of errors in the browser console, but I'm not sure if or how you'd want me to share those.

EDIT: Whatever issue I was having at this time seems to be fixed as I'm checking several hours later.

As briefly mentioned above, there have been quite a few recent videos that are showing on the site (and are playable) but aren't showing up on apps like Video Bomb (not previous issues like this at all).

Just something to bear in mind!

It looks like none of the premium download RSS feeds have updated since this entry:

<title>We Got a PSVR2!</title>

...

<pubDate>Thu, 16 Feb 2023 05:00:00 PDT</pubDate>

So all the videos from yesterday are missing:

• Game Mess Mornings 02/16/23
• Voicemail Dump Truck 57
• Quick Look: Like a Dragon: Ishin!

Yay, new video player day! Can't wait to see what the cool kids have come up with this time around, bring on the popcorn!

@windex: Hey apologies for this, I was out a bit last week but I'll try to see what's going on here.

Yeah, I noticed this too. This is still an ongoing issue—all videos (Premium or Free) are stuck in "Processing..." so nothing can be downloaded. Audio streams can be downloaded only. I believe this is how the Apple TV apps grabbed files, which is why they've been busted for a few weeks now.

So no downloaded even to my own NAS to watch externally. It's either YouTube at this point (buncha ads) or watch it in the web player (not really practical if you wanna just pop open an app on the TV).

I know you guys are a little thin, but hopefully this can get sorted out—it would restore a lot of app functionality and convenience!

I'm seeing this as well. Not entirely sure what's causing it but I'll see if anyone can kick the processor.

This new player is awful. Terrible decision to roll this out in its current state and not even give option of using older player. You can't resume videos which is a core feature this site is designed around due to the lengthy content it puts out. Hope it gets fixed soon.

Seems like there has been one change since I've been checking in. The videos I've started on the site now show the played bar beneath them, it's full which is wrong and they don't show up in Continue Watching (presumably because the site thinks I've finished them) but it seems like some part of this is tracking my activity.

@lateralusjambi said:

This looks so much like one of those robot posts that just summarizes/repeats what was said earlier in the thread.

Seems like whatever update happened since my last post above now Premium Content doesn't render at all. Hear audio but no video. I'm on latest Chrome. Try these links and see:

https://www.giantbomb.com/shows/a-holiday-stocking-stuffer/2970-22068/premium-video

https://www.giantbomb.com/shows/unprofessional-fridays-012513/2970-14096

I'm trying to watch Choose Our Own Adventure!: 10/20/2015 (Life is Strange) and I'm getting error 232500 with the new player.

That specific video has been kinda broken for a few years now. The HD version in the CMS is somehow corrupted (high and other qualities work fine), and with the new player you can't switch quality settings so you currently can't watch it using the site player since it seems to be trying to play the HD file. My workaround when I went to watch it was to use the download dropdown and pick high, which would open it in a different tab. That video is also on Youtube, which they appear to have just readded the ability to switch between that and the site player so you can watch it from the site on Youtube again.

@rorie said:

@alpha_bit said:

Hey @rorie thanks for working with the community on this! Curious as to the progress of being able to "continue where left off" is at?

Also, layout is a tad wonky on w11/10, the time display is slightly weird, like the image

Thanks again for your help! I'm sure there's a bunch to consider right now.

I don't have an ETA on the continuing where left off feature, unfortunately. Lots of stuff going on but might take some time to restore it, if it's possible.

Any new news about this in the past month?

@alpha_bit said:

@rorie said:

@alpha_bit said:

Hey @rorie thanks for working with the community on this! Curious as to the progress of being able to "continue where left off" is at?

Also, layout is a tad wonky on w11/10, the time display is slightly weird, like the image

Thanks again for your help! I'm sure there's a bunch to consider right now.

I don't have an ETA on the continuing where left off feature, unfortunately. Lots of stuff going on but might take some time to restore it, if it's possible.

Any new news about this in the past month?

Hey it is still on the docket, as far as I know! Unfortunately TSA work from the acquisition has taken the priority of most of the engineering team for a while now.

@rorie: got it, thanks Rorie!

@admiralstupid: Which is funny, because the archive's the only reason I'm still subscribed.

Rolling out a player that is unable to play old content followed by Rorie leaving is not a good look. Think it's time I start taking archive seriously and download the stuff I care about before it's gone. I don't think these things happen unless they either A) are about to close the site or B) really, really don't care about the archive itself and will let it further slide into disarray until links are dead or whatever else.

Don't mean to be doom and gloom but it just feels kind of obvious at this point. But also hoping gives me and others the motivation to take archival effort seriously and stop putting off. I don't doubt the crew itself would love to archive and share it all -- Vinny even said he had backups of everything. But probably legal reasons that prevent them as employees so up to community.

I really hope continue where you left off is fixed asap. Why post any videos to the site over a couple minutes long if it doesn’t have continue where you left off? When a video gets stuck you are forced to refresh and lose your spot. To say it wasn’t at the top of the priority list when a majority of the content is video is a bummer.

Noticed that a Back to Youtube button has been added which seems to work. All the other video player bugs still happening but at least you can easily go back to the Youtube player for any videos that have YT versions.

Checking back a month later, these are still issues for me:

• Videos still start muted.
• Clicking most of the bottom controls also pauses the video. Because of the above issue, I always click the volume icon to unmute and thus also pauses the video. It does not unpause the video when paused, though, so it's not like it's detecting the normal click that does both. The only control it doesn't do this for is the play/pause button.
• The lack of auto-resume is such a huge annoyance that it is making me not want to use the GB player at all. However, I have to for Premium videos. I don't typically watch a whole feature in one sitting, and if I keep the video paused for an extended period it gets an error when I come back. That part is not a new issue, so I am used to refreshing and resuming which I keep forgetting doesn't work.

@dtoast is handling tickets and I am under the impression they have refiled all of the ones Rorie filled out prior to him leaving. That said, feel free to ping them in the future when you notice something new.

Hey @rorie

So a new issue has now popped up with chrome browsers. Is anyone else reporting that the new video player is back to not playing anymore? I can only choose download options for most new videos since about Tuesday this week.

Any insight?

Windows 11, Chrome

Rorie left @alpha_bit

@heavyweather: Yeah, I wasn't sure when that was happening. Who's the community manager now?

that would be @dtoast !

@rorie:

What a gentleman! Thanks Rorie. Hello @dtoast! Any info about what's going on with the video player, per question above? Thanks and welcome to the community!