YouTube API - Best workaround

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invide...@gmail.com

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May 31, 2014, 8:05:18 AM5/31/14
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I am trying to integrate a YouTube player in my app.

I have learnt so far that I have to use native integration where I program the player integration separately for Android and for iOS (etc.).

For the Android part, I started to put the JAR of the YouTubePlayer API from Google into my native source directory. The CD1 builder correctly produces an APK, but I am not able to get it running.

The reason is, that the YouTubePlayer API needs the YouTubePlayerView embedded in a YouTubeBaseActivity (a class extending the Android Activity class).

And here is the problem: When I get the YouTubePlayerView out of the native part of my implementation, I am not able to build a YouTubeBaseActivity on the non-native side of my app. Is there a possibility to trick around that thing?

As I expect the answer to be "no, unfortunately not": What "workaround" would be the best, most neat, technically most robust to  achieve an embedding of YouTube videos in CD1? I need to  programmatically change videos being shown, without the native playlist functionality of the YouTube API.

I do developping in this context:
NetBeans
OS X (10.9.3)

Shai Almog

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May 31, 2014, 10:53:54 AM5/31/14
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Up until now we mostly used HTML to support youtube. Chen might have an idea on that.

invide...@gmail.com

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May 31, 2014, 1:27:44 PM5/31/14
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Hello Shai,

thanks for your fast response! I would love to hear thoughts about best practices - and if they are not yet existent inside of CD1, perhaps you could give me an idea how to implement a "CD1 youtube integration jar". I would put some effort in that, but I need some directions.

For my tests right now, I tried the BrowserComponent.

On a Fujitsu M532 with Android 4.0.3 I can see the preview image of a YouTube video (which looks absolutely correct). When I start the video, I can hear the audio, but the component canvas goes black. I see a pause icon in the lower left corner of the video canvas and a "do the fullscreen" icon in the lower right.

The HTML in the component is:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <body>
    <iframe type="text/html" width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/5fhOz61QeoU?wmode=opaque" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
  </body>
</html>

If Chen could put some thoughts in here, where to go - probably also regarding a path for the CD1 community in general -, I would be very happy.

Shai Almog

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Jun 1, 2014, 2:28:39 AM6/1/14
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Hi,
according to some stack overflows this should work:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3458765/how-to-embed-a-youtube-clip-in-a-webview-on-android
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5817805/how-can-we-play-youtube-embeded-code-in-an-android-application-using-webview

But I've noticed they don't have the allowfullscreen or the wmode=opaque flags. Maybe that's affecting the result.

mzie...@invidea-media.de

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Jul 6, 2014, 2:39:24 PM7/6/14
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Hello Shai,

thanks for your hints so far.I tried around some things and found out that the android youtube integration is not very stable with older android versions like 4.0.3.

I have a webpage now with an iframe youtube javascript solution. I get that thing running on desktop browsers, on android browsers but when I use the sourcecode in CN1 WebBrowser component, then I just hear audio and get black video.

As other android (and non CN1 developers) also experience something like that, I wonder if you could tell me if the following things are considered inside CN1 (see the answer with baseURL and WebChromeClient):


Do you know about these issues and can we manipulate something like these things inside of CN1?

Thanks and regards,

+manuel-

Shai Almog

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Jul 7, 2014, 1:34:38 AM7/7/14
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Hi,
I assume you mean the lower ranked answer about hardware acceleration?
Right now its off by default for compatibility but you can use the build argument android.asyncPaint=true which should enable that.
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