Autoplay playsinline without muted not working correctly in HTML5 SDK on iOS 10

[Michael Arguin]

Hi Team,

I have been testing the latest version of the IMA3 HTML5 SDK and support of autoplay, playsinline and muted.  I have found a test case that does not work as expected.

When using playsinline autoplay WITHOUT muted, on iOS 10, I am seeing the following behavior:

1) Page loads

2) Ad request is made and first frame of ad appears to load

3) Ad times out with adPlayerError 402, VAST media file loading reached a timeout of 15 seconds.

I would expect it would work similar to playsinline without muted on iOS 10 where the user has to tap the play button to begin the ad request and playback, or at the very least the ad request is made and ad playback does not immediately begin.

I suspect the issue is because iOS tries to load the ad media, sees that it has audio, does not have the muted attribute, and pauses the ad.

Here is my test page based on one I copied from Chris Feldman with the only change being that I removed the muted attribute:

http://solutions.brightcove.com/marguin/muted/ima-sdk-samples/playsinline-autoplay.html

For reference here is the page I copied:

https://chris-feldman.github.io/v3trax/autoplay/

Please let me know if you need anything else to troubleshoot this issue.

Thank you.

Mike Arguin

[Chris Feldman (IMA SDK Team)]

Hi Michael,

The behavior that you're seeing is expected. While the SDK now supports automatic ad playback, it is not compatible with the 'autoplay' HTML5 tag. The 'autoplay' tag will start content playback, but it will not call adsManager.start(). Furthermore, the SDK currently only supports autoplay with muted ad playback. If you try to autoplay ads with volume you're going to get strange behavior like you're seeing here.

It is possible to use autoplay without the 'muted' element. Without the 'muted' element, you have to call setVolume(0) before  adsManager.start()when you want autoplay functionality. 

Let me know if you have any further questions.

Regards,

Chris Feldman
IMA SDK Team

[Chloé F]

Hi Chris,

It seems that it doesn't work anymore. Calling setVolume(0) before start() has no effect without the muted and playsinline on VPAID ads (https://rtr.innovid.com/r1.5554946ab01d97.36996823;cb=). It worked before.

Would you please look into this issue.

Thx

[Chris Feldman (IMA SDK Team)]

Hi Chloe, 

This is currently a known issue with some VPAID ads. Thank you for sharing the ad tag, it should help us to investigate the issue. I will let you know as soon as I have any new information.

Regards,

Chris Feldman

IMA SDK Team

[Chris Feldman (IMA SDK Team)]

Hi All,

This issue with setVolume(0) has now been resolved.

Regards,

Chris Feldman
IMA SDK Team