• 2 min read

1.1.5 Release - Subtitles using track, Android fix & more

By Steve Heffernan
  • Feature: Switched to track method for setting subtitles. Now works like spec.
  • Feature: Created “players” concept for defining fallbacks and fallback order
  • Fix: Android playback bug.
  • Fix: Massive reorganization of code to make easier to navigate

I’ve switched the subtitles to use the new track element defined in the HTML5 spec . You can now add subtitles by creating a track element pointing to your WebSRT subtitles source. 

<video ...>
  <track kind="subtitles" src="../demo-subtitles.srt" srclang="en-US" label="English"></track>
</video>

The closing track tag is needed, otherwise Safari thinks everything else is a child of the track, even with a self-closing track tag. Not sure why that is, but it’s kind of annoying.

Also a fix for Android playback was added. Android HTML5 video is pretty rough. The canPlayType function returns nothing on Android so VideoJS has a check to see if the source is mp4/m4v, and assumes it’ll play. Then VideoJS adds a click event to the video so it’ll play when you touch it. Also the Android will show the poster image, but no indication that it’s a video and not just an image. Hopefully this will be improved in the next Android version.

Beyond that, I did a massive reorganization of the code, so it should be easier to navigate if you’re planning to hack at it or contribute.

Download version 1.1.5

VideoJS