Playing a video meant asking the server to re-encode it, always. That
decision was made nowhere and written down nowhere, so whoever needed it
re-derived it downstream — the player worked out whether it had been handed
a playlist by looking for ".m3u8" in the URL, in two places. A viewer paid
for a transcode of a file their device could have played untouched, and the
app could not tell them which it was.
One negotiation now produces one self-describing StreamSelection — direct
play, remux or transcode; over a playlist, a plain HTTP file, or a local one
— and every renderer consumes that same answer.
Measured against the development server (Jellyfin 10.11.5), 400 items
sampled for codec mix and 40 put through a real PlaybackInfo negotiation
per profile:
Linux / WebKitGTK (h264 only, 2ch) 3/40 — 7% direct play
Android / ExoPlayer (hevc, ac3/eac3, 6ch) 34/40 — 85% direct play
The library is ~80% hevc, which is why the two diverge so hard. The payoff
is overwhelmingly Android, where 85% of plays were starting a transcode
nobody needed. Linux stays near 7% until libmpv decodes the picture — the
h264-only profile is a WebKitGTK constraint, not a JellyTau choice.
DR-219 StreamSelection: url + tagged Transport (hls/progressive/localFile)
+ PlaybackKind (directPlay/directStream/transcode) + the negotiated
rendition + this source's ladder + a needs_transcoding flag derived
in Rust so the rule is answered once. Both enums are serde-tagged
so the frontend matches a discriminant, not a substring. The paths
that never negotiate get the same shape from Rust rather than
assembling one — media_local_selection for a downloaded file,
LiveStreamInfo.transport for a live channel — so there is no second
place where a transport is decided.
DR-220 The ceiling becomes two levels: a durable device default (Settings,
persisted) and a per-playback override the in-player picker sets.
The picker had called itself a "this film, this connection" control
since it was written but wrote the process-wide default, so dropping
one awkward film to 2 Mbps silently capped every video played
afterwards for the rest of the process, with Settings still showing
the old value. The override is cleared whenever playback moves to a
new item, which stops it surviving into an autoplayed next episode.
effective_streaming_quality() is the single resolution point.
DR-221 The quality picker is filled from what this media source can offer.
Rust marks a rung exceeds_source when its ceiling is at or above the
source's own bitrate — such a rung is another way to spell Original
— and the frontend does not draw those. Original is never marked; a
source whose bitrate the server does not report marks nothing, which
keeps every rung offered.
DR-222 Direct play and direct stream are negotiated, with two client-side
overrides on top because the server's answer is right about the file
and wrong about what this app will do with it: undecodable audio
(Jellyfin 10.11.5 honours a DirectPlayProfile's container and video
codec but ignores its audio codec, so it offers direct play for an
E-AC-3 track the webview renders in silence) and a viewer-pinned
audio track the file does not default to. A direct stream is a remux
and is deliberately not counted as transcoding.
DR-223 Dropped on measurement, not deferred. A master playlist from this
server carries exactly one EXT-X-STREAM-INF: Jellyfin builds it from
the single rendition the request asked for rather than publishing a
ladder. So there is no adaptation for hls.js to be preserving and
none mpv would lose — the claim that there was, in
playback-backend-unification.md, does not hold. Recorded rather than
deleted because it is a measurement: a server that does publish a
ladder would change the answer.
DR-224 Every backend consumes the same selection. The queue item carries
the transport, so player_seek_video picks its seek strategy from the
backend's decision instead of the last stream_url.contains(".m3u8")
in the codebase. Items queued by a path that never negotiated carry
None and fall back to needs_transcoding, which is exact rather than
a guess because every transcode this app requests is HLS (DR-140).
The frontend loader decision moves to streamTransport.ts so it can be
tested: the two cases that pin it are the ones that failed against the old
implementation — a progressive stream whose URL contains ".m3u8" must not
get an HLS loader, and an HLS stream whose URL contains none must.
Also verified the URL the direct-play branch builds actually serves playable
bytes: 206, video/mp4, valid ISO-BMFF, and a mid-file range works, so
seeking a direct play works.
The spec is folded into docs/architecture/{01,02,03} and deleted, per the
rule that docs/specs holds only work that has not shipped. DR-121 leaves
read-through-media-cache.md with a pointer; that spec keeps its capture half.
Not verified: real playback on a device. Direct play changes what actually
gets played, and neither fixtures nor curl prove the WebKitGTK and ExoPlayer
paths render it.
Twelve requirements were marked Done in docs/requirements.md with zero TRACES
anywhere in the tree. The features work — the tags were simply never written —
so the matrix over-reported on exactly the requirements a reviewer would most
want to verify. Each is now tagged at the code that actually implements it:
- JA-006 / JA-009 / JA-013 / JA-014 / JA-015 / JA-018 and IR-022 / IR-024 at
their Jellyfin call sites in repository/online.rs (search, get_item's
MediaStreams/People fields, Items/Resume, Shows/NextUp, FavoriteItems DELETE,
get_person/get_items_by_person), plus the commands that expose them.
- UR-006 / IR-006 across the lockscreen spine: JellyTauPlaybackService (the
MediaSessionCompat owner), the nativeOnMediaCommand JNI intake, and
LockscreenMetadata / update_lockscreen_metadata.
- IR-008 at both audio-focus mechanisms — ExoPlayer-managed for audio, the
manual AudioFocusRequest listener for video — and at the media-type string
that chooses between them.
- UR-037 (with DR-042, also untraced) on the video-library poster grid:
LibraryGrid, MediaCard, and the tv/movies routes.
Resolve contradictory statuses across layers, evidence first:
- IR-018/IR-019 were Planned under Done URs because they were scoped to libmpv.
MpvBackend is the audio-only backend and overrides neither
set_subtitle_track nor set_audio_track — the trait's not_implemented()
default still stands — so UR-020/UR-021 are met by ExoPlayer and by the
HTML5 <video> path instead. Both IRs are re-scoped to those backends and
marked Done; IT-008/IT-009 and the stale @req-planned markers in backend.rs
follow.
- IR-005 (MPRIS) stays Planned: there is no MPRIS/D-Bus code or dependency in
the project and update_lockscreen_metadata is a no-op off Android. UR-006 is
corrected to Done (Android) rather than the IR being marked Done.
- A note under the IR table records where a UR is met by a different mechanism
than its IR anticipated.
Define the two dangling IDs the source already referenced: DR-189 (the control
bar never auto-hid on a touchscreen, because its timer was armed only from
onmousemove) and UT-188 (its rule test). The live-denominator assertion in
extract-traces.test.ts moves 187/330 to 188/331 accordingly.
Traced requirements 444 to 459; IR coverage 19/32 to 25/32.
Adds a 10-band graphic equalizer to AudioSettings (enabled flag +
per-band dB gains, normalised to 10 entries and clamped to range).
Presets return gain curves; the settings page gains EQ UI. libmpv
applies the filter on Linux (Android parity pending). Old persisted
settings without EQ fields load as disabled + flat.
Also includes the requirements/traceability/ux-flows doc updates for
this feature and the home long-press routing (UR-058/DR-087).
TRACES: UR-027 | IR-020, DR-030 | UT-079, UT-080, UT-081, UT-082
Rust: PlayerMediaItem and MergedMediaItem gain image_id (dual-carry),
populated from primary_image_tag at every construction/conversion site.
Regenerated bindings.
Frontend: all catalog + player + merged readers now use imageId. The
NowPlayingItem->MediaItem bridge (player.ts) properly maps the remote
session's Jellyfin fields (Type, runTimeTicks, primaryImageTag) onto the
neutral kind/durationMs/imageId. Types that are genuinely out of scope
(Person, NowPlayingItem, PlayItemRequest) keep primaryImageTag.
Rust 456, frontend 644, check clean.
Hand video playback off to a native audio-only stream when the app is
backgrounded or locked, with no on-device video decode (UR-040). Adds
player_enter/exit_background_audio commands, an audio-only stream URL
for video items across the repository layer, and the frontend handoff
state machine wired into VideoPlayer. Includes accompanying
repository/offline/player refactoring and regenerates the traceability
matrix.
dtourolle
