Rust already reported `use_html5_element: false` on Android, but two frontend
overrides threw that answer away, so ExoPlayer's video path had never actually
run. Both are lifted behind an `experimentalNativeVideo` opt-in (default off).
The flag is a suppressor, never a promoter: off forces HTML5 even where Rust
says native, so an in-progress spike cannot ship as the default, but it can
never select native where Rust reported HTML5 — Linux cannot composite behind
WebKitGTK, and promoting there would be a black screen.
Two blockers the spec did not anticipate, both in code assumed to be merely
unreachable rather than broken:
- `JellyTauPlayer.setActivity()` had zero callers, so `currentActivity` was
always null and `autoAttachSurface()` bailed. The SurfaceView was created and
wired to ExoPlayer but never added to the view hierarchy — video would have
decoded to a surface that was never on screen, whatever the webview did.
This also revives PiP on the video path, which gated on the same flag.
- `createAdapter()` was not the real gate; it is never called in production.
The actual override was in VideoPlayer.svelte, which forced HTML5 and stopped
the native backend `player_play_item` had just started. Both sites now route
through `createAdapter()`.
Compositing needs two independent opaque layers cleared, not one. Clearing only
the page leaves the WebView widget opaque — audio over a black picture, exactly
the symptom the old INTERIM comment described. `videoSurface.ts` toggles both:
the widget background and window drawable from Kotlin, the page backgrounds via
a `data-native-video` attribute keyed by app.css. Transparency lives in
`tauri.android.conf.json` so Linux keeps an opaque window, and is scoped to the
playback session so the launcher never shows through the rest of the app.
Phase 3's rect plumbing turned out to be unnecessary: video is fullscreen on the
player route, and `fitSurfaceToScreen()` already letterboxes and re-fits on
rotation. The mini-player transition remains unverified on device.
Also removes the `navigator.userAgent` sniffing in webviewAudio.ts, which was a
second copy of the Rust cfg gate free to drift from it. `player_get_capabilities`
now reports `usesWebviewAudio` and `supportsNativeVideo` from those same gates.
Tests: adapter selection covers the full matrix, including the regression guard
that the flag off beats Rust. Written first and confirmed failing (2 of 7) before
the fix.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Investigation into unifying the playback backends (Linux/MPV, Android/ExoPlayer,
Windows/webview) onto one engine with hardware acceleration. Conclusion: video
cannot be unified onto a native engine; audio can.
The blocker is not mpv-specific. WebKitGTK, WebView2 and Android WebView each
draw into their own compositor surface, so a native video surface sits either
entirely above or entirely below the webview and cannot interleave with HTML.
GStreamer and libVLC fail identically. mpv would additionally regress streaming:
it has no adaptive bitrate, while the current hls.js path does.
Six specs added:
- playback-backend-unification: the analysis and decision, with evidence
- android-audio-settings-parity: set_audio_settings on ExoPlayerBackend
- android-native-video-spike: timeboxed test of SurfaceView compositing
- windows-native-audio-backend: replace the webview <audio> shim with libmpv
- libmpv2-migration: dead libmpv git pin -> libmpv2, plus a LICENSE file
- playback-docs-corrections: the requirement-status fixes applied here
Corrections to requirements.md, all verified against source:
- UR-031/DR-034 claimed crossfade was "Done (Linux only)". It is implemented
nowhere (mpv_backend.rs has a bare TODO) and is architecturally blocked on
mpv, whose single-stream audio chain cannot feed acrossfade's two inputs.
- Parity matrix listed crossfade as a Linux/Android gap; it is neither.
- The matrix omitted the equalizer, which has the same Linux-only shape.
- The suggested ConcatenatingMediaSource is deprecated in current Media3.
nativeAdapter.ts cited tauri#10152 as an upstream blocker for native Android
video. That issue is a stale feature request, dead since 2024-07-01; the
capability shipped in tauri 27d01834 (2024-09-02), and the related
black-screen bug was fixed in wry 0.39.4 (we ship 0.55.x). What is genuinely
unproven is SurfaceView-behind-WebView compositing, which the spike now tracks.
dtourolleandClaude Opus 5