The Vidyard Player: viewer requirements and browser compatibility

This article details viewer requirements for Vidyard videos. It includes information about compatibility with most major browsers and operating systems (including mobile OS), support for autoplay, as well as support for events/CTAs on mobile.

Playback requirements

At Vidyard, we endeavour to guarantee full functionality for the Vidyard Player across all modern HTML5 browsers. In supported browsers, the Vidyard player operates using TLS 1.2 security protocol and HLS technology to deliver video content in H.264/AAC.

For outdated browsers that do not meet the standards required to support the Vidyard Player, we’ve created a legacy player that will continue to allow playback but may not include all the extra bells and whistles. This ensures that your videos will still play, while allowing our engineers to continue to develop using the most recent technologies available.

Tip: It’s important to keep your browser as up to date as possible. Vidyard works hard to guarantee support across different iterations of browsers, but ongoing browser updates may affect our support for older browser versions.

Supported browsers

Limited-support browsers/OS

Internet Explorer

For both Internet Explorer v9 & 10, Vidyard will continue to serve video content through our legacy player.

The legacy player is designed to allow playback, but may not guarantee much of the functionality expected from the Vidyard player in supported browsers (Events and CTAs, analytics, etc.). The legacy player no longer receives time or resources for active development, testing, or bug fixes.

Any changes that may occur to IE v9 & 10 may therefore cause player performance or features to fail or perform poorly. At this point, player functionality and features are offered as a "best effort".

Internet Explorer v7 & 8 are strictly not supported. This includes circumstances where a more recent browser (such as IE11) may be attempting to view the Vidyard Player on a webpage in compatibility mode.

A note about Windows support

Due to a limitation of the Windows 7 operating system, viewers attempting to play HLS video content using Internet Explorer 11 will be served a modified version of the Vidyard Player.

This player offers all regular player functionality except for resolution options, playback speed, and multi-track audio controls.

Players created from YouTube

Players created in Vidyard using the Add from YouTube option are subject to the browser compatibility and limitations of YouTube's player. Verify that your browser is compatible with YouTube.

Supported mobile OS/device

*Assuming only major browsers on these platforms (for example, Chrome on Android devices, Safari on iOS).

Autoplay by OS/browser

Shortly after video became supported on mobile devices, either muted autoplay or no autoplay was imposed as a restriction on mobile platforms in the interest of conserving battery life, preventing unwanted data usage, and to improve the overall user experience.

With the introduction of Chrome v66, Google has further extended muted autoplay to desktop browsers with changes to the way Chrome handles video, GIFs and other rich media.

Much like Apple’s policy introduced with Safari v11, Chrome now only allows muted autoplay. Users must perform a gesture ( e.g. click, swipe) to enable audio or pass a certain threshold on the Media Engagement Index (MEI) to allow video content from a particular website or domain to autoplay with sound.

As major internet browsers continue to move toward further restrictions on autoplay and enable users greater control over how they experience media content on the web, there are some general notes to keep in mind:

• These changes affect all kinds of video players and visual media on the internet (YouTube, Vimeo, etc.), including the Vidyard player.
• Browsers have implemented these new behaviors to provide users with greater control over how they consume media. Ideally, it also improves the quality of clicks, impressions, and views that publishers receive from their content.
• Muted autoplay helps to further unify the web experience between desktop and mobile.

Autoplay and videos shared via email

Restrictions to autoplay pose a particular challenge to users who share one-to-one videos via email, either through the Vidyard Chrome Extension or a number of integrated applications and products that support the Vidyard app—Gmail, Outlook, SalesLoft, Outreach, Zendesk + many more.

In addition to clicking on the video thumbnail in the email to load the sharing page, individuals who receive a video may also have to click again to unmute the video after it fails to autoplay with sound.

We think this creates a poor experience for Vidyard users and their audiences.

As a solution, we’ve implemented the autoplay=2 query string. Autoplay=2 allows the player to detect whether the browser will mute the video. If the browser will allow autoplay with sound, autoplay will proceed. Otherwise, the video thumbnail will display instead.

Autoplay=2 is applied by default to videos sent through the Chrome extension or the Vidyard app that have been configured to use autoplay.

Vidyard Event & CTA compatibility on mobile

Depending on the mobile operating system, Vidyard events (such as email gates, annotations, CTAs, etc.) may not be compatible with a viewer's mobile device.

Most notably, Apple iOS did not support use of the <video playsinline> element prior to iOS v10. This element is required to watch videos outside of fullscreen mode.

<playsinline> is also required for videos to display events on iOS. The Vidyard player automatically adds <playsinline> to the <video> tag on iOS 10+.