8 upvotes, 13 direct replies (showing 13)
View submission: Addressing the new video player
Great questions. We’ll answer with a series of bulleted lists:
Phew! Good, detailed questions. Make sure to update your app if you’re not seeing the fixes mentioned above.
Comment by thatpaulallen at 03/08/2021 at 01:37 UTC
20 upvotes, 1 direct replies
I hope you reconsider not having pause and scrub controls when you’re not viewing a video full screen. Oftentimes Im scrolling through my feed and I want to pause or re-watch a clip without having it take up my entire screen. (NSFW content comes to mind, but not exclusively). Removing functionality doesn’t make sense to me. It sounds like you’re needlessly complicating things.
Comment by axschech at 03/08/2021 at 04:35 UTC
8 upvotes, 2 direct replies
It looks like the behavior right now is:
1. Start video from feed.
2. Pause video in Video UI (where pausing is available)
3. Go back to feed, video has started playing again (instead of remaining paused).
So this means:
1. In the feed you can start a video but you can’t stop it?
2. Effectively this means a user can never stop a video playing in the feed once it has been started?
This is REALLY bad design. I get trying to drive users to watch more content and engage with individual posts… but this is literally forcing users to watch videos since they can never be paused in the feed. Seems like a user is forced to make a choice between not starting the video (since users can’t stop them), starting the video and then restarting the app (this technically stops the video), or just letting the video play?
Is this really the intended behavior?
Comment by elfmere at 03/08/2021 at 02:36 UTC
8 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Comment by elfmere at 03/08/2021 at 02:24 UTC
2 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I had random videos play from subs i had never visited or had any desire to visit. Felt so dosconnected from my own personal experience. Felt forced to watch videos, i can see it being useful for non paying redditors to force ads upon.
Comment by thatpaulallen at 03/08/2021 at 01:58 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Why can’t we have the video player used for ads? That shit is sleek and intuitive.
Comment by semi-confusticated at 03/08/2021 at 01:50 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
If you expand the comments to full-screen
Getting full-screen comments back is some of the best news here! At the moment, what I'm seeing looks to me just like the old player, though, so I'm not sure if that's what you're talking about? If so, then great! I love it, it's just like the old player. Otherwise...
Make sure to update your app if you’re not seeing the fixes mentioned above
I'm currently running Android 2021.29.0, which appears to be the latest version?
Comment by Rogue_Spirit at 04/08/2021 at 23:38 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
We desperately beg that you let us have controls without leaving our feed. I’m significantly less likely to watch a video if I cannot watch it in my feed.
Comment by [deleted] at 05/08/2021 at 01:14 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
It was created to be fun, but it’s not fun. Swiping up goes to comments everywhere else, so now it’s super easy to swipe up and end up on something we weren’t looking at, then we have to go back, tap the little comment button and try again. Really lame. Just make it consistent with other types of posts. Nobody’s trying to go to random videos. TikTok is tiktok. Reddit is for discussion (aka comments).
Comment by matt12992 at 05/08/2021 at 03:30 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
can't pause video in your feed.
Personally for me the main issue of the new player is that I can't rewind/pause/unpause from the main screen. But it takes me inside the video when it's easier for me to do all of that without having to go inside the video player
Comment by cooliojim at 05/08/2021 at 15:40 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
This is also something that was an intentional update. When you watched a video in the old player, you could watch that video then return to your feed to scroll through your other posts and communities. In the new player, you can do the same or also scroll up to enter a video-only experience that’s curated based on the communities you follow. It was created to be a fun bonus way to discover new videos and communities.
Really don't understand the logic behind this. If I'm in a video sub and I sort how I want (lets say top of this week) why do you think its "fun" to show me some random 2 upvote video from a month ago? I chose the sort method, let me scroll by that! As of now I have to watch a video, then back out and scroll to the next and click that instead of just scrolling within the video player. Honestly this is the biggest issue with it. Scrolling is NSFW subs is also fully broken, and just gives completely random unrelated subs.
Comment by WokenWisp at 07/08/2021 at 20:10 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
it's not a fun bonus way to discover videos. it's infuriating. i can't click the top post of a subreddit and scroll through it anymore. i have to click the top post, watch it then swipe back and click the little tile and watch the next one. it might be better in card view but if you're using compact or classic like i am, it's completely unintuitive
Comment by BayesOrBust at 30/08/2021 at 05:24 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Why not have within-sub scrolling behaviour something to be opted into? It’s a bit annoying that scrolling through images does this by default but not videos within a sub
Comment by Astropical at 31/08/2021 at 15:16 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
In reference to changing functionality of swiping o “discover videos”, this is a REALLY poor design. Functionality should be uniform for all posts, and if swiping up on a video makes it behave differently than other post types, this is really bad for muscle memory and user experience.
Additionally, if I hit a video and try to back out, it continues to auto play on my feed, even if I Ouse it in the actual thread or video player. Trying to click on the video again to pause it just takes me back to the thread or player full screen. Don’t know if that is user error or design flaw, but this is all together a horribly designed video player.
I’m switching to Apollo unless and until this change is reverted. I much prefer the Reddit app, but the video change is so terrible that I cannot have a good user experience.