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Can Soloslides also play videos?

Posted: Tue Mar 24, 2020 9:58 am
by Gzo
Will Soloslides also play videos in my google photos album, as they come?

Re: Can Soloslides also play videos?

Posted: Tue Mar 24, 2020 10:03 am
by tim
The app does not play videos yet. We hope to add that one day.

Re: Can Soloslides also play videos?

Posted: Tue Mar 24, 2020 11:25 am
by Gzo
Thank you for your quick answers Tim. I appreciate it.

Re: Can Soloslides also play videos?

Posted: Tue Apr 21, 2020 7:16 pm
by Romain9000
This is something I’ve been waiting for a year now, I can’t wait ! No clue how complicated that is to implement but I hope it’ll come eventually :)

Keep up the good work

Re: Can Soloslides also play videos?

Posted: Mon May 11, 2020 3:20 pm
by tim
Just an update: I have done most of the work to add video to SoloSlides but have hit a major snag: Google's servers that serve up the bytes of the video content are not compatible with iOS' default video player. Specifically, AVPlayer on iOS is claiming that Google's servers are "misconfigured", potentially because they don't support byte range requests (I did not verify).

I filed a bug on the Google side, let's see what they say: https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/156198845

The alternative would be having the app download the entire video before trying to play it, but that's going to be a huge problem for user experience: what is the app going to show while the video is downloading? nothing? other photos? but then if other photos, it is going to have to store the video for quite a while... videos are huge, and this app is used on lots of crusty old iOS 9 ipads that probably have 0 space free... so storing videos (even temporarily) is not a good option at all.

Re: Can Soloslides also play videos?

Posted: Tue May 12, 2020 8:17 am
by Romain9000
Hi, thanks for the update !
The option to load the entire video while showing pictures sounds good. I understand the problem for old devices and their storage but this is only an option and you could also limit the size of the playable videos. It’s a bummer that apple and google are not easily compatible on this but having one way even not perfect to play videos along pictures in your app would be a huge improvement !

Re: Can Soloslides also play videos?

Posted: Tue May 12, 2020 8:19 am
by Romain9000
Or is there another video player you could use in the app that would be compatible with google servers ...?

Re: Can Soloslides also play videos?

Posted: Fri Apr 16, 2021 4:15 am
by Romain9000
Hi there,

I don’t know why but my soloslides won’t play videos anymore...
I tried with different albums or with the entire library with several options on or off it doesn’t change anything and only photos are displayed. I didn’t change iPhone or iOS so I’m wondering. Am I the only one ?

Re: Can Soloslides also play videos?

Posted: Fri Apr 16, 2021 4:19 am
by Romain9000
I also tried to sign out an in again and tried the app on my iPad on a much older iOS version. No difference. Am I missing something or is it Google that broke the thing ?

Re: Can Soloslides also play videos?

Posted: Fri Apr 16, 2021 8:26 am
by tim
Soloslides plays videos from camera roll only. Google has not implemented streaming video yet on google photos.

Re: Can Soloslides also play videos?

Posted: Fri Apr 16, 2021 12:17 pm
by Romain9000
Oh ok I'm sorry I keep forgetting about this nonsense !

Re: Can Soloslides also play videos?

Posted: Fri Apr 16, 2021 2:11 pm
by tim
No problem at all. I wish I could get Google to build it... or at least even acknowledge the gravity of the problem!

Re: Can Soloslides also play videos?

Posted: Sun Jan 09, 2022 8:41 am
by doozer
Hi, I would like to highlight this issue again. I guess there hasn't been any changes so far from Google's site (at least not when looking at the ticket you raised). Still, it would be great if you could follow up on this. I use Soloslides to have my old iPad as picture frame for my parents, so they can see their grandchildren - and not having videos truly reduces this experience. So far, that I'm already considering buying a Fire HD device instead. Anyway, I know it is not really in your hands, still maybe it helps to point attention to the issue once more.

Otherwise, nice small app that does exactly what it is supposed to do. Thanks