Tutorial: Selecting a track

The goal of this tutorial

The RxPlayer has an advanced API when it comes to track selection:

You can list, change, enable or disable video audio and text tracks for either what is currently being played or any other Period in the current content. Because the RxPlayer's track API tries to be complete and flexible, it can feel intimidating at first.

This tutorial will help you understand what your options are, why you would use an API instead of another and how to use them.

What is a "track"?

We should first agree on what is a track, as a concept. Let's take for example an italian film presented to an english-speaking audience.

For that film, let's imagine those multiple "audio tracks":

  • one being the original audio track, in italian
  • one being a dub in the english language
  • another in english with accessibility features such as an audio description of what visually happens in the film (for example, to give cues of what is happening to the visually-impaired).

There also could be multiple "text tracks":

  • subtitles in english
  • closed-captions in english (for example, for the hearing impaired)

And we could even imagine multiple video tracks:

  • one displaying the "regular" film
  • another displaying either the same film from a different camera angle (seems far-fetched here but let's just pretend we're talking about some kind of experimental film!)

All those will provide to the user a different way to offer the same film. In most cases, audiom video and text tracks are currently independent and can such be switched in a large number of combination to give a large number of different experience for what is effectively the same content.

Listing the available tracks

Nominal case: currently played content

Using methods

Once the RxPlayer has loaded a content (meaning the RxPlayer is not in the STOPPED, LOADING or RELOADING player state) you can begin to ask it what is the current list of available tracks.

This can be done through three RxPlayer methods:

Those methods will all return arrays of objects, each object containing information about a single track.

It should be noted that the information for an audio track won't be the same than for a video or a text track. For example, you might be interested by the height and width available in a video track. Those notions make absolutely no sense for an audio track.

For more information about the structure of the data returned by those methods, you can refer to their API documentation (a shortcut is available by clicking on the method name).

Note that you can still ask for the current tracks when the RxPlayer does not have loaded any content (is in the STOPPED, LOADING or RELOADING player state), but you will most likely only get an empty array in those cases.

Examples

Those methods are straightforward, here are some examples of how they can be used:

// Array of all available audio languages
const availableLanguages = rxPlayer
  .getAvailableAudioTracks()
  .map((track) => track.language);

// List of audio tracks containing an audio description of what is visually
// happening
const audioDescriptionTracks = rxPlayer
  .getAvailableAudioTracks()
  .filter((track) => track.audioDescription);

// List of video tracks for which a profile with a 1080p resolution is available
const highResVideoTracks = rxPlayer
  .getAvailableVideoTracks()
  .filter((track) => {
    return track.representations.some(
      (representation) =>
        representation.height !== undefined && representation.height >= 1080
    );
  });

// List of text tracks available in french
const frenchTextTracks = rxPlayer
  .getAvailableTextTracks()
  .filter((track) => track.normalized === "fra");

Using events

If you want to be alerted when the list of currently available tracks is set or change, it might be a good idea to rely on events.

Here are the three events you will need to know:

All of those events will have the corresponding available tracks as a payload, which will be the exact same data that what you would get when calling the corresponding getAvailable...Tracks method at this point.

Note that no available...TracksChange event will be sent when the RxPlayer stops the content or temporarly goes through the RELOADING player state with an empty array as a payload - as there is no current content in those cases.

Examples

Like any RxPlayer event, you will need to add an event listener for those:

let currentAudioTracks = [];
let currentVideoTracks = [];
let currentTextTracks = [];

rxPlayer.addEventListener("availableAudioTracksChange", (audioTracks) => {
  console.log("New audio tracks:", audioTracks);
  currentAudioTracks = audioTracks;
});

rxPlayer.addEventListener("availableVideoTracksChange", (videoTracks) => {
  console.log("New video tracks:", videoTracks);
  currentVideoTracks = videoTracks;
});

rxPlayer.addEventListener("availableTextTracksChange", (textTracks) => {
  console.log("New text tracks:", textTracks);
  currentTextTracks = textTracks;
});

Advanced case: Any part of multi-Period contents

For contents with multiple Periods and/or when in the LOADING or RELOADING state, you may want to list the tracks for a part of the content that the RxPlayer is not yet playing.

This can be for example for a future/previous live program, or even for the current one when the RxPlayer did not yet begin to play it.

In those conditions, the three methods presented here (getAvailableVideoTracks, getAvailableTextTracks and getAvailableAudioTracks) can all take an argument: the id property of the wanted period:

// Getting the audio track list for the Period with the "foo" id.
rxPlayer.getAvailableAudioTracks("foo");

That id can be known in several ways:

  • the getAvailablePeriods method can list the different Periods and their respective id property:

    const periods = rxPlayer.getAvailablePeriods();
for (const period of periods) {
  console.log(`Tracks for Period ${period.id}:`,
              rxPlayer.getAvailableAudioTracks(period.id));
}

  • the newAvailablePeriods event triggered each time new Periods are known (either when the content is first loaded, or when the it is updated) with their respective id property:

    rxPlayer.addEventListener("newAvailablePeriods, (periods) => {
  for (const period of periods) {
    console.log(`Tracks for Period ${period.id}:`,
                rxPlayer.getAvailableAudioTracks(period.id));
  }
});

  • the periodChange event triggered when the current Period being played changes, with the corresponding id property:

    rxPlayer.addEventListener("periodChange, (period) => {
  console.log(`Tracks for the current Period ${period.id}:`,
              rxPlayer.getAvailableAudioTracks(period.id));
});

Obtaining those lists as soon as possible

The RxPlayer does not "guess" the tracks available for a given content, it usually finds every information about them in the Manifest file which is loaded at the beginning.

Thus, the list of available tracks will only be available once the RxPlayer has loaded and parsed that Manifest. Moreover, a Manifest can have several lists of available tracks depending on the player's position (for example, a live channel with multiple programs might have different audio languages available for different programs).

This means both that the available tracks won't generally be known just after a loadVideo call and that it can then change at any time. The first instant when the list of available audio, video and text tracks is available after loading the content through loadVideo is on the newAvailablePeriods event:

rxPlayer.loadVideo({ url: "foo/bar", transport: "dash" /* ... */ });
rxPlayer.addEventListener("newAvailablePeriods", (periods) => {
  for (const period of periods) {
    const periodId = period.id;
    const videoTracks = rxPlayer.getAvailableVideoTracks(periodId);
    const audioTracks = rxPlayer.getAvailableVideoTracks(periodId);
    const textTracks = rxPlayer.getAvailableTextTracks(periodId);
    console.log(`Video tracks for Period "${periodId}":`${videoTracks}`);
    console.log(`Audio tracks for Period "${periodId}":`${audioTracks}`);
    console.log(`Text tracks for Period "${periodId}":`${textTracks}`);
  }
});

This newAvailablePeriods event is also the right one for setting the initial track (we will see how to below), as it's guaranteed that at the point this event is sent, no media data has been loaded yet for the corresponding Period(s):

rxPlayer.addEventListener("newAvailablePeriods", (periods) => {
  for (const period of periods) {
    // Theoretical logic for initial track selections (presumably through the
    // `getAvailable...Tracks` and `set...Track` families of API)
    setInitialVideoTrack(period);
    setInitialAudioTrack(period);
    setInitialTextTrack(period);
  }
});

Knowing the current track

Nominal case: currently played content

Using methods

You might also want to know which track is the one currently selected. There are several ways to do that.

Through methods

The RxPlayer has a set of methods that just return the currently active tracks:

Those methods will return an object describing the attributes of the current tracks. They can also return null if no track has been enabled (for example, the user could have wanted to disable all text tracks) and undefined if the track is either unknown (which is a very rare occurence) or if no content is currently playing.

Like the getAvailable...Tracks methods, the format of the objects returned will entirely depend on which method you call. You can refer to the API documentation to get more information on this.

Also like the getAvailable...Tracks methods, the current text track will usually only be known once the RxPlayer has loaded a content (which means we are not in the STOPPED, LOADING or RELOADING player state). If no content is loaded, those APIs will just return undefined.

Examples

Here is an example on how you could use them:

const currentTextTrack = rxPlayer.getTextTrack();
if (currentTextTrack === null) {
  console.log("No text track is enabled");
} else if (currentTextTrack === undefined) {
  console.log(
    "We don't know the current text track. " +
      "Are you sure a content is loaded?"
  );
} else {
  const language = currentTextTrack.language;
  console.log("We have a current text track in the " + language + "language");
}

Through events

Exactly like you would obtain the list of available tracks through the available...TracksChange events, you can know when the current track change as soon as possible through the following events:

Those events just emit the current track information as soon as it changes, in the same format that the get...Track methods.

Unlike for the get...Track methods however, its payload cannot be set to undefined: you won't receive any ...TracksChange event if the track is unknown or if there is no content.

This also means that you won't have any event when the RxPlayer stops or re-load the current content, despite the fact that you don't have any current track in that case. Calling the get...Track method in those cases will return undefined, as it should. This has to be considered.

Example

Like for any events, you will have to register an event listener:

rxPlayer.addEventListener("textTrackChange", (track) => {
  if (track === null) {
    console.log("No text track is active");
  } else {
    console.log(
      "new active text track in the following language: " + track.language
    );
  }
});

Through the list of available tracks

As written earlier the available...TracksChange events and the getAvailable...Tracks methods both return arrays of objects, each object defining a single track.

In each of those object, you will find an active boolean property, which will be set to true if the track is the currently chosen one and false otherwise.

Note that it's possible that none of the available tracks are active. This is for example the case when the track has been disabled (for example when the user wants no text tracks at all).

// get the active audio track through `getAvailableAudioTracks`
const activeAudioTrack1 = rxPlayer
  .getAvailableAudioTracks()
  .find((track) => track.active);

// get the active audio track through `availableAudioTracksChange`
let activeAudioTrack2;
rxPlayer.addEventListener("availableAudioTracksChange", (tracks) => {
  activeAudioTrack2 = tracks.find((track) => track.active);
});

Which one to use?

As usual here, this is highly dependant on your application. All of those APIs give the same information through different means.

Accessing with the get...Track method is simple to use, the events allow to know at the earliest possible time and relying on the list of available tracks can simplify your code if you want both of them.

Selecting a track

Now that we have the list of available tracks and the current one, we might want to choose another one, or let the final user choose another one.

To do that, you will have to use one of those three RxPlayer methods:

Each of those methods take a single string as argument. That string should be the value of the id property of the chosen track.

For example, to choose the first audio track with an audio description, you can do:

const firstAudioTrackWithAD = rxPlayer
  .getAvailableAudioTracks()
  .find((track) => track.audioDescription);

if (firstAudioTrackWithAD !== undefined) {
  rxPlayer.setAudioTrack(firstAudioTrackWithAD.id);
}

It's important to consider that those APIs only allow to change the current track and will have no impact on the other contents you will encounter in the future.

After manually setting a track through the set...Track methods, you will receive the corresponding ...TrackChange event when the change is applied.

Note that on some contents, changing a track from a given type might automatically also change the current track for another types. For example, switching to another audio language might also automatically turn on the subtitles. This is because some streaming protocols might "force" some combination.

To detect those cases, you can either listen to every ...TrackChange events or call the corresponding get...Track method everytime you want to use them.

Disabling a track

Now what if you want no track at all?

This is for example a frequent need for text tracks, where you might prefer to have no subtitles or closed captions appearing on the screen.

You could also want to disable the video track, which is a trick often used to reduce the network bandwidth used by a content.

You can disable respectively the current text track and the current video track by calling those methods:

However, like for selecting a track, this only concerns the current content being played. When playing a new content or even when just switching to another part of the content with a different track list, you might need to re-do the same method call.

Tracks now missing from the Manifest

There is a very unlikely event that could theoretically arise on some contents: the select track disappearing after a Manifest update.

For example, after refreshing the Manifest files, it turns out that the previously-selected audio track has been completely removed from the Manifest, for the same Period.

Here, the RxPlayer will by itself select another track instead and immediately emit a "trackUpdate" event a reason property set to "missing":

rxPlayer.addEventListener("trackUpdate", (data) => {
  if (data.reason === "missing") {
    console.warn(
      `The previously-chosen ${data.trackType} track for the Period ` +
      `"${data.period.id}" disappeared. A new track has been selected instead.`
    );
  }
});

Notes about the "textTrackMode" option

This tutorial was focused on track selection but there's still a last point I want to approach, which is how subtitles will be displayed to the user.

By default, text tracks will be displayed through <tracks> elements which will be contained in the media element where the content plays. This allows to display subtitles but may not be sufficient when wanting to display richer subtitles (such as closed-captions).

This is why the RxPlayer has a textTrackMode concept.

By setting the textTrackMode to "html" in a loadVideo call, you will be able to profit from much richer subtitles than what you could have by default. If you do that, you also need to set the textTrackElement property to an HTML element, that the RxPlayer will use to display subtitles into.

More information on those options can be found in the RxPlayer API.

Tutorial: Selecting a track

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