setPlaybackRate

Description

Updates the current playback rate, i.e. the speed at which contents are played.

As its name hints at, the value indicates the rate at which contents play:

  • Setting it to 2 allows to play at a speed multiplied by 2 relatively to regular playback.

  • Setting that value to 1 reset the playback rate to its “normal” rythm.

  • Setting it to 0.5 allows to play at half the speed relatively to regular playback.

  • etc.

This method’s effect is persisted from content to content, and can be called even when no content is playing (it will still have an effect for the next contents).

If you want to reverse effects provoked by setPlaybackRate before playing another content, you will have to call setPlaybackRate first with the default settings you want to set.

As an example, to reset the speed to “normal” (x1) speed and to disable trickMode video tracks (which may have been enabled by a previous setPlaybackRate call), you can call:

player.setPlaybackRate(1, { preferTrickModeTracks: false });

–

This method can be used to switch to or exit from “trickMode” video tracks, which are tracks specifically defined to mimic the visual aspect of a VCR’s fast forward/rewind feature, by only displaying a few video frames during playback.

This behavior is configurable through the second argument, by adding a property named preferTrickModeTracks to that object.

You can set that value to true to switch to trickMode video tracks when available, and set it to false when you want to disable that logic. Note that like any configuration given to setPlaybackRate, this setting is persisted through all future contents played by the player.

If you want to stop enabling trickMode tracks, you will have to call setPlaybackRate again with preferTrickModeTracks set to false.

You can know at any moment whether this behavior is enabled by calling the areTrickModeTracksEnabled method. This will only means that the RxPlayer will select in priority trickmode video tracks, not that the currently chosen video tracks is a trickmode track (for example, some contents may have no trickmode tracks available).

If you want to know about the latter instead, you can call getVideoTrack and/or listen to videoTrackChange events. The track returned may have an isTrickModeTrack property set to true, indicating that it is a trickmode track.

Note that switching to or getting out of a trickmode video track may lead to the player being a brief instant in a "RELOADING" state (notified through playerStateChange events and the getPlayerState method). When in that state, a black screen may be displayed and multiple RxPlayer APIs will not be usable.

This method can be called at any time, even when no content is loaded and is persisted from content to content.

You can set it to 1 to reset its value to the “regular” default.

It is possible to try to enable the trick mode track by setting the second argument to true (and disable it when setting false). If available, the RxPlayer will switch the current video track to the trick mode one. The trick mode track proposes video content that is often encoded with a very low framerate because the content is not intended to be played at regular framerate and because the chunks must be faster to load for the client.

Examples

// plays three times faster than normal
player.setPlaybackRate(3);

// plays five times faster than normal, and enable trickmode tracks if they exist
player.setPlaybackRate(5, { preferTrickModeTracks: true });

// reset the speed to "normal" (x1) speed and to disable trickMode video tracks
player.setPlaybackRate(1, { preferTrickModeTracks: false });

Syntax

player.setPlaybackRate(speed);

// or, with trickmode settings
player.setPlaybackRate(speed, { preferTrickModeTracks });

  • arguments:

    1. speed number: The speed / playback rate you want to set.
    2. options (optional) Object|undefined: Options related to the speed update.

setPlaybackRate

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