RxPlayer Features

Overview

The RxPlayer has this concept of “features” which are functionalities which may or may not be included to your build.

This allows to reduce bundle size by not including features you don’t use, like parsers for subtitles formats you don’t depend on.

Which features you will need to import will depend on what RxPlayer’s build you rely on;

  • If you import the default RxPlayer build (e.g. through an import RxPlayer from "rx-player import), you will obtain an RxPlayer with most features, which should be sufficient for most use-cases. It already includes the following features (description of each available in the next chapter):

    • SMOOTH
    • DASH
    • DIRECTFILE
    • EME
    • NATIVE_SRT_PARSER
    • NATIVE_VTT_PARSER
    • NATIVE_TTML_PARSER
    • NATIVE_SAMI_PARSER
    • HTML_SRT_PARSER
    • HTML_VTT_PARSER
    • HTML_TTML_PARSER
    • HTML_SAMI_PARSER

  • If you import the RxPlayer’s minimal build however (e.g. through an import RxPlayer from "rx-player/minimal import), you will obtain an RxPlayer with no feature by default. In that case, you will probably need to add the features you want.

addFeatures static method

New features can be added by calling the addFeatures static method:

import RxPlayer from "rx-player/minimal";
import { DASH } from "rx-player/features";

RxPlayer.addFeatures([DASH]);

Features list

Features, which are variables imported from the "rx-player/features" path, are all objects declared in upper-case.

Here is the anotated exhaustive list (notes are at the bottom of the table):

Feature Description of the feature
SMOOTH Enable Smooth streaming (HSS) playback
DASH [1] Enable DASH playback using a JavaScript-based MPD parser
DIRECTFILE Enable playback of “directfile” contents
EME Enable playback of encrypted contents
NATIVE_SRT_PARSER [2] Parse SRT text tracks for the "native" textTrackMode
NATIVE_VTT_PARSER [2] Parse VTT text tracks for the "native" textTrackMode
NATIVE_TTML_PARSER [2] Parse TTML text tracks for the "native" textTrackMode
NATIVE_SAMI_PARSER [2] Parse SAMI text tracks for the "native" textTrackMode
HTML_SRT_PARSER [2] Parse SRT text tracks for the "html" textTrackMode
HTML_VTT_PARSER [2] Parse VTT text tracks for the "html" textTrackMode
HTML_TTML_PARSER [2] Parse TTML text tracks for the "html" textTrackMode
HTML_SAMI_PARSER [2] Parse SAMI text tracks for the "html" textTrackMode
BIF_PARSER Parse BIF image tracks for the image buffer
DEBUG_ELEMENT [3] Allows to use the createDebugElement RxPlayer method
DASH_WASM [1] [3] [4] Enable DASH playback using a WebAssembly-based MPD parser
LOCAL_MANIFEST [3] Enable playback of “local” contents
METAPLAYLIST [3] Enable playback of “metaplaylist” contents
NATIVE_TEXT_BUFFER [5] (Deprecated) Base for the "native" textTrackMode.
HTML_TEXT_BUFFER [5] (Deprecated) Base for the "html" textTrackMode.
IMAGE_BUFFER [5] Allow to display thumbnails through the image buffer

Notes:

[1]: In cases where both the DASH and DASH_WASM features are added (which are both parsers for DASH contents), the RxPlayer will default using the WebAssembly parser (provided by DASH_WASM) and fallback on the JavaScript parser (provided by DASH) when it cannot do so.

[2]: The "native" and "html" textTrackMode are options set when loading a new content through the loadVideo method. To help you choose between those two:

  • The "native" mode relies on HTMLTrackElement (<track> tags) to display subtitles. This does not need any setup but may lead to poorly stylized subtitles. You may rely on this if you don’t need advanced subtitles stylization.
  • The "html" mode relies on regular HTMLElement (like <div> and such) to display subtitles. It allows more powerful stylization but will need a parent textTrackElement to also be provided on that same loadVideo call (as documented in the corresponding API documentation page.

[3]: Those features are experimental. They should be imported from rx-player/experimental/features.

[4]: The DASH_WASM feature has its own setup, detailed in the corresponding documentation page.

[5]: The NATIVE_TEXT_BUFFER, HTML_TEXT_BUFFER and IMAGE_BUFFER features are deprecated. They are already implicitly imported when parsing any of the corresponding text or image parsers.

Examples

To help you choose your features, are some examples that represents common usecases.

unencrypted DASH contents with native webVTT subtitles

import RxPlayer from "rx-player/minimal";
import {
    DASH,
    NATIVE_VTT_PARSER,
} from "rx-player/features";

RxPlayer.addFeatures([DASH, NATIVE_VTT_PARSER]);

possibly-encrypted DASH contents with HMTL webVTT and TTML subtitles

import RxPlayer from "rx-player/minimal";
import {
    DASH,
    EME,
    HTML_VTT_PARSER,
    HTML_HTML_PARSER,
} from "rx-player/features";

RxPlayer.addFeatures([
    DASH,
    EME,
    HTML_VTT_PARSER,
    HTML_TTML_PARSER,
]);

Building with environment variables (not recommended)

How it works

If you don’t want to or can’t rely on tree shaking for your use-case but still would like to remove features you don’t want, you can also build yourself an RxPlayer while only enabling specific features through environment variables. The code related to the unwanted features should be removed when the final code is minified (as the corresponding code is made unreachable).

To be able to do this, you will need to:

  1. pull the RxPlayer’s repository (for example, through a git clone)
  2. install its dependencies (for example by calling npm install in that repository),
  3. run its bundling script (npm run build:min) with the right environment variables.

To avoid any conflict with other environment variables, they all are named RXP_<FEATURE-NAME>.

For example, the following will remove all code related to Microsoft Smooth Streaming from the build:

RXP_SMOOTH=false npm run build:min

List of environment variables

RXP_SMOOTH

True by default. If set to “false”, all code relative to HSS streaming will be ignored during a build.

RXP_DASH

True by default. If set to “false”, all code relative to DASH streaming will be ignored during a build.

RXP_DIRECTFILE

True by default. If set to “false”, all code relative to directfile streaming will be ignored during a build.

RXP_LOCAL_MANIFEST

False by default. If set to “true”, all code relative to the “local” transport (to be able to play content offline for example) will be included during a build.

RXP_METAPLAYLIST

False by default. If set to “true”, all code relative to metaplaylist streaming will be included during a build.

RXP_DEBUG_ELEMENT

False by default. If set to “true”, the method RxPlayer’s createDebugElement method will be callable.

RXP_EME

True by default. If set to “false”, all code relative to encrypted contents will be ignored during a build.

RXP_NATIVE_TTML

True by default. If set to “false”, all code relative to TTML parsing for native text tracks will be ignored during a build.

RXP_NATIVE_SAMI

True by default. If set to “false”, all code relative to SAMI parsing for native text tracks will be ignored during a build.

RXP_NATIVE_VTT

True by default. If set to “false”, all code relative to VTT parsing for native text tracks will be ignored during a build.

RXP_NATIVE_SRT

True by default. If set to “false”, all code relative to SRT parsing for native text tracks will be ignored during a build.

RXP_HTML_TTML

True by default. If set to “false”, all code relative to TTML parsing for html text tracks [1] will be ignored during a build.

RXP_HTML_SAMI

True by default. If set to “false”, all code relative to SAMI parsing for html text tracks [1] will be ignored during a build.

RXP_HTML_VTT

True by default. If set to “false”, all code relative to VTT parsing for html text tracks [1] will be ignored during a build.

RXP_HTML_SRT

True by default. If set to “false”, all code relative to SRT parsing for html text tracks [1] will be ignored during a build.

RXP_BIF_PARSER

True by default. If set to “false”, all code relative to BIF image parsing will be ignored during a build.

RXP_BAREBONE

If set to true, no feature is activated by default and all other environment variables are considered as false by default (unless set).

For example, to only activate DASH, you could do:

RXP_BAREBONE=true RXP_DASH=true npm run build:min

RXP_ENV

Either “production” or “development”. “production” as a default. In the “development” case:

  • logs will be activated
  • the code will be less tolerant towards unwanted behavior
  • the code will be less optimized

Notes:

DOM element instead of a <track> (the latter here being called “native”) tag for a richer formatting.

RxPlayer Features

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