Mobile video backgrounds and best practice

Soldato
Joined
27 Dec 2005
Posts
17,310
Location
Bristol
Does anyone have any links to resources on best practice for displaying/not displaying video backgrounds on mobiles?

My old approach was just to disable them on mobile and show an image instead, but a couple of newer phones (Note 9 and S8 for two) do play them. However iPhones - or at least the ones I have access to - don't. They therefore fallback to the poster, which I usually opt to have as the first still of the video as a preload.

However that still is often irrelevant to the content, or certainly not as good as another chosen image. BUT if I do that then those devices that can play the video have a horrible UX where you see an image for 1-5 seconds (or however long the video takes to load) before jumping to the video.


The <video> is in a wrapper that also has a backup image, but devices that can't load the video still show the element's poster, rather than the image behind.

Is there a way to check if a video element is able to be played, and only then disable it?

Any other tips?
 
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