Why doesn't Chromecast respect fractional playbackRate values on video elements?

Question

Using the debugger on the sample cast app I try to set a fractional playback value:

document.getElementById("vid").playbackRate = 0.5;

And the video will not change speed. If I set playbackRate to zero the video will pause. And if I set it to 1.0 it will resume. Note that on chrome desktop the video element DOES respect fractional playbackRate values.

Yeah more interested in the 1.5 & 2.0 use case. Would be a shame if this isn't supported. — Ishan, Sep 02 '13 at 03:39
As of 2023, using a very old Chromecast Ultra, it seems that 1.0 ~ 2.0 rates work, but sub 1.0 rates do not. — Jonny, Jul 28 '23 at 03:39

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 15 '13 at 16:41

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This was disabled on the device due to the hardware limitations. For example, if one tries to play an HD movie in 3x speed, the hardware won't be able to keep up so it was disabled to avoid such issues. If there is a strong need to support rates < 1, please open a feature request and our team will review that.

answered Oct 15 '13 at 16:41

Ali Naddaf

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Is this still the case with the latest update or are there any plans to allow it? – Alex Kwitny Feb 07 '15 at 01:57
I tested this and it seems to work, has this been enabled again? – casolorz Nov 11 '16 at 15:56

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 14 '13 at 01:29

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It looks like, for now, Chromecast doesn't support any playbackRate values besides 1 and 0, not just fractional ones. Everything else I tried (fractions and whole numbers from -1 to 3) all resulted in normal speed playback, with 0 making it pause.

answered Oct 14 '13 at 01:29

hodayathink

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score 0 · Answer 3 · edited Jul 21 '14 at 23:43

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Play rate control is very useful (almost required) for finer controlling adaptive streaming where a slight slow down or speed up can help to increase or shrink the latency.

< 1x is perfectly fine for this purpose. In fact, probably no more than 10-15% delta will be employed for this kind of optimzation.

In addition, this is a standard video element method. Not supporting it at all is a serious defect. Supporting it with limitation is perfectly fine.

Please consider this seriously. If there is a more formal place to place this request, please let me know.

edited Jul 21 '14 at 23:43

Gottlieb Notschnabel

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answered Jul 21 '14 at 19:22

user2789276

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Feature Requests for Cast SDK can be made here: https://code.google.com/p/google-cast-sdk/issues/list – Ali Naddaf Jul 22 '14 at 00:28

Why doesn't Chromecast respect fractional playbackRate values on video elements?

3 Answers3