Dacast Streaming Platform Tutorial: Video Autoplay Workaround

Despite the simplicity of the features, different sites have different rules around video autoplay. Today, we’re going to talk about some autoplay policies and what you should do about them.

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What is Video Autoplay?

Autoplay is a feature that allows a video to start to play automatically whenever someone visits a website that has the player embedded on it.

Dacast’s New Video Autoplay Policy

With the release of Chrome 66 in April, both Chrome and Safari have now moved towards stricter autoplay policies.

These changes prevent websites from playing audio and video with audio, without a visitor’s consent. These guidelines are aimed at improving the user experience while giving greater control of media playback back to the viewer.

What Changed with Chrome’s Autoplay Policies?

Muted autoplay is always allowed.
Autoplay with sound is allowed if:
- User has interacted with the domain (click, tap, etc.)
- On desktop, the user’s Media Engagement Index threshold has been crossed, meaning the user has previously play video with sound
- On mobile, the user has added the site to his or her home screen

Developers are allowed to selectively enable and disable autoplay on various browsers. Browsers are able to determine if autoplay is allowed depending on if the user visits the page often.

What Should You Do?

On the Dacast User Interface there is a way for you to allow autoplay on your videos.

Simply click on any video (via the edit pencil icon or by the title)you have uploaded onto your Dacast account.

Then go to the Theme section, there you will see the option to automatically enable autoplay. Under Behavior.

Now once you toggle to the right, the option to start the video muted is automatically also enabled. The reason being due to Chrome’s policies. This will guarantee that the video will automatically play as intended, always.

Just scroll further below and click Save to finalize the changes.

If you do not want to enable the autoplay feature, you have the option to disable it, by moving the toggle to the left and clicking on Save once more.

You can also have the option to allow autoplay via the iframe embed codes, like this example below:

To allow autoplay you can add allow=”autoplay” on your iframe embed code.

Take a look a the examples below:

Embed code with no video autoplay allowed:

“`<iframe src=”//iframe.dacast.com/b/104301/f/537468″ width=”590″ height=”431″ frameborder=”0″ scrolling=”no” allowfullscreen webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen oallowfullscreen msallowfullscreen></iframe>“`

Embed code with video autoplay allowed:

“`<iframe src=”//iframe.dacast.com/b/104301/f/537468″ width=”590″ height=”431″ frameborder=”0″ scrolling=”no” allow=”autoplay” allowfullscreen webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen oallowfullscreen msallowfullscreen></iframe>“`

If you have questions on this or other technical topics, please contact our expert tech and 24/7 support team.

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Dylan Schneibolk

Dylan is a Marketing Coordinator at AmpLive, a live streaming distribution platform and partner of Dacast's online video platform.