Background video playback is incorrectly paused

[defagos]

As of version 3.4.0 background video playback does not work correctly anymore. This is not related to the iOS version, as I first incorrectly assumed. This regression is likely connected to the fixes made for PiP in 3.4.0.

Issue type

Incorrect behavior

Environment information

• Application version: 3.4.0
• iOS version: Tested on 14.8.1, 15.1 and 15.2
• Device: Physical

Reproducibility

Always reproducible

Steps to reproduce

1. Enable background video playback.
2. Play some video and reduce it into the mini player. Playback continues in the background.
3. Lock the device. Playback is incorrectly paused.

Note that background playback continues when the device is locked while the video layer is visible.

[defagos]

This is an SRG Media Player issue.

[pyby]

The most common cases are fixed with SRGMediaPlayer 6.2.1 release.

AirPods issue still persist, but I think, not new #199.

[ganti]

The issue is still occurs, especially with audio only streams. A restart of the device helped, but it is annoying since it happens multiple time a week.
I use V 3.5.0 (373)

[defagos]

Thanks for the feedback and sorry this issue affects you.

Background video playback (which this issue is originally about) is a tricky thing, but background audio (which the issue you describe is about) is usually pretty straightforward to implement.

I suspect the problem is related to iOS itself since we saw this issue raising recently, even if we didn't change anything to support audio playback in background (it's basically setting a flag to enable it, unlike background video playback which requires a substantial amount of additional work).

The fact that a device restart, usually a forced one, fixes the issue, is probably a sign this is (sadly) not related to the app itself. I could never reproduce it myself (maybe there is a reliable way but I could never identify one) so I never got the chance to debug what is happening and to report this issue to Apple if I can confirm the problem is on iOS side.

Which iOS version and which kind of device are you using, BTW?

[ganti]

haven't seen the bug much lately, but it still occurs sometimes.
Also rebooting the device did not help always.

I'm using an iPhone 13 with iOS 15.3.1 with SRF Player v3.5.1 (378)

[defagos]

@ganti Thanks for the update. We'll keep listening to what our users say (through our official support channels or in App Store reviews) to see if the problem becomes more widespread than expected.

Usually forced restarts have always been a great help, but until one of our devices is affected (so that we can debug the issue) I sadly have no clue how we could get to the bottom of the story.

I hope the situation will improve on your side with further iOS updates. If we happen to be able to debug the issue we'll keep you posted.