YouTube iframe api behavior on Chromecast

Question

Trying to get a YouTube video playing on Chromecast, not using the YouTube receiver but simply the iframe YouTube api. When the receiver url is loaded in a desktop chrome browser it plays ok but when the same url is loaded onto Chromecast I get the message 'This video is currently unavailable - Learn More'. If I keep trying to get the widget, once created, to play different videos it sometimes also says 'The Adobe Flash Player is required for video playback'.

The widget is created in the onYouTubeIframeAPIReady() callback using new YT.Player as shown in the docs. Maybe I'm confused but I thought the iframe api was html5 based, not flash based. Has anyone successfully achieved this or is this unsupported on Chromecast, hence the weird behaviour? I also stumbled across this http://www.youtube.com/html5

I've successfully built a receiver that utilizes the iFrame API, and haven't had any problem with any video I've tried yet. What video IDs have given you errors, so I can try them out in my receiver and, if successful, share the code here as an answer? — jlmcdonald
Every single one I tried. For example, from the youtube api reference example - 'M7lc1UVf-VE' — milleph
But it's very encouraging that you have it working - probably just configuration/initialization. If you could post some code that would be very helpful. — milleph

jlmcdonald jlmcdonald · Accepted Answer · 2013-09-04T16:10:07

Here's the code I'm currently using on my receiver. The message handling (both directions) is hit and miss, and I'm currently working through that ... but the loading of the iFrame library, the embedding of the video, etc. all works. If it doesn't work on your end, we can start to investigate how your setup might be different. I've tried to add comments where it might be helpful.

<html>
<head>
<script src="https://www.gstatic.com/cast/js/receiver/1.0/cast_receiver.js">
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
 // first create our receiver object and our channel handler
        var receiver = new cast.receiver.Receiver('{YOUR_APP_ID}', ['ChromecastYoutube'],"",5);
        var ytChannelHandler = new cast.receiver.ChannelHandler('ChromecastYoutube'); //  'using 'ChromecastYoutube' as my dev namespace. Wouldn't really be that in production.
        ytChannelHandler.addChannelFactory(receiver.createChannelFactory('ChromecastYoutube'));
        ytChannelHandler.addEventListener(
                cast.receiver.Channel.EventType.MESSAGE,
                onMessage.bind(this)
        );

        receiver.start();

        window.addEventListener('load', function() { // we won't try to load the iframe libraries until the chromecast window is fully loaded.
                var tag = document.createElement('script');
                tag.src = "https://www.youtube.com/iframe_api";
                var firstScriptTag = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0];
                firstScriptTag.parentNode.insertBefore(tag, firstScriptTag);
        });

        var player;
        function onYouTubeIframeAPIReady() {
                player = new YT.Player('player', {
                        height: '562',
                        width: '1000',
                        videoId: 'jLlSqucqXB0',
                        playerVars: { 'autoplay': 0, 'controls': 0 },
                        events: {
                                'onReady': onPlayerReady,
                                'onPlayerStateChange': onStateChange
                        }
                });
        }

        function onPlayerReady(event) {
                document.getElementById('annotation').innerHTML="We're ready to go";
        }

        function onStateChange(event) {
                switch (event.data) {
                        case YT.PlayerState.ENDED:
                                // TODO let sender know we're done, then close casting 
                                break;
                        case YT.PlayerState.PLAYING:
                                // TODO let sender know we're playing 
                                break;
                        case YT.PlayerState.PAUSED:
                                // TODO let sender know we're paused 
                                break;
                }
        }

        function onMessage(event) { // currently, any one of these will work, but subsequent ones seem to falter. Investigating...
                ytBindings={"playVideo":player.playVideo(),"pauseVideo":player.pauseVideo(),"stopVideo":player.stopVideo(),"getStatus":player.getPlayerState()}
                ytBindings[event.message];
        }


</script>
<style>
#wrapper {
        width: 1000px;
        margin: 10px auto;
        text-align: center;
}
#annotation {
        color: #ffffcc;
        font-size: 200%;
        margin-top:25px;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<div id="wrapper">
<div id="player"></div>
<div id="annotation"></div>
</div>
</body>
</html>

YouTube iframe api behavior on Chromecast

3 Answers