Using MediaElement in Windows Phone 8.1 app

Question

I'm developing a Windows Phone 8.1 app that plays a video using the MediaElement control. I'm facing some problems for which I've not been able to find information. I've uploaded an example app here: https://mega.co.nz/#!s9sFiQDK!JDI9ar8qWqWIZ_Ot-Q8K8X0qfQ5YG7ATLAiHypOs5Ow

1. If a click the button in the default page, the app navigates to a second page that contains a MediaElement to play a video. My app is configured to be Portrait only, but I want the video to be displayed in Landscape. For this, I'm changing the screen orientation when clicking on the button and before navigating to the video page with this line: Windows.Graphics.Display.DisplayInformation.AutoRotationPreferences = Windows.Graphics.Display.DisplayOrientations.Landscape; The problem with this is that I can see in the app when the orientation is changing which looks ugly. How can I do to make the video display in landscape without having to change the orientation of the screen? I've seen in the Facebook app that when a video opens, the app does navigate to another page (or at least it seems so from the transition animation that I see) but even though, videos open and play in landscape, there is no screen rotation.

2. I want to hide the StatusBar before the page with the video is displayed. I've put this line statusBar.HideAsync(); in various places but regardless, I always see that the StatusBar is still hiding when the video is already visible and playing. Again, the Facebook app does hide the StatusBar before the video is shown in the screen.

3. When the video is playing, if I press and hold the back hardware button, the app is minimized. Now, if I click on its screenshot to go back to it, the app comes to the foreground, but the video is not playing anymore. If I tap on the video to see the video controls, I can see that the video progress line is moving, but the video is like frozen. If I pause the video and play it again, the video resumes. How do I do to make the video to continue to play when the app comes to the foreground? In the Facebook app when I do this, the app comes to the foreground, but the video page is closed and the app takes me to the timeline page. Is this the only way of doing it? If so, how do I detect that when the app comes to the foreground there is a video playing so I can close the page and navigate to the previous one.

Answer 1

1. If you always want the video page in landscape mode, you can call Windows.Graphics.Display.DisplayInformation.AutoRotationPreferences = Windows.Graphics.Display.DisplayOrientations.Landscape; in the page constructor, after InitializeComponent();

2. Calling StatusBar.GetForCurrentView().HideAsync(); in the main page constructor is working fine for me.

3. I still have the same problem, I've tried different approaches, but I can't even get App.Resuming event (and unfortunately in Windows Phone 8.1 WinRT OnNavigatedTo is not triggered on app resuming).