How to customize quality selection and labels on the default UI (MP4)

Some of our customers prefer MP4 assets over HLS/MPEG-DASH ones. One major downside to this approach is that Adaptive Bitrate Streaming (ABR) is not possible with such streams, as they don't have a playlist with multiple qualities.

To counter this, we've made it possible to pass on a list of MP4 qualities & switch between them manually, to improve the overall UX. What is nice about this piece of integration code, is that it can be tweaked and applied to customize other parts of the default UI as well!

SDKs

Web SDK	Android SDK	iOS SDK	tvOS SDK	Android TV SDK	Chromecast SDK
Yes	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A

Customizing the quality selector and labels

This example explains how to customize quality selection & labels for MP4 assets.

Web SDK

First of all, we need to set up the player. Then, the different MP4 qualities of the same asset need to be stated, along with the corresponding resolutions:

// set your resolutions and sources
var resolutions = [
  { name: "360p", src: "https://example.com/demos/sample-videos/low.mp4" },
  { name: "540p", src: "https://example.com/demos/sample-videos/medium.mp4" },
  { name: "720p", src: "https://example.com/demos/sample-videos/high.mp4" }
];

Now for the slightly trickier part: Removing current & adding custom menu

var currentTime, wasPaused;
var settingsMenu = player.ui
  .getChild("ControlBar")
  .getChild("SettingsButton").menu;

// Remove built-in quality sub menu
settingsMenu.removeMenuItem(settingsMenu.menuItems[0]);

// Create custom quality sub menu
var qualityMenuItem = settingsMenu.addSubMenuItem({
  index: 0
});
var qualityMenuTitle = document.createElement("span");
qualityMenuTitle.className = "theo-settings-control-menu-item-title";
qualityMenuTitle.innerHTML = "Quality";
var qualityMenuValue = document.createElement("span");
qualityMenuValue.className = "theo-settings-control-menu-item-value";
qualityMenuItem.el().appendChild(qualityMenuTitle);
qualityMenuItem.el().appendChild(qualityMenuValue);
qualityMenuItem.subMenu.menuHeader.el().innerHTML = "Quality";
var qualityItems = resolutions.map(function (resolution) {
  var qualityItem = qualityMenuItem.subMenu.addMenuItem();
  qualityItem.el().innerHTML = resolution.name;
  qualityItem.on("click", function () {
    selectQuality(resolution);
  });
  return qualityItem;
});

// Getting the player/UI in the correct state
function selectQuality(resolution) {
  qualityMenuValue.innerHTML = resolution.name;
  currentTime = player.currentTime;
  wasPaused = player.paused;
  player.src = resolution.src;
  player.currentTime = currentTime;
  if (!wasPaused) {
    player.play();
  }
  var qualityItem = qualityItems[resolutions.indexOf(resolution.name)];
  qualityItems.forEach(function (item) {
    item.selected(item === qualityItem);
  });
}
selectQuality(resolutions[0]);

Android SDK

Android SDK does not have a built-in UI. It also does not support JavaScript injection. However, you can implement a similar custom quality selection menu using Open Video UI for Android and following the same logic for Web SDK.

iOS SDK

iOS SDK does not have a built-in UI. It also does not support JavaScript injection. However, you can implement a similar custom quality selection menu on your custom UI following the same logic for Web SDK.

You can now select multiple qualities of the same MP4 asset!