Bug in playing 360 videos. Upper half of screen shows upper half of the video as normal video; lower half shows part of the same video 90-degree rotated.
This '360 video' playing bug occurs in two portable versions of Firefox, the ESR version and 62.0.2 version (I'm using Windows 10, 32 bits, Intel Atom processor Z3775, 2 GB RAMs). When they worked properly, I could view 360 videos correctly and could drag the video screen to 'see all 360 degree around', as well as 'up' and 'down' in both the Firefox versions. After working properly for a few 360 videos, the mentioned bug then occurred. The upper half of the video screen showed the upper half of a 360video as normal video, whereas the lower half of the video screen showed part of the same 360video rotated by 90 degrees. When this bug happened, I couldn't drag the video screen to 'see around'. To summarize, the 360 video behaved as normal video that you couldn't drag around, but it was displayed weirdly as normal upper half and '90 degree' rotated lower half described earlier. (Note: I know how a 360 video would look when viewing through a non-supported browser. It would look something a bit weird, similar to when you view a photosphere image in a non-supported viewer. But it certainly does not look as highly weird as this Firefox '360 video' bug.
The mentioned bug happened quite regularly. I had to quit and restart Firefox, which could sometimes solve the problem (and sometimes not) . But then again, after working correctly for a few 360 videos, the bug comes again.
Note: It seems that I can't upload image (it's saying 'Uploading ...' indefinitely. So I've tried to explain the bug as detailed as possible.
All Replies (5)
I have posted an image describing the bug here
My error: This is a duplicate.
Modified by sithichai
Have you noticed any pattern to it?
Does it help, when this problem occurs, to clear the cache and reload the page?
Dear jscher2000
Thanks for your kind and quick response. As far as I can recall, reload the page didn't help. I think I once cleared cache, and it didn't help either. Usually, I just closed and restarted Firefox, and as I already mentioned above, it sometimes helped (and several times didn't help.
During the next couple days I'll try to observe whether there's a usage pattern leading to this bug as you kindly suggested.
For now, I have 3 images for your further information.
1) The first image is the incorrect display of a 360 video, reposted here for easy comparison with the other images.
2) The second image is exactly the same video at exactly the same spot (same second) displayed correctly as 360 video.
3) The third image is exactly the same video at exactly the same moment (same second) displayed correctly as 360 video, but I drag the video around a little bit to show part of the 2 lines of text "II SPHERE MOVEMENT WITH STABIZATION" shown in the first image (i.e. incorrect display) so as one can easily recognise that the second and third images is exactly the same video at exactly the same moment of time as the first image.
Note. As you can see, when Firefox displays 360 video correctly, there will be a small white navigation button (circle) at the top left corner of the display screen. In fact, when displayed correctly, the video can be dragged freely 360 around as well as upward and downward; whereas when displayed incorrectly (i.e. as in the first image), the video can't be dragged at all (i.e. behaving like a normal video)
Note: I've modified this post by merely removing the blank spaces at the beginning of each paragraph so as the post can be easily read. (If there are spaces at the beginning of a paragraph, that paragraph will be displayed as a single line with a scrolling control. As a result, you must scroll repeatedly to read the entire text of a long paragraph, which is so annoying, like this.
Modified by sithichai
Dear jscher2000
I begin to think this error could possibly related to the relatively limited 2GB RAMs of my device and the way Firefox consumes available memory (I heard that Firefox consumes relatively large amount of memory)?
One pattern that I think I've observed was that the error happened on a complex and highly graphics intensive web page (comprising several videos, tons of images, several 360 images at Kuula). At first, a 360 video would display correctly, with a small navigating button (circle) near the top left corner of the video screen, and I could use my finger to drag around, or upward / downward to change the perspective of the video. After spending some time in the web page: reading, viewing videos and 360 videos properly, and 360 Kuula photo; I began to notice that clicking on a 360 Kuula photo would result in that photo being loaded indefinitely (usually a click on such photo would need a few seconds to load, after which you some text would appear at the bottom of the photo telling that you can drag the photo around for 360 degree viewing, which I could actually drag around and view that 360 photo properly). After this, when I returned to view the same 360 videos on the page that used to work properly, they were not displayed correctly (i.e. no navigating button, could not be dragged around at all, and displayed as upper and hower halves, with the lower half rotated 90 degrees).
I would spend the next couple days trying to investigate this, and report back.
Meanwhile, I have two more images to show how frustrating this 360 video viewing error can be. The first image is when the video is displayed correctly. The second is when it was displayed incorrectly (i.e. as upper and lower halves, with the lower half rotated 90 degrees). You can compared the 2 images and see that both represent the same instant of the same video (i.e. at the 3rd second).
Best regards
Modified by sithichai