/videojs-event-tracking

Track events with VideoJS and keep an eye on performance metrics

Primary LanguageJavaScriptMIT LicenseMIT

videojs-event-tracking

Track events with VideoJS and keep an eye on performance metrics. This has been tested with VideoJS 5 through 7, if you want to see if it works nicely with your version simply clone the repo and update package.json. Open index.html and press play -- watch the events stream through.

Installation

npm install --save videojs-event-tracking
yarn add videojs-event-tracking

Usage

To include videojs-event-tracking on your website or web application, use any of the following methods.

Initializing just like a normal videojs plugin does.

videojs('videodomid', {..., plugins: { eventTracking: true } });
// or
videoInstance.eventTracking({... config ...});

Current Events

Play

This event is triggered when the video has been played for the first time. If you are looking to track play events, simply listen on the player for a normal "play" or "playing" event.

player.on('tracking:firstplay', (e, data) => console.log(data))

Data Attributes:

  • secondsToLoad: Total number of seconds between the player initializing a play request and when the first frame begins.

Pausing

Tracks when users pause the video.

player.on('tracking:pause', (e, data) => console.log(data))

Data Attributes:

  • pauseCount: Total number of Pause events triggered

Seeking

During playback, we are tracking how many times a person seeks, and the position a user has seeked to.

player.on('tracking:seek', (e, data) => console.log(data))

Data Attributes:

  • seekCount: total number of seeks that has occuring during this file
  • seekTo: Position, in seconds, that has been seeked to.

Buffering

Tracks when the video player is marked as buffering and waits until the player has made some progress.

player.on('tracking:buffered', (e, data) => console.log(data))

Data Attributes:

  • currentTime: current second of video playback
  • readyState: video#readyState value
  • secondsToLoad: Total amount of time in seconds buffering took
  • bufferCount: Total buffer events for this source

Positioning

Track Overall Percentile (1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th) of Completion. This event triggers each quarter of a video.

player.on('tracking:first-quarter', (e, data) => console.log(data))
player.on('tracking:second-quarter', (e, data) => console.log(data))
player.on('tracking:third-quarter', (e, data) => console.log(data))
player.on('tracking:fourth-quarter', (e, data) => console.log(data))

Data Attributes:

  • pauseCount: Total number of Pause events triggered
  • seekCount: Total number of Seek events triggered
  • currentTime: Current second video is on
  • duration: Total duration of video

Performance

note a little experimental

This event triggers when the player has changed sources, has ended, or has been destroyed.

Data Attributes:

  • pauseCount: Total number of Pause events triggered
  • seekCount: Total number of Seek events triggered
  • bufferCount: Total number of Buffer events triggered
  • totalDuration: Total duration provided by the file
  • watchedDuration: Total number of seconds watched, this excluses seconds a user has seeked past.
  • bufferDuration: Total seconds that buffering has occured
  • initialLoadTime: Seconds it took for the initial frame to appear

Special Requirement When initializing, you'll need to pass a function to the configuration for this plugin.

pluginConfig = {
  performance: function(data) {
    /** Use your preferred event tracking platform.
     *  Google Analytics? Amplitude? Piwik? Mixpanel?
     */
  }
}

Why?

In order to keep accuracy high, it listens for the browser's beforeunload. While it is not completely accurate either, it does give us more opportunity to catch the actual performance data we're looking for. This functionality should be noted that there is potential for noise.