<a-video>

The video primitive plays a video as a texture on a flat plane.

Example

<a-scene>
<a-assets>
<video id="penguin-sledding" autoplay loop="true" src="penguin-sledding.mp4"></video>
</a-assets>

<!-- Using the asset management system. -->
<a-video src="#penguin-sledding" width="16" height="9" position="0 0 -20"></a-video>

<!-- Defining the URL inline. Not recommended but more comfortable for web developers. -->
<a-video src="airbending.mp4"></a-video>
</a-scene>

Attributes

Attribute Component Mapping Default Value
color material.color #FFF
height geometry.height 1.75
metalness material.metalness 0
opacity material.opacity 1
repeat material.repeat None
roughness material.roughness 0.5
segments-height geometry.segmentsHeight 1
segments-width geometry.segmentsWidth 1
shader material.shader flat
side material.side front
src material.src None
transparent material.transparent false
width geometry.width 3

Caveats

iOS has a lot of restrictions on playing videos in the browser. To play an inline video texture, we must:

  • Set the <meta name="apple-mobile-web-app-capable" content="yes"> meta tag. A-Frame will inject this if missing.
  • Set the webkit-playsinline and playsinline attribute to the video element. A-Frame will add this to all videos if missing).

Since iOS 11, iOS has required user interaction to trigger video playback. This is also true on a number of Android device and browser combinations.

Fine-Tuning

Ensuring that the video is not distorted by stretching requires us to appropriately set the width and height preserving the original aspect ratio of the video. This properties are set in meters, don’t confuse with pixels.

For example, a 2:1 video:

<a-video src="#myvideo" width="3" height="1.5"></a-video>