0

I was surprised when I shared a page that unfurled as a video on iMessage (an Amazon product which I include for reference and have no affiliation with).

The page has several occurrences of .mp4, such as:

<video id="7" preload="auto" style="position: absolute; left: 0px; top: 0px; overflow: hidden; height: 1px; width: 1px;" src="https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/C1g6NzH-yaS.mp4">

<script>
jQuery.parseJSON('{..., "url":"https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/C1g6NzH-yaS.mp4", ...})

{..., "videoUrl":"https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/C1g6NzH-yaS.mp4", ...}
</script>


<div ... src="https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/C1g6NzH-yaS.mp4" ...>...</div>

<div ... data-video-url="https://d12xgfa7l6zj5h.cloudfront.net/9569dba3-5545-4b63-92a8-b7af7047d14d/default.jobtemplate.mp4.480.mp4" ... >...</div>
</script>

They are not in a head or meta tags, so I don't see which is responsible for the video unfurling.

The same link does not unfurl with an image on facebook messenger nor on Whatsapp. In my experience, iMessage has had experimental features (see OpenGraph image standards for Facebook, Whatsapp, and iMessage), so this feature could be short-lived.

I tried the first one on my server with:

<video preload="auto" src="/video_small.mp4" controls></video>

It is 1.1 MB and plays on a browser. On iMessage, it does not show a video, only the image I placed in the meta Open Graph tag.

Is there a standard for links to unfurl with a video on Facebook, Whatsapp, and iMessage?

Update: To answer the comments:

(1): Adding a full URL to the video with the same domain name fails to unfurl a video on iMessage.

(2): Addding a full URL with the video above copied to my server also fails.

miguelmorin
  • 5,025
  • 4
  • 29
  • 64
  • **(1)** Try using a full URL for the video like `src="https://www.example.com/video_small.mp4"` where the `example.com` is same domain as shared page (video and page are in same server) . **(2)** What happens if you copy their `C1g6NzH-yaS.mp4` to your own server and replace `small.mp4` URL with video copy URL, does the same product video work on iMessage if coming from your server (instead of Amazon)? – VC.One Jan 31 '21 at 14:23
  • **(3)** It's possible that this is a special permission allowed by Apple only for important sites like Youtube and Amazon (notice how only Youtube is allowed to play inside Facebook posts? Other sites just become a link with OpenGraph's `image` and `description` parts only because Facebook decided to make that artificial rule). – VC.One Jan 31 '21 at 14:29
  • @VC.One I tested (1) and (2) and they failed. Can you write an answer with (3)? – miguelmorin Feb 02 '21 at 11:08

0 Answers0