How to tell if a <video> element is currently playing?

Question

I see that the MediaElement interface exposes attributes like paused, seeking, and ended. Missing from the list, however, is playing.

I know there are playing events that fire when an element starts playing, and timeupdate events events periodically while playing, but I'm looking for a way to determine whether a video is playing right now. Is there an easy way to determine this?

The closest I've got is:

!(video.paused || video.ended || video.seeking || video.readyState < video.HAVE_FUTURE_DATA)

Answer 1

It has been a long time but here is a great tip. You can define .playing as a custom property for all media elements and access it when needed. Here is how:

Object.defineProperty(HTMLMediaElement.prototype, 'playing', {
    get: function(){
        return !!(this.currentTime > 0 && !this.paused && !this.ended && this.readyState > 2);
    }
})

Now you can use it on <video> or <audio> elements like this:

if(document.querySelector('video').playing){ // checks if element is playing right now
    // Do anything you want to
}

Answer 2

There is not a specific attribute that will reveal whether a MediaElement is currently playing. However, you can deduce this from the state of the other attributes. If:

• currentTime is greater than zero, and
• paused is false, and
• ended is false

then the element is currently playing.

You may also need to check readyState to see if the media stopped due to errors. Maybe something like that:

const isVideoPlaying = video => !!(video.currentTime > 0 && !video.paused && !video.ended && video.readyState > 2);

Answer 3

var video = $('selector').children('video');

var videoElement = video.get(0);

if (!videoElement.paused) {} 

One way of doing it using Jquery

Answer 4

See my response here: HTML5 video tag, javascript to detect playing status?

Basicaly, as said before there is no single property to check but according to the spec it's a combination of conditions.