Click-to-play overlay for amp-video

Introduction

Click-to-play is a common UX feature for video players on the web.

Initially displayed on top of the video, the overlay contains details about the video such as title, duration, poster image, links and a play icon.

amp-video supports the standard play AMP action, allowing you to implement click-to-play easily.

Setup

Import the amp-video component.

<script async custom-element="amp-video" src="https://cdn.ampproject.org/v0/amp-video-0.1.js"></script>

Styling

Custom styles for click-to-play overlay

<style amp-custom>

  /* Wrapper that hosts the video and the overlay */
  .video-player {
    position: relative;
    overflow: hidden;
  }

  /* Overlay fills the parent and sits on top of the video */
  .click-to-play-overlay {
    position: absolute;
    top: 0;
    left: 0;
    right: 0;
    bottom: 0;
  }

  .poster-image {
    position: absolute;
    z-index: 1;
  }

  .poster-image img {
    object-fit: cover;
  }

  .video-title {
    position: absolute;
    z-index: 2;

    /* Align to the top left */
    top: 0;
    left: 0;

    font-size: 1.3em;
    background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0.8);
    color: #fafafa;
    padding: 0.5rem;
    margin: 0px;
  }

  .play-icon {
    position: absolute;
    z-index: 2;

    width: 100px;
    height: 100px;

    background-image: url(https://amp.dev/static/samples/img/play-icon.png);
    background-repeat: no-repeat;
    background-size: 100% 100%;

    /* Align to the middle */
    top: 50%;
    left: 50%;
    transform: translate(-50%, -50%);

    cursor: pointer;
    opacity: 0.9;
  }

  .play-icon:hover, .play-icon:focus {
    opacity: 1;
  }
</style>

Markup

The overlay is an absolutely positioned div that sits on top of the amp-video element and fills the parent player container. It hosts the poster image, video title and a play icon.

Play icon uses play and hide AMP actions to hide the overlay and play the video when it is tapped.

Title of the video

<div class="video-player">

  <amp-video id="myVideo" controls width="1280" height="720" layout="responsive" src="/static/samples/video/bullfinch.mp4">
  </amp-video>

  <div id="myOverlay" class="click-to-play-overlay">

    <h3 class="video-title">Title of the video</h3>

    <div class="play-icon" role="button" tabindex="0" on="tap:myOverlay.hide, myVideo.play"></div>

    <amp-img class="poster-image" layout="fill" src="/static/samples/img/bullfinch_poster.jpg"></amp-img>
  </div>
</div>

Need further explanation?

If the explanations on this page don't cover all of your questions feel free to reach out to other AMP users to discuss your exact use case.

Go to Stack Overflow

An unexplained feature?

The AMP project strongly encourages your participation and contributions! We hope you'll become an ongoing participant in our open source community but we also welcome one-off contributions for the issues you're particularly passionate about.

Edit sample on GitHub

Written by @aghassemi