VideoPress: resolve the inline player's poster in the browser when the server has none

[heydemoura]

Fixes N/A — follow-up to #52011 (the poster facade) for Linear VIDP-412.

Proposed changes

• Bug: with the inline player setting on, video embeds render as a black box until play. VideoPress: poster facade for the inline player, load the player on play #52011 moved poster resolution from the player, which fetches video info in the browser with a playback token, to PHP, which only knows the block's poster attribute, the local attachment's metadata and the anonymous v1.1/videos/{guid} lookup. So private videos, videos on a private-by-default site, and videos the anonymous API refuses (unknown_media) reach the page with no poster, and the facade shows only its dark background. The block, both shortcodes and oEmbed are all affected.
• Poster resolved in the browser when the server had none. The boot script now gives a facade without a poster image one before it is played: it fetches the video info anonymously, and when that fails or reports the video private it asks for the playback token through the same admin-ajax endpoint the token bridge uses, refetches with metadata_token and tokenizes the poster URL the way the player does. Facades that already carry a server-rendered poster are untouched (that stays the LCP fast path); a poster image that fails to load is replaced the same way. Lookups wait until the facade is within 200px of the viewport and are shared between facades of one video, so a long page does not fire a request per video on load.
• Play button and spinner like the player's. The facade's play glyph is now the player's own large play icon at the player's size (min(max(100vw / 8, 60px), 90px), 40px under 200px) with its hover scale and the chrome v2 pre-play vignette behind it. From the click until mount() replaces the facade, the placeholder carries is-loading, which swaps the glyph for the player's waiting spinner (48px glass pill with the rotating arc, 40px in containers under 250px). So nothing visibly jumps when the player takes over.
• [wpvideo] in the Jetpack plugin passes the poster frame already present in the video data it fetched, rather than looking it up again.
• Tests: a Jest suite for the resolver (public video, private via token, private fallback, retry after a miss, shared lookup) and boot-script cases (fill before play, replace on error, bare facade when nothing is found, no poster added after a click mounted the player, viewport gating).

Related product discussion/links

• Linear: VIDP-412
• Introduced by VideoPress: poster facade for the inline player, load the player on play #52011, on the inline player stack for VIDP-384

Does this pull request change what data or activity we track or use?

No. The browser makes the same video-info and playback-token requests the player itself makes on play; they now happen before play for videos the server could not resolve a poster for.

Testing instructions

Setup as in #52011: a Jetpack-connected site with VideoPress, jp build packages/videopress plugins/jetpack, Jetpack → VideoPress → Settings → "Load the player once per page instead of once per video" switched on.

• Make a video private (or turn on "Private videos by default" in the VideoPress settings) and put it on a page as a video block, a [videopress <guid>] shortcode and a pasted videopress.com URL.
• Before: each embed is a black box with a play button until clicked. After: each shows its poster shortly after load. DevTools → Network: one v1.1/videos/<guid> request per video, an admin-ajax.php?action=videopress-get-playback-jwt request, then the poster with metadata_token=; still no videopress.js until a click.
• A public video whose poster PHP could render keeps its poster in the HTML and triggers no request before play.
• Scroll a long page of videos: posters below the fold are only looked up as they approach the viewport.
• The play button looks like the player's own (compare with a video block that has Autoplay on, which mounts the player at once). Click a facade: the glyph gives way to the player's spinner until the player appears, then playback starts as before. Throttle the network to see the spinner longer; block videopress.js in DevTools and the play button comes back. Click while a lookup is still running: no poster is inserted over the mounted player.
• Automated: jp test js packages/videopress, jp test php packages/videopress.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

[github-actions]

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[github-actions]

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Code Coverage Summary

Coverage changed in 3 files.

File	Coverage	Δ%	Δ Uncovered
projects/packages/videopress/src/client/lib/inline-player/index.ts	85/90 (94.44%)	1.59%	1 ❤️‍🩹
projects/plugins/jetpack/modules/videopress/class.videopress-player.php	87/474 (18.35%)	0.31%	1 ❤️‍🩹
projects/packages/videopress/src/class-inline-player.php	212/215 (98.60%)	0.08%	0 💚

1 file is newly checked for coverage.

File	Coverage
projects/packages/videopress/src/client/lib/inline-player/poster.ts	33/33 (100.00%) 💚

Full summary · PHP report · JS report