Prevent HTML5 Video from disabling screen saver

Question

Is there a parameter or some kind of setting to flag an HTML5 video to NOT disable a user's screen saver?

Not sure how relevant this is today, but I feel like it could potentially be an issue in the future. I discovered this developing a site that uses a looping HTML5 video (with no audio) playing in the background to provide some motion for the site. I began noticing that my screen saver stopped initializing during the weeks of development on the site. When development was complete, it had occurred to me that I had left the page with the video playing open in a tab in my browser, nearly the entire time. The tab doesn't have to even be in focus for it to affect the screen saver.

I know this is definitely a good feature of HTML5 videos to prevent screen saver from activating while watching a video, but it would be nice to tell the browser that this video embedded should not affect screen savers/power features.

Most of my development was on a Windows 7 desktop PC. I did some on my Macbook Pro, however the power settings shut off the screen before a screen saver ever has a chance to initialize on my Mac.

Answer 1

No. Most browsers suppress screen savers when playing HTML5 videos in full-screen as a feature. If the browser is suppressing the screen saver when video is not played in full-screen (for instance, in a tab, as you describe), this is likely a bug with the browser.

Which browser are you encountering this issue? In the latest release of Google Chrome (version 38 at the time of this writing), it seems there is a bug that causes the screen saver to be suppressed when playing HTML5 video outside full-screen mode.

This issue is resolved in the beta release of Google Chrome version 39.