Question

The Flash YouTube API getPlayerState() method has 6 possible values:

• -1 (unstarted)
• 0 (ended)
• 1 (playing)
• 2 (paused)
• 3 (buffering)
• 5 (video cued).

The manual reads:

When the player first loads a video, it will broadcast an unstarted
(-1) event. When a video is cued and ready to play, the player will
broadcast a video cued (5) event. In your code, you can specify the
integer values or you can use one of the following namespaced
variables.

Consider this:

1. The player is CUED waiting for user interaction.
2. User clicks play
3. Pre-roll video ad starts to play

What state is the player in during the pre-roll ad? How do I know an ad is being played?

Answer 1

I did the legwork for you at https://developers.google.com/youtube/youtube_player_demo

Cuing a video with a preroll and then clicking Play leads to:

1. onStateChange event: Player state changed to: “-1” (undefined)
2. cueVideoById(cggNqDAtJYU, parseInt(0), default);
3. onStateChange event: Player state changed to: “5” (video cued)
4. onStateChange event: Player state changed to: “2” (paused)

So the video’s state is PAUSED (2) while the ad is playing. Additionally, calls to playVideo() or pauseVideo() will be no-ops during a preroll.