Stepwise: the player who waits for you. (2nd Submission)

Most video is watched. Some of it is followed, with your hands busy: a recipe, a repair, a knot. Every player makes that person stop and drag a thin bar back a few seconds. Stepwise moves the pause to where it is wanted.

A video’s chapters are its steps. Each one is a numbered segment of the seek bar, and when a step ends the video holds its last frame, the finished result, until you say go. Go can be a tap anywhere on the picture, the space bar, the word “next” on a computer, or two knocks on the counter on a phone. Knocks are measured on the device, and the microphone is open only while the player waits. Counter mode fills a phone’s screen, makes the step readable from across the kitchen, and keeps the screen awake. Flip Wait off, and it is an ordinary player; a video without chapters never sees any of this.

Built on Video.js v10 (HTML and CSS, on the Scaffold base). Every control is reachable from the keyboard, and reduced motion, more contrast, reduced transparency and forced colours are handled. The intro video is me explaining the player from inside it, hosted on Mux.

Love that this starts from a real annoyance: greasy hands, dragging a tiny bar back ten seconds. Putting the pause where the step ends instead of where your finger is feels like something every recipe site should just have. Great problem to pick.

Walkman VJS-10: a Video.js skin inspired by the classic cassette Walkman

I wanted a video player that feels like a physical object, not just a set of controls. Walkman VJS-10 turns the Video.js player into a brushed-metal stereo unit with a video screen, a cassette window, VU meters and chunky transport buttons.

What it does

Three tapes: Sunset Highway (Side A), Blue Hour (Side B) and Golden Reel (Side C). Switching tapes swaps the video like loading a new cassette.

Cassette-style controls: Rewind, Play, Fast Forward, Volume and Eject (fullscreen), each with its own color-coded accent.

Live tape counter: a green LCD readout shows elapsed and total time.

Three body finishes: silver, purple and gold.

Aspect ratios: switch between 16:9, 4:3 and 21:9.

Keyboard shortcuts: Space to play and pause, ← → to seek, M to mute.

Three named tapes with sides is such a nice way to turn a playlist into something you can hold. Eject as fullscreen made me smile. The three body finishes are a great touch too, I'd pick the gold one.