Bumper Videos feature deprecation

[farhan]

Study the Bumper Videos feature history and analyze if its candidate to deprecated.

[farhan]

Feature spelunking

What we learned digging through the history of the Video Bumper (pre-roll videos) feature:

• Implemented mid-2015 by @auraz: #7825, #8041, #8120. No feature work since.
• How it works: with FEATURES['ENABLE_VIDEO_BUMPER'] on, a course's video_bumper advanced setting (edx-val video ID + transcript paths) makes a 5–35 second clip play before each video, once per user per 7 days (SHOW_BUMPER_PERIODICITY), with Skip / "Do not show again" options.
• It was an edx.org-only feature: the docs state it required working with edX partner support — there has never been self-service setup for Open edX operators, and no authoring UI exists (configuration is a hand-edited JSON blob in an Advanced Setting that is hidden unless the flag is on).
• Bumper transcripts were deliberately left out of the edx-val transcript migration in 2017 (commit: "we don't handle video pre-load/bumper transcripts in edx-val") — they still work only via contentstore /static/ files.
• The bok-choy acceptance tests were removed in 2020, so the full flow has had no automated end-to-end coverage since.
• A GitHub-wide code search for ENABLE_VIDEO_BUMPER: true finds only test fixtures (bok_choy.yml / mock.yml in platform forks) — zero deployment configs, Tutor plugins, or site configurations. Zero forum threads about the feature in ~11 years.
• The React video player technical discovery already listed the bumper among features to consider deprecating in the old Video Block.
• The flag gates only the entry point: the XBlock fields, is_bumper handler branches, and bumper JS ship to every instance regardless — so disabling it doesn't remove the maintenance surface, only removal does.

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🤖 Written with the assistance of Claude Code

[farhan]

How we tested it

Rather than assume the feature had silently broken over time, we verified it on a Tutor dev instance running current master. It still works as-is — but enabling it took four manual steps, none of which are exposed in any UI:

1. Feature flag via a Tutor settings patch — note it must be set dict-style, FEATURES["ENABLE_VIDEO_BUMPER"] = True; a plain top-level ENABLE_VIDEO_BUMPER = True in a downstream settings module silently fails to reach FEATURES.get() readers (FeaturesProxy namespace issue, to be reported separately).
2. Hand-creating the edx-val Video/EncodedVideo rows in a Django shell, pointing the desktop_mp4 profile at a hosted clip — there is no UI for this without a full video encoding pipeline.
3. Uploading the .srt to Files & Uploads and hand-typing its /static/ path into the hidden "Video Pre-Roll" JSON advanced setting.
4. Enrolling a learner and viewing in the LMS — the bumper never shows in Studio preview, by design (runtime.is_author_mode check).

Result: the pre-roll plays with skip controls and its own transcript, "do not show again" persists via save_user_state, the bumper transcript endpoints (?is_bumper=1) serve correctly from contentstore, and the 7-day periodicity works.

One notable behavior: if the bumper's video URL is unreachable, the player silently falls back to the main video — an operator could have this "enabled" for years without knowing it isn't playing. Given the edx.org encoding pipeline (VEDA) was itself deprecated in 2020, any real-world bumper configuration would likely be in that state today.

Testing Video:

https://docs.google.com/videos/d/1qqW95BpgUhBdH1QDEGWYQ05UdyXrTIYXsNYeHXc-jCM/edit?usp=sharing

Screenshot:

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🤖 Written with the assistance of Claude Code

[farhan]

My experience summary: should we remove it?

My recommendation: yes — deprecate and remove.

Having spelunked the history and actually run the feature end-to-end, my overall take:

• It works, but nothing about it is usable. The code is not fully broken — yet there is no path for a real course team to use it: no authoring UI, no self-service video ingestion (the encoding pipeline it assumed, VEDA, was deprecated in 2020), no operator documentation, and the one config surface is a hidden hand-edited JSON blob.
• Every usage signal is zero. Off by default for ~11 years, edx.org-only by design, no forum threads ever, and the only ENABLE_VIDEO_BUMPER: true on all of public GitHub are test fixtures.
• It fails silently. An unreachable bumper video quietly falls back to the main video, so even a site that believes it has bumpers enabled may not be showing them — and would likely be in exactly that state today.
• The cost is real and ongoing. The feature threads through the Video XBlock (course setting, user-state fields, is_bumper transcript branches, three JS modules, analytics events, tests) and all of it must be carried through the ongoing extraction to xblocks-contrib and any future video player work. The feature flag only gates the entry point, not this surface. Removing it would cut this maintenance burden and make the video code significantly easier to reason about.
• The functionality is trivially replaceable — a course team wanting an intro clip can place a standalone Video component at the start of the course.

Risk of removal is minimal: worst case, an unknown private fork uses it, which is exactly what the deprecation announcement period is for. If no usage surfaces from the community post, I see no justification for continuing to maintain it.

Next steps: forum announcement → if no objections by the stated date, file the formal [DEPR] ticket per OEP-21 citing lack of usage, then remove.

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🤖 Written with the assistance of Claude Code