The video pager never lands on a black slide: a post joins the carousel once its clip is ready to play; and the carousel shows the clips the screen's way round, with a toggle for all shapes.HEADmaster

Ready to play: the clip's first frame on its slide and its opening in the cache (the head start done). Until then the post waits out of the carousel — parked off screen, no height, no snap point — and a swipe or a flight passes over it to the next post that is ready; it joins when ready, and a post joining above the clip on screen moves the scroll by its height in the same frame (snapping off for it, and never while the pager is in motion: then once it has settled), so the reader doesn't feel it. The post tapped to open the pager is in whatever its state. Seen on Adam's phone before this: 17 of 18 landings had their frame, the 18th was black for a second while the server was still making its frame. (Adam, 2026-10-16: "i never want to land on a black screen i'd rather just not have a video in carousel yet if it's not ready to play".) A local http clip, which can have no server frame, waits only for its opening. Data Saver is unchanged (nothing waits: heavy clips sit under their tap-to-play cover).

The screen's way round: the Videos view used to show tall clips only, everywhere. Now it and the pager show tall clips on a screen taller than wide and wide clips on one wider than tall — a square either way — unless the reader asks for all shapes: a toggle over the Videos grid and in the pager's top bar ("Tall only" / "Wide only" / "All shapes"), remembered on the device. A post the wrong way round is kept out of the carousel the same way (not the one opened on, and never the clip on screen: a turn of the phone doesn't pull it away; shapes not yet known are let in, and a shape is learned from the server frame as it loads). Turning the phone re-sorts them. (Adam: "only show vertical videos by default on a phone that's in vertical orientation and only horizontal videos if the phone is in landscape but have some kind of control to toggle the ability to see all videos".) The posts prepared ahead (frames for five ahead and three behind, head starts for the next two and the one before) skip the ones kept out for shape.

tools/pager-ready-gate-test.js: the grid shows four of five clips (not the wide one) with the toggle, and all five after a tap; in the carousel the next clip, its frame delayed, waits while the one after (ready) has joined; a step lands past it on a clip with its frame; the waiting post joins above the clip on screen without moving it, the counter grows, a step back lands on it; the pager's toggle lets the wide post in and out. pager-tap-slop-test keeps all shapes on (its path has a wide clip before a tall one in a portrait window). Every other pager test passes; feed-pager-ahead and feed-video-pager fail the same checks on a clean checkout.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5.1 <[email protected]>

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