Note: In case you don’t want to encode your videos you can – alternatively – use the hack that powers “players” such as iphone-inline-video: manually change the currentTime of the video element.

Here’s a little snippet of a (non-public) project that I’m working on that might be of help:

play(reset = false) {

  // Reset to start if need be
  if (reset) {
    this.refs.video.currentTime = 0;
  }

  // Store time
  this.lastTime = Date.now();

  // "Play" the video, using requestAnimationFrame
  this._rAFRender();

}

pause() {
  this.rAF && cancelAnimationFrame(this.rAF);
}

_rAFRender() {

  // Calculate time difference between this and the previous call to _rAFRender
  const time = Date.now();
  const elapsed = (time - this.lastTime) / 1000;

  // More time has passed than the framerate
  if (elapsed >= (1 / 25)) {

    // Seek the video to currentTime, thus rendering a new frame even though it's not playing
    this.refs.video.currentTime = this.refs.video.currentTime + elapsed;

    // Store time as lastTime
    this.lastTime = time;

  }

  // We are not at the end of the video: keep on rendering
  if (this.refs.video.currentTime < this.refs.video.duration) {
    this.rAF = requestAnimationFrame(this._rAFRender);
  }

}

If you create an <audio> element in parallel, you can even sync up the audio from the video with it – a feature Whitewater has not.

Note to self: I urgently need to release this component …