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Automattic
Playback: audio skipped
Initially reported p1650892587223279-slack-C02A333D8LQ
What the listener said:
I was just listening to a 2hour podcast and at about 1hr10min it just skipped back to the beginning. Yet the progress bar still showed that the episode was at 1:10!?
It happened when they played the Biblical Series: Genesis 1 - Chaos & Order episode.
What has been done so far
- Enabled Legacy Bluetooth Support
- Disabled Intelligent Playback Resumption
- Noticed this happens on Bluetooth and over phone speakers
I wanted to let you know that I’ve been encountering this issue about random skips on my iPhone for quite some time. The suggested fix of disabling Intelligent Playback Resumption has fixed the issue for me.
p1633088949333200-slack-C02A333D8LQ
Has there been any progress on this particular bug? I’m starting to encounter it now even with Intelligent Playback Resumption disabled and it’s making it hard to get through some podcasts as it randomly jumps back or forward
p1643133451260200-slack-C02A333D8LQ
4723649-zen
From Chip:
Leaving notes as I investigate. I haven't been able to reproduce this error yet.
From the device logs in the ticket, I noticed an interesting pattern:
| Pause | 2022-01-21 08:25:24 Remote control: pauseCommand 2022-01-21 08:25:24 pausing playback |
| 2022-01-21 08:25:24 saving played up to 2816.553585642 for episode The Man Who Built A Gun To Shoot Space | |
| Audio Session Stop | 2022-01-21 08:25:28 deactiveAudioSession succeeded |
| Pause | 2022-01-21 08:25:28 pausing playback |
| 2022-01-21 08:25:28 saving played up to 2816.581357628 for episode The Man Who Built A Gun To Shoot Space | |
| Audio Session Stop (The session didn't reactivate and was stopped twice) |
2022-01-21 08:25:31 deactiveAudioSession succeeded |
| Play | 2022-01-21 08:27:01 Remote control: playCommand, treating as playPause |
I'm not sure if this is related to the issue but it stood out.
Another similar report:
The pod will all of a sudden repeat itself sometimes 40 seconds worth, other times more or less. Or it will skip forward. Not a timing thing, almost like a bad edit or feed. Most of the time when this happens, the pod just ends a minute or two early. And like I said, in some cases, parts are just missing.
p1644502274803249-slack-C02A333D8LQ
From GeoJunkie:
If it helps, I had another incidence of this yesterday and I happened to keep track of the timestamp within a two-minute window.
Here are the details:
- Episode: https://pca.st/cfzo2kxz
- It happened at around the 1:18 - 1:20 mark and skipped back a couple of minutes. I was driving, so I couldn't get the exact details, but I can resend logs if it helps. (This has happened at home, too, so I don't think it's related to Car Play
- I still have Intelligent Playback Resumption toggled off
- I also had the podcast end early, like in the other report. I'd assumed it was because I'd set the "Skip Last" setting, but I just checked, and it's not actually set for the podcast.
- I don't know if it's related, but I tend to skip forward and back a lot when I listen to skip past the ads. Usually several times forward, then back once I'm past the ends to get to the beginning of the resumed episode.
Let me know if there's any other details I can share.
Often the audio will skip back a minute or 30 seconds without me touching my phone at all. This happens regularly. Podcasts have clearly been cutting off before they’re finished by at least a couple of minutes. There seems to be missing audio at the end.
4809432-zen
I’ve had issues with my podcast suddenly skipping backwards 30 seconds, sometimes 60 seconds randomly. If happens often enough that it’s become annoying. Is there something I can do to stop it? (It’s definitely not me accidentally hitting a button, my phone is always locked when it happens).
4830581-zen
Often when I’m listening to an episode, it will skip back and replay a part I’ve already heard, but the episode timer will keep going forward, so the end of the episode gets cut off. It’s super annoying to listen to the same part of an episode twice and then miss the end of the episode.
App Review
From mattwondra:
Also likely related:
- p1652911683033139-slack-C02A333D8LQ
- p1652344114292549-slack-C02A333D8LQ
- 5202856-zen
- 5185077-zen
- https://www.reddit.com/r/pocketcasts/comments/ly06l6/podcasts_randomly_skipping_forward_and_rewinding/gtte2kp/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
Complaints of this seem to go back over a year so not likely a recent regression. Through some spot-checking, it appears that all of these issues happen with podcasts that use dynamic ad insertion, and the user either has auto-downloads disabled or is away from wifi so the episode is streaming. I also see users pausing for a while and then resuming the episode. Users who download, or try on other apps, do not experience this issue.
My understanding is that because we're streaming, that means we're using the AVPlayer. I don't know how that framework buffers/streams content, but my best guess would be that at some point when the app requests content beyond the current buffer, the host starts serving audio with different dynamic content. So once the users gets to that part in the audio, there's a jump (either forward or back).
Since this happens on so many podcasts, and users don't experience this in other apps, it seems unlikely to me that this is an issue with the hosts, and more like something we should be able to fix on our end.
I've turned off Auto Downloads so that I'm always streaming episodes, and I've hit this bug myself several times, often on the Decoder Ring podcast. This podcast does have dynamic ads, and as suspected it happens most often when playing after a long paused period. It takes a while for the playback to catch up and the bug to hit (like 5-10m). I'm trying to find a good instance that I can capture more logs for, but since it comes up sporadically it's hard to pin down.
I also think this bug bit me in a different way recently — The episode stopped with 0:19 left on the clock, and would not play on to completion. The audio for the episode sounded like it was supposed to have ended. Pressing Play would just Pause it again. My guess is, the duration was cached when I first started playing, then later on new dynamic ads were inserted and the episode was 19 seconds shorter. So when I reached the end of playable audio, the player paused (and wouldn't play again), but it didn't advance to the next episode because the player thought I still had 19s of the episode remaining.
#5276011-zen
In the "video1" you can see that there is a skip around when the time on the podcast is at 1:28. Then, I archived the episode and played it back again. In "video2" you can see that the location of the original skip is now at 0:56, but the audio plays fine now, joining back to the forward skip at around 1:30. So in the original playback, about 30 seconds were skipped.
From jgcaruso:
I haven't been able to reproduce this myself "in the wild" listening to podcasts, but I looked at https://github.com/Automattic/pocket-casts-ios/issues/44#issuecomment-1182414157 and watched "video 1" while comparing it to the podcast audio currently on my device.
The timestamp at the point where it seems to "skip ahead" actually matches the audio that plays on my device at that timestamp (1:28). The audio and intro music that is playing at the start of that video clip at 1:20 actually starts around 49 seconds for me. This seems to match what they reported in "video 2"
So I might argue that the audio isn't skipping ahead so much as it has "caught up" to where it should be. Why it is so far behind isn't exactly clear, but this theory about dynamic ad insertion might be a good explanation. Depending on how much time has passed between the initial pause and resume (it is a day or more?) it could have something to do with the podcast inserting different ads on release day vs after release day. If they insert an ad at the start of the podcast on release day, but not the days that follow (this podcast episode has been out for 10 days at this point).
@joashrajin Since the report seems to have been made on June 6 (or was that just when we got back to them?) I wonder if we can make any assumptions about when they actually listened to the podcast, and if they started it on release day (Friday, June 3) but didn't finish it and then continued on Monday June 6? If we could follow up with them, would they remember those details?
Short aside: I'm starting to like this theory because this is how I used to listen to a lot of podcasts on my commutes... I might listen to a few podcasts on friday on my way home and prematurely end one because I arrived home. Then pick it up on monday morning again when I left for work (no weekend listening). So if the podcast changed at all in those 3 days I can see this happening. But this is all anecdotal... I can't actually tell if "The Daily" does different dynamic ads at the start of a podcast on release day, at least not for Canada where I'm listening from since I just listened to today's episode and it doesn't start with an ad. But maybe its different for different cities/states/countries?
Possible Solution If I was to guess at possible solutions to this, if we're able to set a buffer expiration (or just clear the buffer if we know its old) that might solve the problem but the listener would still miss part of the podcast, they just wouldn't know (or probably wouldn't remember) since we start them fresh and they won't hear the jump happen.
@mattwondra You mentioned you've experienced this issue. How much time has passed between "a long paused period". Are we talking about a day, or just a few hours?
From @mattwondra:
How much time has passed between "a long paused period". Are we talking about a day, or just a few hours?
Sometimes, just a few hours. I was binge listening through the back catalog of Decoder Ring and noticed it happen a few times — maybe I played an episode a bit in the morning, then I'd pick it back up that night. A couple minutes after I started playing I'd notice the "skip". (The most important note is this only happens when I've disabled all automatic episode downloading, to ensure that I'm just streaming episodes.)
That podcast definitely has dynamic ads and they must rotate pretty frequently. To verify this, I kept downloading one of their episodes to my computer every couple hours until the download changed. It took less than 24 hours until I downloaded a version of the same episode with a different duration and ads in different spots.
Reproducing this in a way that's easily testable is going to be the biggest challenge — you can't have hours of lag time between code changes to see if you're on to something. My first thought was to do something like:
- Gather two long audio files that are very obviously different from one another (so "skips" are really easy to detect)
- Create your own test podcast on a free service (like Simplecast? I've never used any of them)
- Publish an episode to your feed using one of your audio files
- Start the playing the episode through Pocket Casts iOS
- While it's playing, switch the audio on your host (e.g. Simplecast) to the other audio file
- This simulates switching out the episode to one with different ads, in the middle of a play session
- If this is the source of the bug, you should only have to wait a couple minutes to hear the audio switch from the original file, to the new one
If it's possible to shorten the amount of buffering the iOS audio player will do, that could help shorten the debug / fix cycle on this too.
If that's reproducible in our iOS app, I'd be curious if this happens in Android as well (I've only ever see iOS reports, even though we have twice as many Android users). I'm also curious if this happens on other apps (Apple Podcasts, Overcast, etc).
if we're able to set a buffer expiration (or just clear the buffer if we know its old) that might solve the problem but the listener would still miss part of the podcast, they just wouldn't know (or probably wouldn't remember) since we start them fresh and they won't hear the jump happen.
This seems like it's on the right track, but my fear is that we'd keep the same number of customer complaints, just for a different issue: Instead of "Your player is skipping parts of my episode" we'd get "Your player doesn't start where I left off".
That said, I don't really know what kind of solution there actually is. We can't control when the source media is changed mid-stream, so unless we develop magical tech to seamlessly stitch the two versions together, there's always the risk of skips while streaming.
The only thing that comes to mind, is silently downloading the whole file once the user starts playing it and keeping that cached until another espisode plays. I wonder if this is how other platforms may get around this issue? But it also feels a little deceptive to users who are on limited data, downloading more than they intended...
One thought I had that could help debug or could even help us explain to users — is it possible to detect when the source media's duration has changed? That would be a clear indicator that the user might encounter this bug. I'd love to see a log of how often this happens. But also, we could show users a message if they open their app soon after we notice the duration discrepancy, informing them that the podcast host has updated the episode while they were listening, which could result in skips. (AKA redirect the user rage at the hosts so we don't take the fall 😉 )
+1 at #5293373-zen
I’ve noticed a trend over the last week of podcasts skipping around during playback. Sometimes it replays a minute or two of the podcast and other times it plays some of the podcast, cuts to a different part for 10 seconds, comes back to the original point where it left off, and does it again. I’m currently listening to an episode of the Brain Candy Podcast where it cut off one of the hosts talking and started playing the middle of an interview with a guest (interviews with guests are always saved for the last 20 minutes of the episode and I still have 35 minutes to go).
This has happened before, but not to the same degree. And it’s happened for more than one podcast. I can think of a few others I’ve had this issue with in the past if you need more examples, but I know I also had an issue with Drama Queens yesterday. It feels like I only have this issue with podcasts that include ads, but I don’t know if that’s correlation and not causation since they all seem to just be audio files, and most podcasts include ads.
I tend to listen to podcasts straight through (meaning I don’t skip around between podcasts before finishing one), though may need to pause multiple times depending on when I’m listening and what I’m doing. I listen almost exclusively via the Up Next queue, so it will play the episodes in order of release across multiple shows.
+1 at #5310455-zen
I’ve had a bug lately where many episodes will at random points, skip and jump around the audio track to random places. It will go 10 seconds back, then play through, then 10 seconds back again. Then it will randomly jump forward maybe 45 seconds or more. It’s very disorienting and I just wanted to put it on your radar if it wasn’t there already. I’m always using downloaded episodes or a solid internet connection - so it’s not the audio buffering or anything
+1 at #5310455-zen
I’ve had a bug lately where many episodes will at random points, skip and jump around the audio track to random places. It will go 10 seconds back, then play through, then 10 seconds back again. Then it will randomly jump forward maybe 45 seconds or more. It’s very disorienting and I just wanted to put it on your radar if it wasn’t there already. I’m always using downloaded episodes or a solid internet connection - so it’s not the audio buffering or anything
The user came back to say most podcasts they listen to have ads, and this happens after they’ve been listening for a while, and not simply after resuming a paused episode.
From GeoJunkie:
I think @mattwondra is on to something. I turned on automatic downloads and haven't run into the issue since, even after turning intelligent playback on.
The user was asked and responded to the following:
Q: Do you recall when you first listened to the podcast in the video (the approx date)? A: Originally listened to on June 5.
Q: Did you listen to a little of it when the episode first came out and then resume it after a few days? A: Listened to the whole episode straight through.
Q: Does this happen for downloaded episodes? A: Not sure if it happens on downloaded episodes. I would guess that it happens much less or not at all on downloaded episodes.
5356954-zen
Hey all, I've been having an issue for the last year where audio will skip backwards 5, 15, 30 seconds while listening, often when I'm not touching the phone. Those time estimates are rough, but I can't seem to troubleshoot or figure out what is causing the issue.
App Version: 7.19.3 Device: iPhone12,3 OS: 15.5
5372396-zen
I love Pocket Casts but I’ve been forced to switch over to Apple Podcasts app because almost every episode of all my podcasts skip sections for no apparent reason.
App Version: 7.19.3 Device: iPhone11,6 OS: 15.5
Hey, love the app, recently I’ve noticed podcasts skipping to the next episode in the queue before the episode finishes. I thought these were just weird edits until I went back to an episode and rewound and was able to finish the podcast. I would say this happens about every 5 podcasts or so. The episode it just happened on was the recent episode of the ryen russillo podcast.
App Version: 7.19.3 Device: iPhone13,2 OS: 15.5
5435264-zen
I have been getting random skips in podcast episodes where it will go back around 30 seconds. It is not happening every episode but several times a week and it does not matter which podcast i am listening too.
App Version: 7.19.3 Device: iPhone14,5 OS: 15.5
5436617-zen
I have been noticing that a few podcasts that I listen to there will be a skip in the episodes, why is that?
App Version: 7.20.2 Device: iPhone14,2 OS: 15.6
5482774-zen
Any news or status updates about upcoming patches for lost playback? Looking at the App Store reviews, I am not alone with Pocket Casts rewinding spontaneously in episodes during playback or resuming playback and losing all progress. I’m running the latest version of Pocket Casts on the latest version of iOS on an iPhone 14 Pro Max.
App Version: 7.22 Device: iPhone15,3 OS: 16.0.2
5618817-zen
I wanted to report an issue with playback. A strange thing happens where a chunk (like 10 seconds) of audio will be spontaneously skipped in an episode, but the time doesn’t skip ahead. At first I thought that it was an editing issue in the podcast episode itself, but then I started noticing it on many different podcasts. I thought maybe I was accidentally triggering a skip ahead somehow (e.g. a headphone malfunction?). But then, tonight, I was listening to a podcast and skipped back a few minutes to re-listen to a section, and as I re-listened, content I had heard a few minutes before was skipped over while I watched the time count down with no skips or gaps. I tried sliding back to the beginning of the episode, then back to the spot I was listening and the content reappeared (e.g., the playback timer was aligned differently with the content then it had been previously). Anyways, no need to reply but I wanted to let you know. It looks like some other users might have had a similar problem here: https://www.reddit.com/r/pocketcasts/comments/sxcdh0/app_skips_forward_in_episodes/
I’m listening on an iPhone SE 2nd gen with an up to date OS.
5632722-zen
after providing feedback that many of my podcast episodes skip back a few seconds or minutes, support suggested I reach out with episode title and the times that the skips happened. This happens regularly- most podcasts Iisten to have this issue.
App Version: 7.23 Device: iPhone14,2 OS: 15.6.1
Logs and sample podcasts provided in details below:
5645208-zen
Another case from Reddit:
i’ve been experiencing a problem for a while, the episode i’m listening to will skip forward 15-ish seconds randomly and then a few minutes later will skip back 15 seconds. i just got a new phone and it’s happened on both phones, and with various bluetooth devices. i’m streaming episodes rather than downloading.
https://www.reddit.com/r/pocketcasts/comments/yvpt3s/skipping_issue
