White screen on playback, audio playback as expected

[morpig]

Description

Around 1-2% of my users (on mobile, majority Android 6+), are having issues playing back live HLS content (clear stream, no DRM/encryption).

What they're experiencing is white screen on player container, while audio plays back normally. Errors are sent by sentry, but I'm having difficulty to identify, so it's hard to reproduce/identify the cause.

Regarding the hls content/stream, it's a 720p video (not interlaced), and HE-AAC audio stream.

funny enough, looking at past issues, no one has reported this kind of issue (?)

Steps to reproduce

Normal video.js playback, however it's difficult to reproduce, given wide variety of android devices.

Results

Expected

Normal playback (video + audio)

Actual

White screen on player container, audio plays normally.

Error output

There are errors coming from Sentry, but I'm not able to identify which one is connected to this issue.

Additional Information

Please include any additional information necessary here. Including the following:

versions

videojs

video.js 7.10.2

browsers

chrome 71+, other chrome-based browsers

OSes

android 6+

plugins

hls plugin

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[morpig]

edit: sentry does indeed send some errors, but i'm having difficulties to identify which one correlates with this issue.

[danielsarin]

Just wanted to comment that me and some of our users have experienced issues exactly like this, but using Plyr https://github.com/sampotts/plyr. The videos used to work without any issues, so I suspect there was some update to Chrome for Android that changed something related to video playback.

Edit: I also managed to reproduce the white screen issue using https://vimejs.com/. I am seeing this issue on Chrome 88 on Android 10.

[morpig]

Just wanted to comment that me and some of our users have experienced issues exactly like this, but using Plyr https://github.com/sampotts/plyr. The videos used to work without any issues, so I suspect there was some update to Chrome for Android that changed something related to video playback.

Edit: I also managed to reproduce the white screen issue using https://vimejs.com/. I am seeing this issue on Chrome 88 on Android 10.

hmm, so it looks like more of a chrome issue? i'm currently trying out with jwplayer, haven't received any complaints since.. 🤔

[mister-ben]

do you have an example source this happens with?

[morpig]

do you have an example source this happens with?

attached below is zip file that contains the m3u8/ts stream. as i said previously, nothing special about the stream. no drm/encryption, h264 720p video & aac audio.

test.zip

[morpig]

any updates regarding this issue?

[cyberkepper]

The video HLS, from videojs.com homepage, in Brave, Chrome, at mobile, white screen issue. Tested in a Xiami RedMi pro 8.

Chrome and Brave --> White Screen at HLS videos Fail!

Xiaomi Mi Browser --> Works!

[morpig]

The video HLS, from videojs.com homepage, in Brave, Chrome, at mobile, white screen issue. Tested in a Xiami RedMi pro 8.

Chrome and Brave --> White Screen at HLS videos Fail!

Xiaomi Mi Browser --> Works!

Is that your own phone? if yes, can you try this step and see the error?

please check https://developers.google.com/web/tools/chrome-devtools/remote-debugging

[stale[bot]]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.

[nogov]

+1, same issue here.