1613446 - Video Playback Errors and GIF playback errors in Firefox for Android

Status: RESOLVED MOVED

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: General, defect, P3)

Description

[Greg]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_14_6) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/13.0.3 Safari/605.1.15

Steps to reproduce:

Try to play any video or GIF on any web page. This happens on all of the latest Firefox releases, be it stable, beta, or preview editions. I am on Android 10 on a Samsung Note10+ phone. No add-ons are enabled. Clearing cache/data does not help. Reinstalling app does not help. It is not a connection problem, this happens on both WiFi and 5G data connection.
See video of this happening here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXY2ukA6cRg

Actual results:

Videos end with all sorts of error messages and don't play the next video in the queue, or "glitch out" and flash randomly black colors. GIFs do not loop as they are supposed to, or experience the same issues as the videos.
Please see the video of this happening here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXY2ukA6cRg

Expected results:

Videos should play with no error messages, and start the next video in the playlist. GIFs should loop.

Comment 1

[Greg]

Just to say that it's definitely a Firefox android specific issue, I have no problems playing the videos in Chrome mobile browser, videos and GIFs work as expected. This problem is happening on all of the latest FireFox mobile editions -- public, beta, nightly, preview, etc etc.

Comment 2

[Stefan Arentz | :st3fan | ⏰ EST | he/him]

Asking QA to do some specific testing around video playing in both Fennec and Fenix.

Comment 3

[Greg]

If there's anything i can do to test on my end, or any settings in about:settings I can try, let me know

Comment 4

[Andrei Bodea[:andrei]]

Hello Greg, thank you for adding this issue!

I tried to reproduce it and here are my findings:

• I was able to reproduce this issue for the cnn.com, twitter but only while the uBlock addon was enabled.
  Please note that when the addon was uninstalled or disabled, I couldn't reproduce the issue.

• The issue can be reproduced on any android version, and it is not OS-specific here are the devices:

  • Google Pixel 3a XL (Android 10)
  • Samsung Galaxy S10+ (Android 10)
  • Samsung Galaxy S10+ (Android 9)
  • Samsung Galaxy S8 (Android 8)

• With the following Firefox builds:

  • Firefox Release 68.5.0,
  • Firefox Beta 68.6b1
  • Firefox Release Firefox Nightly 68.5a1 (2020-01-20)
  • Firefox Preview Nightly from 2/13.

Notes

I didn't encounter the issue with GIF and my videos started correctly after one ended.
@greg can you please try and re-check if you have uBlock turned on? And try with it enabled and disabled.
Also, note that I opened a bug on the Fenix repo that contains the logs for the issue.
Based on my comment I will set this issue as new.

@Stefan do you consider we should keep only the Fenix issue?

Thanks,
Andrei

Comment 5

[Greg]

I do have ublock orgin, disabling it and CNN videos work, but still have the same issues with twitter videos, reddit videos, and GIFs on all sites. Deleting firefox after clearing cache/data, and installing firefox again (with no addons or plugins installed at all), I still have the issue. (This is on the latest firefox stable).

FireFox nightly, and Firefox Preview, also have the same issue, after fresh install with no plugins or adblockers.

So it seems the CNN videos were because of the adblocker, but rest are a problem with FireFox and my OS.

I am an app developer myself so I know sometimes there's weird bugs that only affect certain device/os combinations, or can't be reproduced on the emulator. If there's anyway I can get detailed system logs to you, let me know.

Comment 6

[Stefan Arentz | :st3fan | ⏰ EST | he/him]

Moved to https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/8503