1954241 - Netflix not able to play or load any content.

Status: NEW

(Core :: Audio/Video: Playback, defect, P1)

Description

[AMD97]

Attachment: Infinite Loading Circle

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:138.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/138.0

Steps to reproduce:

Go to the netflix site and click on video.

In addition this was also tested on: Beta 137, Stable 136, and Nightly 138. All were tested with new profiles to ensure any extensions were not affecting the result.

Actual results:

Clicking on the video shows an infinite loading loop and does not play anything.

Expected results:

The video should have played.

Comment 1

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The Bugbug bot thinks this bug should belong to the 'Core::Audio/Video: Playback' component, and is moving the bug to that component. Please correct in case you think the bot is wrong.

Comment 2

[Mayank Bansal]

Thanks for reporting! To help diagnose this issue better, please can you:

1. Type "about:support" in Firefox and copy-paste its contents here
2. Does this reproduce in a clean profile or Troubleshoot Mode?
3. Capture a log when the issue occurs:

• In Firefox, ideally freshly started with no other tabs, go to about:logging in a new tab
• Select the Media preset
• Enable "stack traces for log messages"
• Click on "Set Log Modules"
• Click Start Logging
• Reproduce the bug
• Back on about:logging, click Stop Logging
• In the new tab that appears with the Firefox Profiler web application, in the top right click the button to upload the profile
• Make sure hidden threads are included and upload, then share the link here or send privately to a Mozilla developer
  -See https://paul.cx/public/about-logging-presentation.webm for a video walk-through

Comment 3

[AMD97]

(In reply to Mayank Bansal from comment #2)

Thanks for reporting! To help diagnose this issue better, please can you:

1. Type "about:support" in Firefox and copy-paste its contents here
2. Does this reproduce in a clean profile or Troubleshoot Mode?
3. Capture a log when the issue occurs:

• In Firefox, ideally freshly started with no other tabs, go to about:logging in a new tab
• Select the Media preset
• Enable "stack traces for log messages"
• Click on "Set Log Modules"
• Click Start Logging
• Reproduce the bug
• Back on about:logging, click Stop Logging
• In the new tab that appears with the Firefox Profiler web application, in the top right click the button to upload the profile
• Make sure hidden threads are included and upload, then share the link here or send privately to a Mozilla developer
  -See https://paul.cx/public/about-logging-presentation.webm for a video walk-through

Yes, I have tried using a clean fresh profile on all 3 versions of Firefox. And also troubleshoot mode the issue persist.

Here is the log: https://share.firefox.dev/3XTes0m

If you want me to use a new profile without extensions for another log I can.

Comment 4

[Alastor Wu [:alwu]]

Could you provide your about:logging? Thanks!

Comment 5

[AMD97]

(In reply to Alastor Wu [:alwu] from comment #4)

Could you provide your about:logging? Thanks!

Can I ask what you mean? I have provided the log file from about:logging as requested.

Comment 6

[Alastor Wu [:alwu]]

Sorry, my fault, I wanted to say about:support.

Comment 7

[AMD97]

Attachment: about:support media section

Comment 8

[AMD97]

(In reply to Alastor Wu [:alwu] from comment #6)

Sorry, my fault, I wanted to say about:support.
Ah ok, I've updated the original post with a screenshot of the media section of about:support.

If you want me to copy the original raw data or text here let me know.

Comment 9

[Alastor Wu [:alwu]]

Could you please help me capture another profile by following steps below?

1. restart Firefox
2. go to about:logging and select Media playback preset
3. paste timestamp,MFMediaEngine:5,MediaDecoder:5,EME:5 into New log modules and then click Set Log Modules
4. after going that, you should see those log modules appearing in Currently enabled log modules: above
5. click Start Logging
6. directly go to the Netflix video you can't start playing directly (instead of going through the home page)
7. wait for the issue happen
8. stop capturing and upload the profile.

---

In addition, your issue is caused by Netflix enabling 4k video playback on your account. A temporary workaround to fix this problem is to disable the pref media.eme.playready.enabled. Does this issue occur with all Netflix videos, or only specific ones? Is your Netflix account ad-free or ad-supported? Thanks!

Comment 10

[Alastor Wu [:alwu]]

I wonder if the issue only happens when you directly navigate to the video? If you navigate the video via the home page, will the issue still happen?

Comment 11

[Alastor Wu [:alwu]]

Attachment: netlfix_block_autoplay.png

I can reproduce this issue by directly navigating to the video url, AND without clicking the page. If you see this as well, change the autoplay setting to Allow Audio and Video should fix the problem. If the issue you're experiencing is the same as mine, then it's a Netflix issue. They should provide a play button when the autoplay is blocked. I will report this issue to them.

Comment 12

[Alastor Wu [:alwu]]

Okay I found that even if the autoplay is allowed, for Netflix's HEVC videos, the video would still be stucking on loading. (AVC videos work fine) This issue seems specifically related with SL3000 clear lead + HEVC. I've reported this issue to Netflix and will see if they have any thought.

Comment 13

[AMD97]

(In reply to Alastor Wu [:alwu] from comment #12)

Okay I found that even if the autoplay is allowed, for Netflix's HEVC videos, the video would still be stucking on loading. (AVC videos work fine) This issue seems specifically related with SL3000 clear lead + HEVC. I've reported this issue to Netflix and will see if they have any thought.

(In reply to Alastor Wu [:alwu] from comment #11)

Created attachment 9472528 [details]
netlfix_block_autoplay.png

I can reproduce this issue by directly navigating to the video url, AND without clicking the page. If you see this as well, change the autoplay setting to Allow Audio and Video should fix the problem. If the issue you're experiencing is the same as mine, then it's a Netflix issue. They should provide a play button when the autoplay is blocked. I will report this issue to them.

Yeah ironically enough I thought it was Autoplay also, but unfortunately it wasn't the case. I started investigating and apparently there are ton of reports of Netflix limiting video output to 720p regardless of whether you have UHD as part of your account, this is all specific to only Firefox. I thought it had something to do with the infinite loading, and sure enough after downloading an extension that forces the video to play at 1080p the loading went away for all videos.

This might also directly correlate to the different video formats also, because this is also something I noticed when testing. Some videos actually do load and some don't.

Does Firefox even support HEVC?

Comment 14

[Alastor Wu [:alwu]]

(In reply to AMD97 from comment #13)

Yeah ironically enough I thought it was Autoplay also, but unfortunately it wasn't the case. I started investigating and apparently there are ton of reports of Netflix limiting video output to 720p regardless of whether you have UHD as part of your account, this is all specific to only Firefox. I thought it had something to do with the infinite loading, and sure enough after downloading an extension that forces the video to play at 1080p the loading went away for all videos.

This might also directly correlate to the different video formats also, because this is also something I noticed when testing. Some videos actually do load and some don't.

Does Firefox even support HEVC?

Yes, Firefox for Windows started supporting HEVC since version 134. As a temporary workaround, you can disable the media.eme.playready.enabled preference, which will force a fallback to Widevine. However, please note that this means you would loss the ability to watch 4K video playback even if your account is 4k capable.

We’re currently discussing this issue with Netflix, as it seems like a regression to me. I'm confident that HEVC playback worked previously. I’ll provide more updates once I hear back from them.

Comment 15

[AMD97]

(In reply to Alastor Wu [:alwu] from comment #14)

(In reply to AMD97 from comment #13)

Yeah ironically enough I thought it was Autoplay also, but unfortunately it wasn't the case. I started investigating and apparently there are ton of reports of Netflix limiting video output to 720p regardless of whether you have UHD as part of your account, this is all specific to only Firefox. I thought it had something to do with the infinite loading, and sure enough after downloading an extension that forces the video to play at 1080p the loading went away for all videos.

This might also directly correlate to the different video formats also, because this is also something I noticed when testing. Some videos actually do load and some don't.

Does Firefox even support HEVC?

Yes, Firefox for Windows started supporting HEVC since version 134. As a temporary workaround, you can disable the media.eme.playready.enabled preference, which will force a fallback to Widevine. However, please note that this means you would loss the ability to watch 4K video playback even if your account is 4k capable.

We’re currently discussing this issue with Netflix, as it seems like a regression to me. I'm confident that HEVC playback worked previously. I’ll provide more updates once I hear back from them.

According too Netflix directly Firefox browser at least for their services does not support UHD 4k playback, it says 1080p Max, which I find odd because of the reports for many that they are limited to 720p on Firefox.

Comment 16

[Alastor Wu [:alwu]]

Supporting UHD and 4K is an experiment feature we're collaborating about. It's not enabled for all users yet. Before, Netflix only supported up to 720p for Widevine, but afaik Netflix already started supporting up to 1080p for Widevine, depending on user's capabilities.

Comment 17

[AMD97]

(In reply to Alastor Wu [:alwu] from comment #16)

Supporting UHD and 4K is an experiment feature we're collaborating about. It's not enabled for all users yet. Before, Netflix only supported up to 720p for Widevine, but afaik Netflix already started supporting up to 1080p for Widevine, depending on user's capabilities.

That makes sense then.

Comment 18

[Alastor Wu [:alwu]]

For the video you stuck on loading, could you please try to add &enableMediaCapabilities=true in the end of url and then refresh the page to see if it helps? Thanks!

Comment 19

[AMD97]

Attachment: New video stats

Comment 20

[AMD97]

(In reply to Alastor Wu [:alwu] from comment #18)

For the video you stuck on loading, could you please try to add &enableMediaCapabilities=true in the end of url and then refresh the page to see if it helps? Thanks!

Yeah so unusually enough it started working again without that fix or the extension. I tested it on 137b8 also to make sure, same result.

I've also uploaded the video stats its showing 1920x1080 streaming.

Was there something you guys did or Netflix did?

Comment 21

[Alastor Wu [:alwu]]

For your case, it seems triggering Netflix's fallback mechanism to use Widevine, so you are no longer getting PlayReady video. That is why you don't see the same issue again. Anyway, Netflix has found out the problem and will put a fix soon.