Endless buffering in Chromium based browsers for some .ts

[JaroslavHerber]

What version of Hls.js are you using?

v1.6.15

What browser (including version) are you using?

Edge 144.0.3719.92 and latest Chrome

What OS (including version) are you using?

Windows 11

Test stream

https://catchup.videoline.ru/match/video.m3u8

Configuration

{
  "debug": true,
  "enableWorker": true,
  "lowLatencyMode": true,
  "backBufferLength": 90
}

Additional player setup steps

It plays in Firefox, but not in Edge / Chrome / WebView2 / LG Web App. I guess it is a Chromium issue.

Checklist

• The issue observed is not already reported by searching on Github under https://github.com/video-dev/hls.js/issues
• The issue occurs in the stable client (latest release) on https://hlsjs.video-dev.org/demo and not just on my page
• The issue occurs in the latest client (main branch) on https://hlsjs-dev.video-dev.org/demo and not just on my page
• The stream has correct Access-Control-Allow-Origin headers (CORS)
• There are no network errors such as 404s in the browser console when trying to play the stream

Steps to reproduce

1. Open Demo page in Edge or Chrome: https://hlsjs.video-dev.org/demo/
2. Insert Stream URL: https://catchup.videoline.ru/match/video.m3u8

Expected behaviour

Should play like in Firefox.

What actually happened?

Does not play in Chromium based browsers

Console output

No errors at all. Debug output is same as in Firefox. But stream is not played in Chromium.

Chrome media internals output

[robwalch]

Changed the reported version to v1.6.15 to match the reproduction steps. v1.7.0 has not yet been released. Use the development demo page URL to report issues against latest dev (https://hlsjs-dev.video-dev.org/demo/).

[robwalch]

When attempting to play the asset using browser HLS support, Safari only plays audio, and Chrome won't play it at all.

Run mediastreamvalidator against the asset - there are MUST-fix issues. Playlist segment durations are not accurate, and interlaced video is detected.

For HLS.js, in Chrome, segments are appended in order, but the video appends do not result in any error or buffered change. This should be considered a bug in Chrome. If the media is not supported, an append error should be expected. For Safari, the video is appended, but is followed by an HTMLVideoElement decode error, at which point the video buffer is removed.

[JaroslavHerber]

Thank you for your fast feedback 🙂

I receive a lot of reports about such streams from users of my player app—more and more IPTV providers seem to be using them. That made me wonder why Firefox appears to be the only browser that can handle them.