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daleslad · ‎2021-04-05

I'm using a desktop MacPro OS Mohave 10.14.6 computer and Chrome Version 89.0.4389.114 .

I am frequently running into a problem when viewing motion triggered videos in my library that I can't view. I get the message "This video is not able to play in your browser. Please download to view."

The camera is taking motion view of a bird sitting on eggs in a nest so the view is always the same. I will check the previous day of videos in my Library, there may be anywhere from 20 to 40 shots that I will be looking through. They are usually only minutes apart yet I will get at least one or maybe as many as 6 of the videos that will show that message in one day of viewing.

I've had this camera for over 2 years and at first I would only get one or two videos that had the message but lately I've been getting more. I've read other posts of similar incidents but never quite like mine and not on a Mac.

Thanks for any suggestions.

StephenB · ‎2021-04-05

I am thinking this is likely video corruption at the beginning of the video clip (so the browser is confused on the format).

Are you seeing artifacts at the beginning when you download and play them?

daleslad · ‎2021-04-05

Hi, and thanks for the suggestion. I have never bothered to download one of the corrupt videos, like I said the other videos are just minutes apart and I wouldn't be missing much. However I just tried one right now and it played fine on Preview, I didn't notice anything unusual at the beginning of the video.

StephenB · ‎2021-04-06

@daleslad wrote:

However I just tried one right now and it played fine on Preview, I didn't notice anything unusual at the beginning of the video.

FWIW, media players vary greatly in their ability to play through bitstream errors. If you want to pursue it, you could post a download link (either publicly, or send me a private message via the envelope icon in the upper right of the forum page), and I can take a closer look.

SAub · ‎2021-04-06

I have the same issue on Windows 10 using Edge/Chromium or Google Chrome browsers. About 10% of my recorded videos in my Library do not play, or play partially before getting the "...not supported by your browser..." error. But, when I down load the video it plays correctly. I opened a support case. So far no progress has been made to fix this. Tech support told me that they can't reproduce the issue with any of their videos, and that my browser versions were out of date (they were not) and that Windows needed to be updated (it already was). So now they have asked when it occurs again to create a browser log file and send it to them, which I will when it reoccurs.

daleslad · ‎2021-04-06

Not sure how to post a download link, would sharing the video with you be any good.

SAub · ‎2021-04-07

I don't think it is useful for me to try playing your video, so no need to make it available to me. I suspect tech support would not accept it from me even if I got the "...unplayable" error as it didn't come from my Arlo Library nor was it recorded from my camera/base station. I'll have to wait until I get one from my Library/Camera/Base station and submit the browser log.

daleslad · ‎2021-04-07

Sorry, I guess I replied to the wrong post this was meant for you StephenB. "Not sure how to post a download link, would sharing the video with you be any good.

StephenB · ‎2021-04-11

@daleslad wrote:

Sorry, I guess I replied to the wrong post this was meant for you StephenB. "Not sure how to post a download link, would sharing the video with you be any good.

It wouldn't solve the problem - it would only allow me to see if the cause is video corruption. I have a couple of different tools I can use to take a deeper dive in the video file.

You can

download the video to your PC via the browser interface
upload it to cloud storage (google drive, dropbox, etc)
send a private message via the envelope icon in the upper right of the forum page
include a link to the cloud storage video in the PM.

daleslad · ‎2021-04-14

Thanks StephenB, I'm afraid that is too complicated for me, however I have found a work around for when it balks like that.

I take note of where the cursor is when the video stops playing and I get the error message. I start the video again and just before the cursor reaches the stalling point I stop the video and then drag the cursor just past that point and then start up the video again and it continues on until the end.

StephenB · ‎2021-04-15

@daleslad wrote:

I take note of where the cursor is when the video stops playing and I get the error message. I start the video again and just before the cursor reaches the stalling point I stop the video and then drag the cursor just past that point and then start up the video again and it continues on until the end.

That fact that this works says that the problem is definitely video corruption/loss. You are skipping over the part of the video bitstream that is damaged.

SAub · ‎2021-04-15

daleslad , clever solution. I wish I had thought of it. Thanks for posting it. However, for me that doesn't work. I still get the "Video is not able to play...". I'm writing this for Arlo to let them know that while you have a work around, I do not and would like Arlo to fix the root problem.

StephenB · ‎2021-04-15

@SAub wrote:

However, for me that doesn't work. I still get the "Video is not able to play...". I'm writing this for Arlo to let them know that while you have a work around, I do not and would like Arlo to fix the root problem.

I haven't seen you post this before (though I have seen the missed recordings issue in your previous posts). Likely I just missed it.

The video playback itself is done by the browser - Arlo can't do anything about that part. All they can do is attempt to repair damaged bitstreams in the cloud somehow, or put in some additional form of recovery to re-transmit packets that are lost. WiFi retransmission is almost certainly already used, but that generally has limited transmission attempts (otherwise latency goes up).

It would be great if they went with the second approach ("repairing" the bitstream would allow it to play, but you'd still be missing parts, and the scene would have visual artifacts/distortions).

Based on your previous posts, it seems likely that the issue is the wifi link between the cameras and the base station. That would account for missed recordings on the local USB drive. I don't recall how far your cameras are from the base (or what might be on the path between the cameras and the base). You could try moving a camera nearby the base (6-10 feet perhaps), and see if you still get lost connections or corruption.

SAub · ‎2021-04-15

I created a support case 42363308 about 1 month ago, so far no solution from Arlo. I didn't post this issue to the forum because I didn't think the forum could help with it.

While wifi transmission issues is the obvious cause I don't think that is the cause of my issue. For all the videos that get the "video is not playable..." error, downloading them from the cloud always plays them correctly as does retrieving the video from my local storage--which indicates that the camera correctly transmitted the video to the base station If wifi transmission is the issue the video should not be playable anywhere. My uneducated guess is that the video created uses a slightly incompatible format that Win10 browsers (chrome and edge) and Mac can't play.

When I download the video from My Library and play it the video is downloaded as an MP4. What format is the video when it is played though My Library through a browser? Is it MP4? If it is MP4 is it the exact same MP4 that is downloaded? If so, then it would seem that the MP4 is not fully compatible with browsers -- Win10 or Mac, but for some reason a Win10 player desktop app (not through the browser) is able to correctly play it.

Normally I would say that the win10 browser have a bug, but since both mac and win10 and chrome and edge all fail, it would seem that the Arlo created video is slightly incompatible due to a bug in Arlo. At least that is where I would start looking. I sent an example of such a video to Arlo support and they got the same error when played though their win10 chrome browser. Hopefully a developer will be able to debug and determine the exact cause and fix if it if it really is an Arlo issue.

Lastly, I Googled this error a bit and many results indicated that the error could be due to the video using the HEVC codec, instead of the H.264 that the Arlo pro 2 cameras are specified to use. I only mention this as a possibility.

StephenB · ‎2021-04-15

@SAub wrote:

Lastly, I Googled this error a bit and many results indicated that the error could be due to the video using the HEVC codec, instead of the H.264 that the Arlo pro 2 cameras are specified to use. I only mention this as a possibility.

The pro 2 cameras only have H.264 hardware. There are some tools that you can use to see the underlying codecs, though I'm not sure what's out there for Mac.

VLC has a "codec information" option under the "tools" pulldown. That should work for Macs too. There is a statistics tab on that screen, which might also show you some errors. That screen only appears to update when it is open during playback (at least on Windows).

FWIW, although Pro3/Pro4/Ultra have HEVC, they only use it for video that has a resolution of 2K or more.

@SAub wrote:

Normally I would say that the win10 browser have a bug, but since both mac and win10 and chrome and edge all fail, it would seem that the Arlo created video is slightly incompatible due to a bug in Arlo. At least that is where I would start looking. I sent an example of such a video to Arlo support and they got the same error when played though their win10 chrome browser. Hopefully a developer will be able to debug and determine the exact cause and fix if it if it really is an Arlo issue.

One aspect here is that a bitstream with errors is (by definition) non-compliant. The codec conformance tests don't cover playback of non-compliant bitstreams, and some decoding engines handle them much better than others. In general, software media players tend to handle errors much better than hardware decoders.

One thing you might try is disabling hardware acceleration in your browser settings, and see if that makes any difference.

Are these playback issues showing up at the very beginning of the recording, or do they sometimes show up in the middle?

daleslad · ‎2021-04-15

Yes I kind of figured it was something like that.

What I find that odd is that the camera is taking motion videos of exactly the same object every few minutes. It is focused about 3 feet from a nesting dove with chicks and in about 20 videos there will be at least one that fails.

daleslad · ‎2021-04-15

Sorry StephenB I misdirected this reply to someone else.

Yes I kind of figured it was something like that.

What I find that odd is that the camera is taking motion videos of exactly the same object every few minutes. It is focused about 3 feet from a nesting dove with chicks and in about 20 videos there will be at least one that fails.

SAub · ‎2021-04-15

StephenB: Thanks for your helpful feedback. 90% of videos that don't play in the browser encounter the error at exactly 5 seconds into the video. The remaining 10% get the error at random times, but none have gotten the error at the start.

I downloaded to my hard drive a video from My Library that doesn't play in the browser. It downloaded as an MP4, and then I played it in a Win 10 video app. It played correctly. I then used Edge to play the same downloaded MP4 file and it stopped playing at exactly the same spot as when played in the browser from My Library. So it seems that this video is corrupted and that the Win10 video app is more tolerant of the corruption. So now the question is why is it corrupted and why are many of my videos getting corrupted (about 1% -5% of all my records get the error when played in the browser from My Library.)

I think it is too easy to blame transmission errors that the camera/base station can't recover from. I still hope Arlo dev investigates. Cameras/base station should be more resilient than that given that recording motion/audio is the sole purpose of a security system like Arlo.

The only remaining question is if the video on my base station local storage also will not play through the browser. I can't test that because I am not home to pull the USB stick and try it.

StephenB · ‎2021-04-15

@SAub wrote:

I think it is too easy to blame transmission errors that the camera/base station can't recover from. I still hope Arlo dev investigates. Cameras/base station should be more resilient than that given that recording motion/audio is the sole purpose of a security system like Arlo.

Corruption/loss can also happen inside the camera - the stream is buffered for transmission, and software bugs can theoretically clobber some of that data. Similarly, they are stored in memory in the base, and in the receiving server before they are written to the cloud repository.

A bug in putting them into the mp4 container is also conceivable. So are bugs in the drivers that control the hardware compression in the cameras. Maybe even power variations that exceed the tolerance of the hardware chipset, ...

So I agree there are plenty of other possible causes - though I still think transmission loss is the most common with Arlo systems.

One thing is that wifi transmission issues are really hard to test in a QA lab. The environment is very different from a typical home deployment (in some ways much harder, in others much easier). My general belief is that anything that can't be tested easily is likely to be broken in some way.

SAub · ‎2021-04-15

StephenB: Thanks again for your feedback. I don't disagree with anything

My camera that had the recent issue is 50' from the base station with only 1 exterior wall in between. The camera shows the strongest wifi signal, 3 bars and is plugged into an AC outlet. 90% of all playback failures, for me, occur at exactly the 5 second mark. (That can't be a coincidence).

I believe that if the camera and base station have sufficient debug logging, the root cause of the issue can be determined. If the camera and base station don't have debug logging, well then, that is an Arlo developer implementation flaw. So far Arlo has only ask me for the Chrome HAR log which I provided a week ago (no feedback from them yet). I have not been asked for the arlologx log and also have not been not asked for a camera log or base station log -- I don't even know if a camera log or base station log exist.

StephenB · ‎2021-04-16

@SAub wrote:

also have not been not asked for a camera log or base station log -- I don't even know if a camera log or base station log exist.

I believe Arlo support can access base station logs remotely (and they certainly can see the logs made by their back-end cloud servers). No idea what's in the cameras though.

SAub · ‎2021-04-16

Hi StephenB:

I got an update from Arlo Level 2 support on this case42363308, and the duplicate 42343650 today. A completely unsatisfactory response. If there is anything you can do it is appreciated. Keep in mind this case has been open for over 1 month. I've spoken with multiple tech support people, submitted 5+ updates to the case, submitted multiple videos that get the error, and submitted a Chrome HAR file. Today Level 2 tech support called and said "We escalated to dev and dev's response is that the issue a limitation of browsers and that you should download the video to your desktop and play it though a desktop player app". Really? That's the best response dev could give? I already know that workaround. I found it myself over a month ago. That is an unsatisfactory response.

As I have played 1000's of non-Arlo videos (youtube, etc) thru my browser and never have I gotten an error like this. 95% of Arlo created videos don't get this error. My ring doorbell videos never get this error. So the conclusion is that it is possible for Arlo to create videos that don't get this error.

My guess is that either it is a bug or that Arlo is using a non-standard feature of h.264 that isn't compatible with browsers. Either way, it is fixable by Arlo if they choose to fix it

My ask is that Arlo man up and detail what the issue is that causes the browser not to play some videos correctly, and then either to say it will be fixed or to state that "Arlo admits it is a bug and Arlo chooses not to fix it because we don't care about browser apps"

StephenB · ‎2021-04-16

@SAub wrote:

I got an update from Arlo Level 2 support on this case42363308, and the duplicate 42343650 today. A completely unsatisfactory response. If there is anything you can do it is appreciated.

Today Level 2 tech support called and said "We escalated to dev and dev's response is that the issue a limitation of browsers and that you should download the video to your desktop and play it though a desktop player app".

FWIW, I agree it is a pretty lame response. They aren't doing anything non-standard as far as H.264 goes (though of course a bug or network loss will make a bitstream non-compliant).

Unfortunately I don't work for Arlo, I'm just a customer.

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