Server Version#: 1.25.5.5492
Player Version#: Plex Web 4.74.1
Chrome Version#: 98.0.4758.80 (Official Build) (x86_64)
Server OS: Mac Pro MacOS 12.1
Player OS: Macbook Pro MacOS 12.1
I recently installed the latest Chrome version (98) and now I’m running into issues with music playback and Chrome crashing… It will play some songs all the way through but crash with others (all of the songs I’ve been testing with are mp3 320kbps stereo). When chrome crashes it throws the “Aw Snap” page up and shows a little “error code: 5” message. I can reload the page and it will come back up with the song paused where it crashed but the moment I try to play again, the tab breaks. Rinse and repeat.
If I select a different song it will usually start playing again but if I go back to the one that just crashed it, instant crash again. And it doesn’t seem to be related to any one file either; If I clear out Chrome’s browsing/cached data and play the song again, it doesn’t crash. This leads me to believe the issue has something to do with cached/buffered audio data. Each time I clear out chrome’s cache everything works again for a few minutes but inevitably I get the “Aw Snap” page again. I’ve also tested on Safari and I haven’t had any issues (though admittedly I’ve only tested on Safari for a short period of time). I even tested a track that is crashing Chrome right now on Safari and Safari has no problem.
So far I’ve only run into this issue with locally stored music (well stored on a NAS but local network). Video hasn’t given me an issue yet nor have podcasts. Thats not to say that they wont but at the moment it’s only been music coming from my server. Since this seems like a chrome related problem, I’m not sure whether server logs would be useful but I would be happy to provide them if needed.
Anyone else run into a similar issue recently?
Edit: I have observed similar issues with video playback as well.
I’ve experienced it while playing playlists and from the artist page “top tracks”. I’ve also had it happen in the middle of a tv show episode. I don’t have any consistent way to trigger it unfortunately but it’s been more prevalent with my music library (though maybe it’s because songs are short compared to shows/movies so there are more chances for the issue to crop up from one file to another). Podcasts still seem ok but again maybe this is just because podcast episodes are longer to there have been fewer chances for the issue to hit.
Once it happens on a particular file though, reloading the page usually results in an instant crash before I can even interact with the page. From my observations it looks like it will load/render the page but then when it tries to load the most recent item into the “play deck” at the bottom (for lack of a better term) it crashes. It’s almost like when it loads up whatever was cached at that moment causes it to crash again. Sometimes after reloading a few times it wont crash instantly and I can hit the stop button on whatever is currently paused in the play deck. Unless I clear the cache, opening that file again will usually result in another crash. I have better luck when I don’t use the re-load button but open a fresh plex instance in a new tab.
The only extensions that I can think could interfere would be “adblock plus” and “ghostery” but neither one seem to be blocking any elements.
I’ve switched to safari for now. Is there anything that I can enable in Chrome or look for to aid in hunting down this issue? Could it just be that I should totally remove Chrome (delete the app, cache folder & app support folder) and see if that solves it? I just dont want to delete anything that might help in hunting down a bug.
Here is a small screen-cast of the issue. All I did before the recording was start a few tracks until I hit one that broke the tab (I started playing about 5 songs before it broke on this track).
Once it broke I reloaded the page and it happened to be an instance when the page would load to a stable state (I think because the player was stopped at the start of the song rather than trying to load into the middle of the track when the page was refreshed). At this point I started the recording a proceeded to do the following:
press play on the pre-loaded file that crashed the page moments before (which leads to a crash)
re-loaded the page using the refresh button (page loads with the playhead back at the start of the song)
press play on the pre-loaded file that crashed the page moments before (which leads to another crash)
re-loaded the page using the refresh button (page loads with the playhead back at the start of the song)
started a different track (track begins to play properly)
started playing failed track again (page crashes)
re-loaded the page using the refresh button (page loads with no pre-loaded track)
started playing previously failed track but it begins to play properly.
Interesting side note that probably doesnt matter but I figured I’d point it out just in case - through the screen-cast you can see that the number of items in the “Activity” counter goes up from 4 to 6. It looks like the server is creating new playback instances each time the tab crashes or something like that.
It’s not a music issue, happens with video streams as well (e.g. playing a video collection on shuffle).
It does seem to work “fine” if you have the developer console open on the resources tab and check the ‘disable cache’ option. Skipping through playlists will work fine. As soon as you close the developer tab (or enable cache) and skip to the next item in the playlist, it will crash Chrome 98.
Adblock or other plugins enabled or disabled has no effect, neither does an incognito window.
Plex Server 1.25.4.5487
Plex Web 4.74.2
Chrome 98.0.4758.80 (Official build) (x86_64)
MacOS Big Sur
I have no doubt that the devs are aware of it at this point. I’ve tried to give as helpful of a description as possible with a screen-cast of the issue. If they need more info I’m sure they’ll let us know but lets give everyone a chance to assess the issue. Just because it’s cropping up in plex doesn’t mean it’s isolated to Plex alone. It could be something in chromium that needs fixing - who knows.
At this point I’m happy to know I’m not alone and for now I’m just keeping a spare Safari/Firefox window open for Plex (which is what I would recommend for anyone else facing this issue too).
It’s odd that it’s occurring at different days and that it occurs on systems/desktops that made no changes nor updates (or ignoring updates) before the fail began happening.
I am having the same issue on Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and Firefox. It happened when I tried to skip to a specific section on a TV show video I was watching using the bar at the bottom of the plex player.
This could be because the problem/incompatability originates with Chrome and not Plex. It sounds like Plex needs to fix or adjust something to make the software compatible with the new updated browser. That would also explain why it works with Firefox, which apparently did not make the change that broke Plex’s playback.
