AV1 video stream crashing the player (Unexpected runtime error)

marcopixel
Fri, 16 May 2025 17:18:45 +0000
Plex Players

So i’ve recently converted a few episodes of a series and i’m getting constant errors while trying to play the video over the Android apps.

On the mobile apps i’m getting an “Error Occured: Unexpected runtime error” with a black screen in the background, on the Android TV it’s stuck on the loading spinner also with a black screen. I’ve verified that all tested devices support AV1 natively with another video and the video plays completly fine with other players (Samsung, VLC) over the network share. It’s just the Plex app (or better the ExoPlayer within) crashing while decoding the video…

I’ve done the following to the media file to check out any other issues:

Removed any other streams than the video

Checked the integrity with ffmpeg -v error -i input.mkv -f null - 2> error.log

Remuxed the container again as MKV

I’ve attached the logs from my device (Samsung S24) and additional data about the video - sadly can’t upload this one since it’s copyrighted material. But i’m technically versed and eager to help debugging this issue

Logs Android: https://gist.github.com/marcopixel/3b49459cbb6388dfe8a67e824e6e518b
File info: https://gist.github.com/marcopixel/a1572bf58feb613844024be22758f462

Server Version: 4.146.0
Player Version: 2025.16.0 (966828402)

24 posts - 9 participants