10 ms·

M1 Pro and M1 Max MBP owners complain of crashes playing HDR YouTube videos

151 points by jb1991 5y ago

BluSyn 5y ago
Is this easily reproducible? Not sure how widespread this problem is. I have viewed 4k HDR content on YouTube in Safari AND Chrome several times. It was the first thing I did when I received my 16" M1 Pro. And I have not experienced a single crash with this laptop. I tested VP9 and AV1 codecs on youtube without issue. I am on macOS 12.0.1
323 5y ago
Related, when I play H.265 videos on Windows 10/NVIDIA 10 series card the player app crashes after 4-5 seek operations. I assume it's video card related, but it has up to date drivers.
- bionade24 5y ago
  But if I understand you correctly, only the player, not Windows entirely?
  - 323 5y ago
    Yes, only the player app, Windows remains stable. Still very annoying.
    - olyjohn 5y ago
      I mean... have you tried another video player?
      - 323 5y ago
        Yes, they all crash, which is why I suspect the video card. I could disable hardware decoding, but H.265 is pretty heavy on the CPU.
        Isthatablackgsd 5y ago
        How old is your CPU? Age can be factor of it, it is possible that it didn't have the hardware to support it. I disabled the GPU acceleration in my player and put the CPU to work, it handles the HEVC 10-bits just fine floating around 20% of usage for this video (Intel Core i7-8559U). If you said it is pretty heavy on the CPU, then it could be your CPU that is causing the issue.
- kevingadd 5y ago
  Hardware decoders in general are very untrustworthy, to the point that browsers go to great lengths to handle decoder crashes and recover from them - if your hardware decoder crashes enough Firefox will quietly switch to software decoding where possible
- Isthatablackgsd 5y ago
  It depends on how the players offload the files. Some players can offload it to GPU (if it have specific format hardware decoding support), some use the CPU to do the processing. Check your player setting and see which one it is using. My MPC-BE player will tell me if the player is using the GPU to decode. And at the same time, it depends on if the file have 8-bits or 10-bits. Some CPU/GPU don't have the support for 10-bits which can offload it to the software decoding which can be resource intensive for your system to decode the file at the software level.
smoldesu 5y ago
Saw one of these in person over the weekend, and I was subtly surprised by how intense the display blooming was. I knew that MiniLED would have some inconsistencies WRT brightness, but if you squint you can almost see the backlights scurrying around when you drag a window across a desktop (particularly a black background). It would probably be great for content consumption, but I have to wonder how reliable it would be for professional color work. Maybe an OLED revision could address that?
- jb1991 5y ago
  Interesting, since all the reports and reviews have indicated blooming was not an issue on these, compared to iPad Pro. https://www.macrumors.com/2021/10/28/macbook-pro-display-blooming-reports/ https://www.macrumors.com/2021/10/28/macbook-pro-display-blo...
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - manderley 5y ago
    Meanwhile, tons of reports and reviews have indicated that blooming very much is an issue. And how could it ever not be, with this type of display. https://www.reddit.com/r/macbookpro/comments/qgkhku/noticeable_miniled_blooming_on_new_2021_macbook/ https://www.reddit.com/r/macbookpro/comments/qgkhku/noticeab...
    - jb1991 5y ago
      That thread seems to suggest it is not an issue for many users, similar to TVs and iPads, so I guess it would be a personal thing as to whether it bothers someone.
  - gambiting 5y ago
    Yeah, I don't trust these at all. According to every review on the planet the iPad Pro has a fantastic screen, and my own(2021 M1 non-XDR) model has probably the worst screen of any device I own. I know it's IPS but it's almost unusable for watching media in a dark room, the contrast is just zero, would literally rather watch things on my phone. And it has an absolutely horrendous ghosting, like an LCD panel from 20 years ago. Get some white text on a grey background and scroll around - ghosting for daaaaays.
bionade24 5y ago
It's sad that they don't provide context like MacOS crashes with Safari but not with Firefox or Chromium-based browsers. Would be interesting if it's actually the UMA memleak problem reported not long ago. Notice: I don't know if any browser besides Safari can play HDR content on MacOS.
- Uehreka 5y ago
  Chrome on macOS is playing back HDR just fine.
  - gigglesupstairs 5y ago
    The linked macrumors post lists multiple responses of it happening inside chrome too.
- sudhirj 5y ago
  I think media playback is delegated to the OS by the browser through some API, I doubt every browser bundles its own decoding and playback engine. And it needs to handover to the OS for picture-in-picture as well, makes sense to delegate.
  - rudian 5y ago
    I think none of what you said is necessarily true. Safari certainly delegates as much as possible, but other browsers have a lot of baggage that OSes don't necessarily support. PIP is just a floating window, they have existed without explicit OS support for decades.
    - sudhirj 5y ago
      Not in macOS, though — PiP seems very heavily integrated into the OS, and seems to switch to OS UI when activated. Same thing happens in iOS as well.
  - ksec 5y ago
    > I doubt every browser bundles its own decoding and playback engine. Not sure if that is the case on Mac but I am pretty sure Firefox bundle its own decoding and playback engine on Windows. And the same for Chrome. ( They are practically a mini OS ) The only one using OS default is Safari. Hence why supporting VP9 or other codec require an OS update. Unless of course it is Hardware Accelerated Decoding.
hnlmorg 5y ago
It really disappoints me just how easy it is to make macOS crash. USB and DisplayPort especially seem to trip it up. And now HDR in Safari. These are things that you'd expect from 90s era monolythic kernels. Not a 21st Century flagship OS for the most successful IT company on Earth.
- mixmastamyk 5y ago
  Reliable OSs were a thing for quite a while by the 90s. Didn’t have to contend with the variety of input from today however.
  - grishka 5y ago
    Didn't most of the mainstream 90s OSes lack memory protection AND use cooperative multitasking, which meant one bug in an app and the entire system crashes or freezes?
    - oneplane 5y ago
      Yep, to some degree at least. Even some more modern systems after that had some similar problems, where there was less or no direct interaction anymore and userspace and kernelspace was the 'best' boundary there was to offer. But the same problems still persisted within the space if the other one goes down. Imagine having a fully functional app but you still can't do anything because the service 'on the other side' doesn't work. It's better because it won't crash the entire system, but it's the same because you still can't do the work you intended to do...
    - p_l 5y ago
      No, that's pretty much MacOS Classic and classic windows line before 9x (9x added /some/ level of protection and preemption)
      - grishka 5y ago
        > (9x added /some/ level of protection and preemption) I do remember games freezing windows 9x so much that you had to reach for that reset button. Also when the system threw up a BSOD if you ejected a CD when you weren't supposed to.
m0lecules 5y ago
Chrome and Firefox play HDR videos just fine, it's one of the first things I did when I opened the package. Here's a good one if you want to fall in love with the display: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MieluM0c6c&t=28s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MieluM0c6c&t=28s And here's a good one if you want to feel a little disappointed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYtvehF9-Z8&t=20s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYtvehF9-Z8&t=20s
- TillE 5y ago
  The slight blooming is certainly noticeable in a contrived test, but I think you'd struggle to be bothered by it in any actual usage unless you're extremely picky, or spending a lot of time with very bright text on pure black backgrounds. But yeah those play on Safari for me without issue (MBP M1 Pro, full screen).
- donkeyd 5y ago
  > Chrome and Firefox play HDR videos just fine Well, that's in part because Firefox doesn't play HDR Youtube at all: https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/kvqec5/its_2021_and_still_no_support_for_hdr/ https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/kvqec5/its_2021_an...
- hjmallon 5y ago
  I'm not getting HDR output from the Firefox browser on macOS (but I am on Chrome and Safari). 'Color' field in stats for nerds shows bt709 in firefox (i.e. not HDR) and smpte2084 (PQ) / bt2020 in Chrome/Safari (i.e. HDR). Also side by side the Firefox picture is flatter and less bright.
zlib 5y ago
My MacBook Air M1 (Big Sur) has crashed twice when watching Netflix. Both times it was when I moved my mouse after 20 minutes or so of watching fullscreen via my USB-C monitor in Safari.
tdstein 5y ago
I'm currently streaming a 4K HDR video on YouTube without issue. Model Name: MacBook Pro. Model Identifier: MacBookPro18,1. Chip: Apple M1 Pro. Total Number of Cores: 10 (8 performance and 2 efficiency). Memory: 16 GB.
- SamuelAdams 5y ago
  What browser?
  - tdstein 5y ago
    Tested on both Safari and Chrome. Tried entering and exiting out of full-screen multiple times, and with 4K and 8K video.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
RubberShoes 5y ago
In playing with an M1 Pro 14" this weekend I noticed all HDR content I viewed was encoded in AV1. YouTube seems to have drawn a line between SDR and HDR with this codec. AV1 is amazing but still relatively early in its development and takes a ton of raw power for decode as M1* does not have a native decoder. I almost guarantee this is the root of the issue. My friend doesn't have iStat Menus so I couldn't see the full resource picture but curious if the GPU is involved or its a pure CPU decode and the issue lays somewhere within that.
- ksec 5y ago
  I am guessing you are doing this on Chrome? HDR content should default to and only be viewed with VP9 on Safari. Since Safari does not support AV1.
- ArgyleSound 5y ago
  That's definitely not the case, all 4K HDR videos are VP9 for me on YouTube with Safari
- singhkays 5y ago
  It's not that bad. Lower than decoding VP9 with a software decoder https://singhkays.com/blog/apple-silicon-m1-video-power-consumption-pt-2/ https://singhkays.com/blog/apple-silicon-m1-video-power-cons...
  - ksec 5y ago
    This is quite amazing. On my Intel Mac it still requires 4 thread with close to 100% CPU usage to play a 4K AV1 using latest VLC. ( Which I assume comes with latest dav1d ) This is easily 20W usage. But on M1 this takes less than 1W. This basically eliminate any argument against AV1. Even with software decoding. You could watch AV1 4K video with passive cooling on a MacBook Air without it ever getting warm. It may be a good question to ask, with these kind of processing power, what can we do to further push the next gen video codec.
    - brokenmachine 5y ago
visarga 5y ago
I had two crashes on my new M1 MacBook Pro, never had such happenings with Intel macs. It's bad.
louhike 5y ago
Off-topic: Is HDR really worth it? I’ve been considering buying a screen who can use it for games, but I’m not sure the investment is that worth it
- Operyl 5y ago
  I definitely notice the difference, but personally if the cost is something you’re concerned about I would probably spend it on something else.

151 points by jb1991 5y ago

Is this easily reproducible? Not sure how widespread this problem is. I have viewed 4k HDR content on YouTube in Safari AND Chrome several times. It was the first thing I did when I received my 16" M1 Pro. And I have not experienced a single crash with this laptop. I tested VP9 and AV1 codecs on youtube without issue. I am on macOS 12.0.1

323 5y ago

Related, when I play H.265 videos on Windows 10/NVIDIA 10 series card the player app crashes after 4-5 seek operations. I assume it's video card related, but it has up to date drivers.

bionade24 5y ago
But if I understand you correctly, only the player, not Windows entirely?
- 323 5y ago
  Yes, only the player app, Windows remains stable. Still very annoying.
  - olyjohn 5y ago
    I mean... have you tried another video player?
    - 323 5y ago
      Yes, they all crash, which is why I suspect the video card. I could disable hardware decoding, but H.265 is pretty heavy on the CPU.
      - Isthatablackgsd 5y ago
        How old is your CPU? Age can be factor of it, it is possible that it didn't have the hardware to support it. I disabled the GPU acceleration in my player and put the CPU to work, it handles the HEVC 10-bits just fine floating around 20% of usage for this video (Intel Core i7-8559U). If you said it is pretty heavy on the CPU, then it could be your CPU that is causing the issue.
kevingadd 5y ago
Hardware decoders in general are very untrustworthy, to the point that browsers go to great lengths to handle decoder crashes and recover from them - if your hardware decoder crashes enough Firefox will quietly switch to software decoding where possible
Isthatablackgsd 5y ago
It depends on how the players offload the files. Some players can offload it to GPU (if it have specific format hardware decoding support), some use the CPU to do the processing. Check your player setting and see which one it is using. My MPC-BE player will tell me if the player is using the GPU to decode. And at the same time, it depends on if the file have 8-bits or 10-bits. Some CPU/GPU don't have the support for 10-bits which can offload it to the software decoding which can be resource intensive for your system to decode the file at the software level.

smoldesu 5y ago

Saw one of these in person over the weekend, and I was subtly surprised by how intense the display blooming was. I knew that MiniLED would have some inconsistencies WRT brightness, but if you squint you can almost see the backlights scurrying around when you drag a window across a desktop (particularly a black background). It would probably be great for content consumption, but I have to wonder how reliable it would be for professional color work. Maybe an OLED revision could address that?

jb1991 5y ago
Interesting, since all the reports and reviews have indicated blooming was not an issue on these, compared to iPad Pro. https://www.macrumors.com/2021/10/28/macbook-pro-display-blooming-reports/ https://www.macrumors.com/2021/10/28/macbook-pro-display-blo...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- manderley 5y ago
  Meanwhile, tons of reports and reviews have indicated that blooming very much is an issue. And how could it ever not be, with this type of display. https://www.reddit.com/r/macbookpro/comments/qgkhku/noticeable_miniled_blooming_on_new_2021_macbook/ https://www.reddit.com/r/macbookpro/comments/qgkhku/noticeab...
  - jb1991 5y ago
    That thread seems to suggest it is not an issue for many users, similar to TVs and iPads, so I guess it would be a personal thing as to whether it bothers someone.
- gambiting 5y ago
  Yeah, I don't trust these at all. According to every review on the planet the iPad Pro has a fantastic screen, and my own(2021 M1 non-XDR) model has probably the worst screen of any device I own. I know it's IPS but it's almost unusable for watching media in a dark room, the contrast is just zero, would literally rather watch things on my phone. And it has an absolutely horrendous ghosting, like an LCD panel from 20 years ago. Get some white text on a grey background and scroll around - ghosting for daaaaays.

bionade24 5y ago

It's sad that they don't provide context like MacOS crashes with Safari but not with Firefox or Chromium-based browsers. Would be interesting if it's actually the UMA memleak problem reported not long ago. Notice: I don't know if any browser besides Safari can play HDR content on MacOS.

Uehreka 5y ago
Chrome on macOS is playing back HDR just fine.
- gigglesupstairs 5y ago
  The linked macrumors post lists multiple responses of it happening inside chrome too.
sudhirj 5y ago
I think media playback is delegated to the OS by the browser through some API, I doubt every browser bundles its own decoding and playback engine. And it needs to handover to the OS for picture-in-picture as well, makes sense to delegate.
- rudian 5y ago
  I think none of what you said is necessarily true. Safari certainly delegates as much as possible, but other browsers have a lot of baggage that OSes don't necessarily support. PIP is just a floating window, they have existed without explicit OS support for decades.
  - sudhirj 5y ago
    Not in macOS, though — PiP seems very heavily integrated into the OS, and seems to switch to OS UI when activated. Same thing happens in iOS as well.
- ksec 5y ago
  > I doubt every browser bundles its own decoding and playback engine. Not sure if that is the case on Mac but I am pretty sure Firefox bundle its own decoding and playback engine on Windows. And the same for Chrome. ( They are practically a mini OS ) The only one using OS default is Safari. Hence why supporting VP9 or other codec require an OS update. Unless of course it is Hardware Accelerated Decoding.

hnlmorg 5y ago

It really disappoints me just how easy it is to make macOS crash. USB and DisplayPort especially seem to trip it up. And now HDR in Safari. These are things that you'd expect from 90s era monolythic kernels. Not a 21st Century flagship OS for the most successful IT company on Earth.

mixmastamyk 5y ago
Reliable OSs were a thing for quite a while by the 90s. Didn’t have to contend with the variety of input from today however.
- grishka 5y ago
  Didn't most of the mainstream 90s OSes lack memory protection AND use cooperative multitasking, which meant one bug in an app and the entire system crashes or freezes?
  - oneplane 5y ago
    Yep, to some degree at least. Even some more modern systems after that had some similar problems, where there was less or no direct interaction anymore and userspace and kernelspace was the 'best' boundary there was to offer. But the same problems still persisted within the space if the other one goes down. Imagine having a fully functional app but you still can't do anything because the service 'on the other side' doesn't work. It's better because it won't crash the entire system, but it's the same because you still can't do the work you intended to do...
  - p_l 5y ago
    No, that's pretty much MacOS Classic and classic windows line before 9x (9x added /some/ level of protection and preemption)
    - grishka 5y ago
      > (9x added /some/ level of protection and preemption) I do remember games freezing windows 9x so much that you had to reach for that reset button. Also when the system threw up a BSOD if you ejected a CD when you weren't supposed to.

m0lecules 5y ago

Chrome and Firefox play HDR videos just fine, it's one of the first things I did when I opened the package. Here's a good one if you want to fall in love with the display: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MieluM0c6c&t=28s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MieluM0c6c&t=28s And here's a good one if you want to feel a little disappointed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYtvehF9-Z8&t=20s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYtvehF9-Z8&t=20s

TillE 5y ago
The slight blooming is certainly noticeable in a contrived test, but I think you'd struggle to be bothered by it in any actual usage unless you're extremely picky, or spending a lot of time with very bright text on pure black backgrounds. But yeah those play on Safari for me without issue (MBP M1 Pro, full screen).
donkeyd 5y ago
> Chrome and Firefox play HDR videos just fine Well, that's in part because Firefox doesn't play HDR Youtube at all: https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/kvqec5/its_2021_and_still_no_support_for_hdr/ https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/kvqec5/its_2021_an...
hjmallon 5y ago
I'm not getting HDR output from the Firefox browser on macOS (but I am on Chrome and Safari). 'Color' field in stats for nerds shows bt709 in firefox (i.e. not HDR) and smpte2084 (PQ) / bt2020 in Chrome/Safari (i.e. HDR). Also side by side the Firefox picture is flatter and less bright.

zlib 5y ago

My MacBook Air M1 (Big Sur) has crashed twice when watching Netflix. Both times it was when I moved my mouse after 20 minutes or so of watching fullscreen via my USB-C monitor in Safari.

tdstein 5y ago

I'm currently streaming a 4K HDR video on YouTube without issue. Model Name: MacBook Pro. Model Identifier: MacBookPro18,1. Chip: Apple M1 Pro. Total Number of Cores: 10 (8 performance and 2 efficiency). Memory: 16 GB.

SamuelAdams 5y ago
What browser?
- tdstein 5y ago
  Tested on both Safari and Chrome. Tried entering and exiting out of full-screen multiple times, and with 4K and 8K video.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

RubberShoes 5y ago

In playing with an M1 Pro 14" this weekend I noticed all HDR content I viewed was encoded in AV1. YouTube seems to have drawn a line between SDR and HDR with this codec. AV1 is amazing but still relatively early in its development and takes a ton of raw power for decode as M1* does not have a native decoder. I almost guarantee this is the root of the issue. My friend doesn't have iStat Menus so I couldn't see the full resource picture but curious if the GPU is involved or its a pure CPU decode and the issue lays somewhere within that.

ksec 5y ago
I am guessing you are doing this on Chrome? HDR content should default to and only be viewed with VP9 on Safari. Since Safari does not support AV1.
ArgyleSound 5y ago
That's definitely not the case, all 4K HDR videos are VP9 for me on YouTube with Safari
singhkays 5y ago
It's not that bad. Lower than decoding VP9 with a software decoder https://singhkays.com/blog/apple-silicon-m1-video-power-consumption-pt-2/ https://singhkays.com/blog/apple-silicon-m1-video-power-cons...
- ksec 5y ago
  This is quite amazing. On my Intel Mac it still requires 4 thread with close to 100% CPU usage to play a 4K AV1 using latest VLC. ( Which I assume comes with latest dav1d ) This is easily 20W usage. But on M1 this takes less than 1W. This basically eliminate any argument against AV1. Even with software decoding. You could watch AV1 4K video with passive cooling on a MacBook Air without it ever getting warm. It may be a good question to ask, with these kind of processing power, what can we do to further push the next gen video codec.
  - brokenmachine 5y ago

visarga 5y ago

I had two crashes on my new M1 MacBook Pro, never had such happenings with Intel macs. It's bad.

louhike 5y ago

Off-topic: Is HDR really worth it? I’ve been considering buying a screen who can use it for games, but I’m not sure the investment is that worth it

Operyl 5y ago
I definitely notice the difference, but personally if the cost is something you’re concerned about I would probably spend it on something else.