No video playback (mp4) in MacOS 11

[HVR88]

Game videos as well as the header video for the GameOS theme will not play in MacOS 11 - blank/black shows up instead.

For the GameOS Theme, the header just looks like the video is missing.

For default theme or GameOS theme, game videos show up as solid black.

System info

MacOS 11.5 running on M1 Macbook Air

Testing with a simple setup of one system and 290 games - pegasus metadata file converted from Skraper's Logiqx dat, all ROMs local with media in the ROM folder under Skraper folder.

Pegasus version

Alpha 15-14 from 2021-07-15

Pegasus log

No errors in log.

[mmatyas]

Can you play the videos using the default, built-in media player of MacOS, without any tweaks? Could you upload an example file?

[HVR88]

Yes, the videos play with the default QuickTime Player, also with the QuickView extension in finder, and with all the third-party video players I have.

Here's one: http://salumba.com/A.E.%20(World).mp4

And here's GameOS' header video: https://github.com/PlayingKarrde/gameOS/blob/master/assets/video/ftue.mp4

[HVR88]

Videos also not working and cause UI hang on RPi4 RetroPie. Could be related... though I can file a separate issue if needed.

I've also been doing some testing on a brand new/current RetroPie setup using Rpi4/4GB (USB SSD boot) set up to read the Emulation Station data. The gameOS header video also won't play. And even with the default grid theme, selecting a game tile which would normally play its video doesn't show the video and will eventually completely lock up the UI - could happen on the first or fifth/tenth tile selected - the Rpi continues to function in the background (SMB shares continue to work and I can access via SSH). Nothing shows up in the log related to a hang.

When starting Pegasus with the default grid theme, the RetroPie category is selected by default and the tiles in that category/system don't have videos (they aren't games) - they can be scrolled and selected all day without issue. The hang only seems to happen when a tile with video is selected.

[polson]

Tested this on my mac. The GameOS header plays fine, but Steam game videos do not. QuickTime can't play the steam videos either. They are WebM with Vorbis audio 👀

FWIW this is essentially the same issue that occurs on Windows when the proper codecs aren't installed. I don't think there is such an easy fix on MacOS.

Probably another good reason to bundle ffmpeg or libVLC with Pegasus so it just works out of the box.

[mmatyas]

The Pi issue is related to GStreamer, the video playback backend used there. I assume some of the codecs might have issues, considering all the driver differences there. Make sure your kernel is up to date, gstreamer1.0-alsa, gstreamer1.0-libav, gstreamer1.0-plugins-good, gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad, gstreamer1.0-plugins-ugly, and (optionally) gstreamer-omx are installed and up to date. If that doesn't fix it, feel free to open a new issue for it; it's a different multimedia backend so it's likely not related to the Mac issue.

As polson mentioned, implementing a custom backend (#347) would be indeed a solution for this in the future.

[HVR88]

@polson can you outline what version of macOS you're running? I'm only testing in 11.5 (GM).

@mmatyas if it adds value to the issue, all the videos are playing fine on the same Pi in Emulation Station. If I have some time this week I'll check/update the dependencies.

[polson]

I'm on 11.4

[HVR88]

M1 or Intel?

[polson]

Intel

[HVR88]

OK, that's a significant difference. Pegasus on my M1 machine is going through Rosetta2 translation - might be something there that's causing the issue.

[HVR88]

Confirmed same issue exists in MacOS 12 (21A5522h) and Pegasus 15-55

[mmatyas]

There was a Qt update recently, could someone test the latest version?

[HomeStarRunnerTron]

Now all video playback works, just like I showed off in my demonstration video! : ) Just verified on your 2023-08-25 build. I'm using macOS 12, so I think this problem should be fixed for all the neighbouring macOS versions. Thank you so much for all your hard work.

[mmatyas]

I think this can be closed then, but feel free to report if the issue still occurs!