Safari 14: No video (audio only) when streaming (Netflix, HBO Max, Amazon Prime, etc)

[Jason Manley]

Hi, this is my first post.

Installed Big Sur in November and noticed an issue with Safari. When streaming content from Netflix, HBO Max or Amazon Prime the stream will start normally and after about 20-30 seconds the video goes "black" but I still hear audio. It's as though the stream is still going, just no longer playing video. Curiously, YouTube has no issues playing content.

I had a ticket in with Apple Support and have not heard back from them in some time. Last update was that my ticket was with a Senior Advisor at Apple. They've had me enable and re-enable the VP9 decoder in Safari (Develop Menu / Experimental Features). Also kill the coraudiod process in Activity Monitor. All to no avail.

In the ensuing time of waiting for something from Apple on my issue (going on 6 weeks) I noticed the other day in YouTube, whilst playing a movie (YouTube Movies) the same phenomenon happened. Roughly 30 seconds into the presentation, the video portion went away and I could still hear audio. This is the same thing I experience on Netflix, HBO Max, Prime Video and Spectrum. All of that taken together makes me think there is some DRM codec that just does not want to play nice with the new Safari; at least not for me on my 4K iMac.

Again, I'll mention that normal YouTube plays fine for me with no issues as do sites like Vimeo, etc. Even news sites (CNN Go, for example) has no issue.

I do sincerely prefer using Safari and staying within the Apple ecosystem when I can because of ease of use and simplicity. But this predicament forces me to have to use a 3rd party browser which stinks.

Any suggestions would be welcome.

Regards

 

[drownded]

i have the same problem, with the same generation imac 4k, do you also have the vega gpu upgrade? i'm wondering if there's some authorization broken in big sur's gpu driver or something.

 

[Jason Manley]

i have the same problem, with the same generation imac 4k, do you also have the vega gpu upgrade? i'm wondering if there's some authorization broken in big sur's gpu driver or something.

I have the Radeon Pro Vega 20 4 GB graphics card. I've wondered the same thing aloud to the Apple Senior Tech and they did mention if it was a hardware issue the same thing would probably happen in Chrome – which it does not – Chrome is fine.

 

[drownded]

yeah i have that same card. yes chrome is also fine for me too; and tv.apple.com on chrome works too, for any stream where tv.app goes to black; and none of this happens on the other mac i have here running big sur; etc etc.

but i know something your senior tech DOESN'T -- chrome's playback isn't in the system sandbox -- cuz chrome drm video (from netflix or tv.apple.com or wherever) doesn't black out when you record the screen, the way safari & tv.app do.

 

[drownded]

another call coming wednesday. i've done more isolations on the problem: it DOES happen when booted from a clean, pure install of big sur and does NOT happen when booted from clean install of catalina. therefore, if the symptoms are exactly/only as JM described, there's not much point going through a troubleshooting process: there's no way for ordinary users to fix it.

(ps: call was postponed, possibly due to disaster in austin tx)

 

[irene_tsei]

Search my problem online and your thread comes up
I got the same problem when I tried to watch a purchased movie through Apple TV app, on my iMac. The movie goes for around half a minute and then the screen go black with only audio. And when I close the movie, the error message appeared.

Screen also goes black when I watched HBO on safari. But Chrome is fine.
Then I tried a few things on the apple tv app. Standard definition works just fine, quality definitely ****** but at least it is able to play smoothly. No black screen. I wonder if this is the reason chrome is fine on this situation. Coz I look up the internet, it seems it is not streaming 1080p while safari is. Some web said it’s max stream quality is 720p
I called apple support this morning, she said she needed around 10 minutes to do some research and then hung up. When she called back, she mentioned something of not many people report this problem and asked me to follow her instructions. I did a lot of time consuming stuffs, including reinstall the OS. It’s not working.
My iMac is 2019 version, it’s pretty new. She mentioned it is a software problem.
She also told me if the problem persist, maybe I should consider format and reinstall the whole computer. But honestly I don’t want to.
My graphic card is Redeon Pro Vega 20 4GB, macOS Big Sur Version 11.2.1
Not sure Catalina will have this issue coz I only tried streaming yesterday. I used to stream on my iPhone.
Well, I am tired on trying to solve this issue, so I decided to let it go, which is watch movie on my phone instead.

 

[drownded]

Search my problem online and your thread comes up
I got the same problem when I tried to watch a purchased movie through Apple TV app, on my iMac. The movie goes for around half a minute and then the screen go black with only audio. And when I close the movie, the error message appeared. View attachment 1732719
Screen also goes black when I watched HBO on safari. But Chrome is fine.
Then I tried a few things on the apple tv app. Standard definition works just fine, quality definitely ****** but at least it is able to play smoothly. No black screen. I wonder if this is the reason chrome is fine on this situation. Coz I look up the internet, it seems it is not streaming 1080p while safari is. Some web said it’s max stream quality is 720p
I called apple support this morning, she said she needed around 10 minutes to do some research and then hung up. When she called back, she mentioned something of not many people report this problem and asked me to follow her instructions. I did a lot of time consuming stuffs, including reinstall the OS. It’s not working.
My iMac is 2019 version, it’s pretty new. She mentioned it is a software problem.
She also told me if the problem persist, maybe I should consider format and reinstall the whole computer. But honestly I don’t want to.
My graphic card is Redeon Pro Vega 20 4GB, macOS Big Sur Version 11.2.1
Not sure Catalina will have this issue coz I only tried streaming yesterday. I used to stream on my iPhone.
Well, I am tired on trying to solve this issue, so I decided to let it go, which is watch movie on my phone instead.

based on what you describe, i would say erase & reinstall wouldn't fix it, so this is a good plan

 

[drownded]

this is kind of interesting, netflix hd is playing again in safari, but amazon prime video is still broken in safari, and apple tv+ is still broken in tv.app. i don't know what this means about the problem.

apple has told me they couldn't replicate the bug but couldn't tell me if they were trying to replicate it on this specific hardware. they said to send the computer for repair, though there was no known hardware fault, and the behavior did not happen when the computer was booted on a fresh install of catalina.

interesting... irritating...

 

[kinwin]

I realize the last post is almost a year ago, but was this issue every resolved?
I recently ran into this issue on my iMac, exactly the same symptoms as OP.

 

[Omnitude]

I realize the last post is almost a year ago, but was this issue every resolved?
I recently ran into this issue on my iMac, exactly the same symptoms as OP.

Ive been having the same issue since upgrading to Ventura on my intel i9 MacBook Pro. I found that turning off one of my monitors fixed the issue (I use a three monitor set up). This can be due to the monitor itself, number of monitors that the graphics card can push to or perhaps the usb-c cable.