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+--- Thread: Playback failed due to a fatal player error. (/t-playback-failed-due-to-a-fatal-player-error--14119)
Playback failed due to a fatal player error. - Mr Jackpots - 2025-10-18
Just last night I noticed that when I try to watch videos from my Jellyfin server via the web client on my Windows desktop I'm getting "Playback failed due to a fatal player error.". I was able to watch shows and movies as recently as last week on this desktop without issue and I had been using Jellyfin for watching shows + movies as well as listening to music for a few months now without any real issues. I do not get this error when trying to watch the same media through the Android app, iPad app or on my 4K TV via the Roku app, I assume due to the issue being related to transcoding or the lack thereof. My Jellyfin 10.10.7 instance is running on a Beelink Mini S12 Pro Intel 12th N100, which is running Ubuntu 24.04.3 LTS and Jellyfin is installed via docker with docker compose. I've attached my docker compose file, the ffmpeg + general logs when trying to watch a show via the browser client as well as my transcoding settings, if I'm missing anything that would help please let me know.
RE: Playback failed due to a fatal player error. - Mr Jackpots - 2025-10-19
Ok, did a little more tinkering/debugging. On my windows desktop web client if I set the preferred codec to H264 videos work fine (not in the admin panel but individual user Playback settings). If I set it to auto, HVEC or AV1 I get the error. So I guess it's good I can get the videos working again but I never explicitly set a preferred codec before today and as recently as either earlier this week/last week I was watching video content without issue through the web client. I have no idea why this would just start happening, the docker container isn't set to update automatically, I don't believe I had run any updates in Ubuntu between the last time it worked and when video stopped working w/ the Auto setting.
edit: further odd behavior: when I use the web client in chrome and edge I get the same error until I explicitly set the preferred codec to H264. However if I use firefox on my android phone to access the web client it works without setting a preferred codec and I verified it was set to Auto in the Playback settings.