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M1 Pro and M1 Max MacBook Pro Owners Complain of Crashes Playing HDR YouTube Videos

Ancandis said:
Can you confirm that you have ProMotion turned on in System Preferences/Displays?

If so, please let us know your config (screen size, cpu, cpu cores, GPU cores, RAM, SSD) -- thanks!
Click to expand...

M1 Pro 16GB/1TB 10c/16c 16" model with promotion on, HDR 1600 profile set, on power, on battery tested. NO ISSUES AT ALL PERIOD. I believe this may be a real hardware issue with some models sold. I have not had one single restart/crash while watching full HDR content at max including VLC using yt-dlp downloaded webm/mp4 8K footages off YouTube. AV01 format won't play in QuickTime however. VLC will allow VP9.2 playing with HDR.

Another new 8K video I tried that has zero issues full screened, theatre mode, default view mode, all while scrolling slowly and/or quickly in comments section - nothing restarts or crashes on my MBP 16.

 
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Ancandis said:
Make sure to set your display to ProMotion (120 Hz), open an 8K HDR video in YouTube and set the video resolution to 2160p60 HDR while in the browser window and scroll _slowly_ upwards so the video will disappear under Safari's menu bar and then some more.

Any 8K HDR video will do. I have used the one that always pops up first for me (Peru).

edit: this video
Click to expand...
I just watched that video and tried different things. No kernel panic for me. My display is set to ProMotion and video was playing at 2160p60. I tried with browser maximized and not maximized; video playing in default and theater mode; scrolling fast, slow; and with video playing on full screen then escaping out.

I will say that this is the only time so far I do see the page not scrolling smoothly. It doesn't freeze or pinwheel but it does have those very quick but noticeable pauses.

On a 16" M1 Pro with 16GB RAM and 1TB SSD.
 
Does this mean we can finally jailbreak M1 Pro/Max into "sideloading" IPA files? It's laughable that Apple puts an artificial restriction on what you can do with your $3500 computers.
 
Been having lots of buggy behavior with the youtube app on apple tv. Through my polk magnify max soundbar whenever i turn on my apple tv, the last YouTube video i was playing starts playing from the beginning, even before the picture shows up. I’ve had other instances of YouTube on my laptop just start playing while the device is asleep. And lastly I’ve found airplaying YouTube to have lots of gitches when connecting to my ipad.
 
JamieLannister said:
M1 Pro 16GB/1TB 10c/16c 16" model with promotion on, HDR 1600 profile set, on power, on battery tested. NO ISSUES AT ALL PERIOD. I believe this may be a real hardware issue with some models sold. I have not had one single restart/crash while watching full HDR content at max including VLC using yt-dlp downloaded webm/mp4 8K footages off YouTube. AV01 format won't play in QuickTime however. VLC will allow VP9.2 playing with HDR.

Another new 8K video I tried that has zero issues full screened, theatre mode, default view mode, all while scrolling slowly and/or quickly in comments section - nothing restarts or crashes on my MBP 16.

Click to expand...

I picked up my base model 14” MBP yesterday and have tested a lot of HDR videos on youtube, after reading this thread. No crashes for me so far. Sometimes there is some stutter in the scrolling, just when the video leaves the screen.

I have just tested again with above video, and here there is significant short freeze in the scrolling, just when the video leaves the screen completly, and when the video just returns to the screen again, but no crash.

I’m running the base model 14” 8 core version. It is on macos 12.0 (not 12.0.1) and the display is using the Apple XDR P3-1600 nits preset with ProMotion enabled.
 
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Doesn't the fact that promotion must be turned on for the panic to happen prove this is a software issue?

The videos that crash are 4K60 HDR so they are never using 120 Hz themselves, but something about the promotion driver causes them to be handled wrong (and specifically handled wrong when not even playing or on the screen).

Also, while 12.1 did not fix all my crashes, the video I initially tested that used to crash on 12.0.1 no longer did. So the software changed something, just not eliminated all crashing.
 
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davidako said:
Doesn't the fact that promotion must be turned on for the panic to happen prove this is a software issue?
Click to expand...
I would think and hope so, but isn't it also possible that enabling ProMotion activates some part of the hardware that only faults out when handling HDR content?
 
JamieLannister said:
M1 Pro 16GB/1TB 10c/16c 16" model with promotion on, HDR 1600 profile set, on power, on battery tested. NO ISSUES AT ALL PERIOD. I believe this may be a real hardware issue with some models sold. I have not had one single restart/crash while watching full HDR content at max including VLC using yt-dlp downloaded webm/mp4 8K footages off YouTube. AV01 format won't play in QuickTime however. VLC will allow VP9.2 playing with HDR.

Another new 8K video I tried that has zero issues full screened, theatre mode, default view mode, all while scrolling slowly and/or quickly in comments section - nothing restarts or crashes on my MBP 16.

Click to expand...
Ancandis said:
Thanks!

This video instantly crashes my MBP14 as soon as it is out of view.
Click to expand...

Redwoods does not crash my 12.1 beta, but the Peru one does.
 
I have been testing on a 16" Macbook Pro M1 Max, 32 GB, 1 TB. On this Mac, I enabled

System Preferences > Display > Reduce transparency


This replaces the "blurry area" mentioned in the posting from Ancandis, and should simplify the screen rendering a bit. But I still see repeatable panics when I follow the recipe described below.


I have not been able to trigger panics when viewing 4K/8K HDR videos on the Vimeo website. I don't see a panic when I view one of my own videos on YouTube (this one is 4K, but not HDR). So why are some people seeting panics, and others are not? There are many other variables. Perhaps the panic is related to a particular combination of settings in System Preferences, the web browser, or network config. Could it be related to the speed or latency of your internet connection? Has anyone seen the panic from a 4K HDR video on local storage?


Some people are jumping on the assumption that there is a hardware flaw in some units. It seems unlikely to me that a hardware flaw would only show up in such a specific situation - I would think that users would see other symptoms.

Ancandis said:
After testing 10 machines (14 and 16 inch) only a single one did not crash.

The issue has nothing to do with scrolling the comments section. It happens under these circumstances:

How to reproduce the CPU panic consistently within seconds​


  1. In System Preferences > Displays the Refresh Rate must be set to "ProMotion" in order to reproduce the crash.
  2. In Safari* open any YouTube 8K HDR video.
  3. Select Settings/Quality/2160p60 HDR.
  4. Start playing the video. You may pause it.
  5. With the trackpad scroll down slowly. As soon as the video leaves Safari's blurry area behind the toolbar your MacBook Pro may crash. This is the critical part.
* This also happens in Google Chrome 95.0.4638.69 (Official Build) (arm64). (Thanks @UncleGuido)

This message has also been posted in the thread 14" MBP Kernel Crash

These machines reportedly crashed:
These machines did NOT crash with the instructions above:
Click to expand...
 
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UncleGuido said:
I have not been able to trigger panics when viewing 4K/8K HDR videos on the Vimeo website. I don't see a panic when I view one of my own videos on YouTube (this one is 4K, but not HDR). So why are some people seeting panics, and others are not?
Click to expand...
Vimeo won't hide the video completely, instead it will be shown in a small view when scrolling up.

Only 2160p60 HDR videos may crash your Mac.

This may be
a) due to a CPU that's not faulty (I have found a single MBP M1 Pro that did not crash amongst ten)
b) if you scroll down fast. The crash only happens if you scroll down slowly.
 
Ancandis said:
This may be
a) due to a CPU that's not faulty (I have found a single MBP M1 Pro that did not crash amongst ten)
Click to expand...

If you have access to a unit that crashes repeatably, and another that does not (on the same content, same network), you could do a comparison of the app and system settings, to see if there are any differences that explain their behaviors.
 
IG88 said:
Make sure it's playing in HDR. Take the video to full screen. Then exit full screen and start scrolling the comments.

The World in HDR in 4K (ULTRA HD)
Click to expand...

Ancandis said:
Make sure to set your display to ProMotion (120 Hz), open an 8K HDR video in YouTube and set the video resolution to 2160p60 HDR while in the browser window and scroll _slowly_ upwards so the video will disappear under Safari's menu bar and then some more.

Any 8K HDR video will do. I have used the one that always pops up first for me (Peru).

edit: this video
Click to expand...

I tried hard to crash it, no lucks.

 
UncleGuido said:
If you have access to a unit that crashes repeatably, and another that does not (on the same content, same network), you could do a comparison of the app and system settings, to see if there are any differences that explain their behaviors.
Click to expand...
Yes, both machines have been reset to the same default system settings.

So it’s 100% not a software setting that causes the difference. :(
 
TinyMito said:
I tried hard to crash it, no lucks.
Click to expand...
You aren't scrolling YouTube comments, you're scrolling Macrumors watching an embedded video.
Open the video in new tab, not embedded from Macrumors. Keep a few other tabs open as well.

Full screen, exit full screen, then scroll the YouTube comments.
 
IG88 said:
You aren't scrolling YouTube comments, you're scrolling Macrumors watching an embedded video.
Open the video in new tab, not embedded from Macrumors. Keep a few other tabs open as well.

Full screen, exit full screen, then scroll the YouTube comments.
Click to expand...

I actually tried to do this at Best Buy today with both a 16" and 14", using both 4K HDR and 8K UHDR directly on Youtube's site, with multiple tabs open, and neither reproduced the bug. Both were running 12.0.1. Both of the display models were base models.

BL.
 
IG88 said:
You aren't scrolling YouTube comments, you're scrolling Macrumors watching an embedded video.
Open the video in new tab, not embedded from Macrumors. Keep a few other tabs open as well.

Full screen, exit full screen, then scroll the YouTube comments.
Click to expand...

Ok.. bro...

 
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TinyMito said:
I tried hard to crash it, no lucks.

Click to expand...

Funny video. Still not quite the exact steps for causing the crash.

But anyway, gave me an idea and I MIGHT have found the answer:


Light mode = crash

Dark mode = no crash


For me the Peru video consistently crashes, but not after I swapped to dark mode. People with crashes, go to Settings -> General -> Dark and try again. (I'm on beta 12.1)

Edit: Just done another test and even Mac Light mode with YouTube's dark mode avoids the crash in Safari.

Edit 2: Doesn't apply to Chrome, still crashes in both light and dark modes.
 
Last edited:
I have just tried again after restarting in light mode, I was still unable to replicate the crash on my 14", 10 core 32Gb 1Tb in Safari or Chrome. However, I now get a significant freeze and stuttering when I get down to the comments, I did not have it that bad in dark mode so you may be on to something.
 
Gorio said:
I have just tried again after restarting in light mode, I was still unable to replicate the crash on my 14", 10 core 32Gb 1Tb in Safari or Chrome. However, I now get a significant freeze and stuttering when I get down to the comments, I did not have it that bad in dark mode so you may be on to something.
Click to expand...

How about YouTube dark mode?
 
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