Chrome playback issues

[ageekhere]

With chrome some videos report "The source file is entirely compatible with this client and the session is receiving the file without modifications" however the video files end up not being supported and i get Playback failed due to a fatal player error.

Firefox and jellyfin media player do not have this issue. The main issue is chrome thinks it is able to play the media file however when it tries it cannot.

Options

1. Make chrome be more strict in deciding which files it is able to play like firefox
2. If direct play fails then try transcoding the video

[viown]

This sounds like a configuration issue, likely related to your transcoding. What do your logs say? You can check out Getting Help to get help from the community.

[ageekhere]

The issue seems to be that chrome is trying to play the video without transcoding.
I believe this relates to #7651 and https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/clients/codec-support/
Chrome has issues with direct play for certain files, even when the browser technically supports the video codec like H.264, HEVC or MKV containers.

So what seems to happen is chrome goes yes i can play that without transcoding then tries to play directly but it cannot. Firefox is more strict on this.

So chrome either needs to be more strict on playing videos without transcoding or fallback to transcoding if video fails to play direct.

For logs all you get is the below error as there is no transcoding.
[2026-05-02 05:10:01.544 +00:00] [INF] [84] Emby.Server.Implementations.Session.SessionManager: Playback stopped reported by app "Jellyfin Web" "10.11.8" playing "testVideo". Stopped at "0" ms