Safari / Mac does not play vp9 files

[Str1atum]

The bug

I changed my recoding settings to

VP9
crf 31
preset medium
aac audio
720p
max bitrate 0
two-pass off

Videos don't play in latest Safari and even when I download them, Quicktime will not open them either.
In Chrome everything works fine.
Any recommended settings or is this a bug?

The OS that Immich Server is running on

Ubuntu 24.04

Version of Immich Server

v.105.1

Version of Immich Mobile App

v.105

Platform with the issue

• Server
• Web
• Mobile

Your docker-compose.yml content

standard

Your .env content

standard

Reproduction steps

1.
2.
3.
...

Relevant log output

No response

Additional information

No response

[mertalev]

If videos play on Chrome, then this is a Safari / Quicktime limitation. I believe there’s a setting in Safari you can enable to make VP9 work. Not sure about Quicktime.

Also Big Sur made some improvements here if you’re on an older version.

[Str1atum]

I'm on 14.5 so that shouldn't be an issue. There's no longer a setting for VP9 AFAIK, so maybe someone knows some working settings.

[mertalev]

For HEVC, there's a tag we need to set in the output for Apple devices to accept it. I wonder if there's something like that for VP9.

[mertalev]

Also, you mentioned using Quick Sync for transcoding? Can you try transcoding a video with CPU, clearing the browser cache and trying again?

[NicholasFlamy]

That might be it, I've tested on Safari on MacOS Sonoma 14.2.1 with VP9 which was CPU transcoded (since my 8th gen Intel CPU doesn't support Quicksync VP9 encoding) on immich. Also, my VM doesn't have a GPU passed through so it must be software decoding.

[Str1atum]

I played around a bit and tried CPU transcoding / hardware acceleration disabled. Strangely, this creates H.265 videos, despite having selected VP9 (triple checked now)

[NicholasFlamy]

It sounds like it might be playing the originals.

[NicholasFlamy]

Found this online:

[Str1atum]

that must be on some old version - it's integrated now and considered "stable"

[NicholasFlamy]

I don't have a Mac but I have a MacOS Sonoma VM so maybe I can try to replicate the problem. I'll copy your settings to an immich instance of mine.

Also, the screenshot I sent I found online.

[NicholasFlamy]

Is the immich server using hardware acceleration for transcoding? Just trying to replicate your setup.

[Str1atum]

Yes, hardware transcoding is enabled

[NicholasFlamy]

Intel? Nvidia? AMD? (Not sure if that's even supported)

[Str1atum]

quicksync on Intel Iris Xe