VLC For XBox One Crashes When Background Streaming Music via UPNP
Title says it all. Not 100% sure on what's causing the crashes. Initially I suspected that it was because the playlist I was using had an ALAC in it (conveniently the same song crashed the app twice, but then I removed it from the playlist and it did it again after about the same duration of play from the overall list). But the issue persisted without it present.
Given that it crashes after playing for about the same amount of time (probably like an hour of streaming?) I think it might have something to do with that. Will try streaming via FTP later and see what that does.
Activity
I am running the latest version and the app consistently crashes for me after a minute or two of playing a song via upnp in the background, not an hour. I usually can't get through a single song before it crashes. Just tested again a moment ago and crashed after about two and a half minutes while playing a FLAC file streaming from a Plex media server running on my local network. Other players on the Xbox as well as other devices can play the same album(s) without issue. Streaming from internet radio stations in the background works just fine, and is currently the only way I can background play audio in VLC without crashing.
Edited by Gordon Shumway-
Great, looking forward to it! I am grateful for the work you all do bringing us this software. I am still using this app on an almost daily basis even with this minor issue.
Edited by Gordon Shumway -
Crash. My library is all FLAC, I have not tested with other formats. Network bandwidth should be fine; wired in, gigabit ethernet. Will convert some stuff to mp3 and try that next.
Edited by Gordon Shumway -
I have been testing background playback with mp3 files over DLNA and played two albums without issue. Maybe FLAC requires too much system resources for background playback while performing other tasks on the Xbox? I have changed the streaming profile on my media server to automatically transcode the FLAC files to mp3 in order to avoid future crashes.
Edited by Gordon Shumway -
Maybe I spoke too soon. Had a crash while background playing mp3 today. First crash I have experienced with mp3 since making the switch. Played half an album before the crash occurred. May also be system resource related, I always test background music while playing a game. The results with mp3 are still far better than with flac where not a single track can be completed without crashing. I must say this was my first crash with mp3 and I will experiment further. I have played many hours of mp3 without crash thus far, this is a rare case but felt I should mention it. These numbers are far from exact! Whereas my failure on FLAC files is close to 100% I would put my failure on mp3 around 5% or less.
P.S: I feel bad only ever commenting on bugs, but this is hands down the best app on Xbox and Windows Store. Those well paid assholes at Microsoft still don't offer a media player capable of a fraction of what yours is capable of.
Edited by Gordon Shumway 
P.S: I feel bad only ever commenting on bugs, but this is hands down the best app on Xbox and Windows Store. Those well paid assholes at Microsoft still don't offer a media player capable of a fraction of what yours is capable of.
@strangeluck don't feel bad. We like good reporters. But the truth is that this platform is very hard to develop for, so we're doing our best, but Microsoft team does not really help us for that...
Maybe I spoke too soon. Had a crash while background playing mp3 today.
That was expected. Memory usage seems to be lower when playing mp3 than FLAC (for reasons we're investigating), but memory leaks still occur. With mp3, it just takes a little bit longer for the app to cross the memory limit enforced by the system and be killed by the Xbox.
I've tentatively fixed the issue and will release an update probably next week. I'll keep this open in the meantime so you can come back and confirm this is not a problem anymore. Stay tuned!
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@strangeluck Please try version 2.5.5 (FLAC/mp3), this should be fixed. Let us know here when you can.
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Still consistently crashing for me with FLAC playback. Version 2.5.5.6. Seems to play for longer than before, but will crash when advancing to the next track if one manages to complete. No crashes with mp3 yet, but as those crashes take longer to manifest I will need to spend more time testing.
Edited by Gordon Shumway -
That's weird... I tested this before releasing and managed to play a full FLAC album (45mins) without problems.
What's your Xbox OS build version?
Also, can you try copying the files on your xbox (instead of playing them from the network) to see if that changes anything for you? https://code.videolan.org/videolan/vlc-winrt/wikis/how-to:-add-music/video-to-your-library
Edited by Martin Finkel -
OS version 10.0.16281.1000 (rs3_release_xbox_dev_1710.170831-1900) I am in the preview program, running the latest alpha build (latest update was pushed out this evening) and they are the midst of a big system redesign so that might be a contributing factor here. I tried 3 different albums. A 24bit 96khz album I tried crashed before completing the track, the others were 16 bit 44khz and crashed on track advance. Plex Media Server used as the network source, tested with VLC backgrounded while playing a game. Unfortunately I have to call it a night, but I will try and test local playback tomorrow or definitely sometime this week.
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Ok, I was able to test again this morning. Copied a 16/44 flac album to the Xbox and the locally stored album played fine while backgrounded and playing a game, album played to completion. Also tested 3 additional 16/44 flac albums over UPNP and it crashed every time when advancing to the next track. So that's 100% failure on track advance over UPNP on my system.