VLC 3.3 for iPhone, iPad and Apple TV

[bkh]

What worked was how I logged into the SMB server: previously I had just clicked Login, having User/Password/Port/WORKGROUP saved. Instead of doing that, I entered the log-in information manually: then, after going to the file with my movie on it, the orange "wait please" screen came up momentarily, but then the movie started playing.

I can confirm that this works for me too. If I try to use saved credentials or if I enter credentials in the two-line form that only requests name and password, I can't play media via TVos; but if I type in fresh credentials immediately in the 4-line form that asks for user, password, port, WORKGROUP then I can play media from the SMB server.

And in the log file I submitted a couple days ago, it did appear (to a novice like me) that when VLC on TVos tries to log in using saved credentials it scans the keychain and fails to find anything. But there are other strange things, like the fact that when VLC shows me the local servers, there are two appearances of the Synology, one with the name in uppercase, and a second with the name in lowercase (which is how it is actually named), and on the iPhone, when I click on the server name (uppercase version) it shows 4 sets of saved credentials for that server, 2 using the server name and 2 using its IP address. So maybe somehow on the iPhone it just grabs the correct working credentials, but on TVos it somehow doesn't -- like because of a different sort order or something weird like that.

So I'm delighted that we now have a work-around that enables us to play media via VLC on TVos, and I wish there were something I could do to help identify the root cause of the failure.

[crevard]

Hi, it works from me as well, finally. "Autoplay On", "Download covers off, and indication of my user / password (port left empty, workgroup left by default) in the main screen right after selecting the NAS device (which I never did before, I just clicked on connect or save, and sometimes login credetials were requested, not always). Thanks all for the solution

[CoNSpiracy001]

I have always just logged in as guest / anonymous login, and have been able to see the files and play the video shared with all on my PC. This still works fine in the iPad version of VLC but not in the AppleTV versions starting with v3.3.1 (I can still log in and see the files, but playback does not work).

I am currently testing a beta version of v3.3.4 and the problem has been the same in builds 424 and 425 but from build 426 I cannot login in at all anymore (the app just automatically closes upon login both in the AppleTV and the iPad version).

I have also tried to install v3.3.0 builds 413 and 418 on AppleTV via the beta testing tool but the behavior is the same as in the versions up to and including build 425, so it could be that it was a problem introduced by the tvOS v15.4 update?

[fkuehne]

@ChemEngr79: this is fixed in version 3.3.4 released last night.

Version 3.3.4 is available for iOS now notably fixing subtitles downloads for media stored on external devices (such as USB keys attached to an iPad) or copyied from other apps.

The update was not reviewed by Apple for Apple TV yet, but I expect that to happen today. It should solve the "media from SMB does not play if I don't have auto-play enabled" issue.

Regarding the "lower case servers don't open but uppercase servers of the same name do" problem, that is fixed for both iOS and tvOS. The servers currently show twice as they are discovered both using Bonjour and NETBIOS - we will do filtering in a future release to have them displayed once only.

[yoshiyike]

it has been almost 3 weeks since i have been able to use VLC on my Apple TV. i can use it anywhere and everywhere else. i have tried all of the methods that others have mentioned. have this off, have that on and so on. i have restarted devices. i.e. net, apple tv, the computer that has the smb attached to it. yet nothing. i joined in the beta testing version to help diagnose and still nothing. it has gone from bad to worse. now i open vlc, select my smb, since it is my home network i dont have any passwords or usernames, all i do is click "login." when i do that it flashes back to the apple tv home screen. i just checked and now vlc no longer works on my iphone. i checked to see if it had an update and it says it was updated recently. VLC IS BROKE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[CoNSpiracy001]

Exactly the same here. Both the AppleTV and the iPhone/iPad versions in build 426 crash when trying to log in to a network folder via SMB (anonymous login)…

[ChemEngr79]

@ChemEngr79: this is fixed in version 3.3.4 released last night.

Version 3.3.4 is available for iOS now notably fixing subtitles downloads for media stored on external devices (such as USB keys attached to an iPad) or copyied from other apps.

The update was not reviewed by Apple for Apple TV yet, but I expect that to happen today. It should solve the "media from SMB does not play if I don't have auto-play enabled" issue.

Regarding the "lower case servers don't open but uppercase servers of the same name do" problem, that is fixed for both iOS and tvOS. The servers currently show twice as they are discovered both using Bonjour and NETBIOS - we will do filtering in a future release to have them displayed once only.

Verified resolved on iPhone and iPad. Thanks!

[yoshiyike]

a little bit of interesting information. i have recently acquired my very first mac. i have recently set it up and am trying to figure it out considering i have always been a windows pc user. however, i did manage to figure out the smb sharing on mac...... somewhat. i have a bunch of empty folders to share but no files... yet. the point to all of this being. with the recent findings of VLC even crashing on iphone i tried to use my iphone 13 to connect to my windows pc smb and instantly it crashed. then with i tried again and noticed that my macs smb was available and tried to connect to it and VLC did not crash. it allowed me to view all of its contents. although it really has nothing to view. i also have tried the same process on my apple tv. trying to connect with windows shared smb, VLC crashes. connect with mac shared smb and it works just fine. so to me it seems that it is a windows compatibility issue. with both iphone os and TvOs. at least in my experience.

[fkuehne]

I can reproduce the Windows 10 21H2 crash. It works with Windows XP, samba/Linux and macOS shares, but indeed crashes with Windows 10 on anonymous logins. We will work on that as soon as possible.

[Venomouse]

Running VLC 3.3.4(426) on my Apple TV.

I can see and connect to my SMB without issue but attempting to play a file simply dumps me back to the directory.

Same thing happened about a month ago where uninstalling and reinstalling fixed the issue.

Sadly it’s not working this time.
I’ve also tried disabling auto play and artwork downloads
Connecting to the SMB by manually entering in credentials and clicking connect but same issue occurs.

[fkuehne]

@Venomouse: what is the SMB server? is the user password empty?

[Venomouse]

Actually. Looks like it is just some files. Some mkv files play. some don’t. Odd

[fkuehne]

@Venomouse: You are welcome to share a debug log with me. There is an option to enable logging at the bottom of the Settings screen both on tvOS and iOS. To get the log from an Apple TV, use the web interface of VLC. On iPhone/iPad, you'll find a folder called Logs in the VLC folder when looking at it using the Files app. To generate a debug log, just try to play your media.

[yoshiyike]

@fkuehne: i feel that clicking log in and anonymous log in is 2 completely different things. although i have never needed to put in a username, password and so on all i have had to do is click "log in" but when i do that now VLC crashes.

[ThunderbirdsFan]

Same problem for me on TV OS, some mkv files on the SMB server just fail to play.
Here's the log for one of the files:
https://pastebin.com/84VT0umA

[CoNSpiracy001]

I can reproduce the Windows 10 21H2 crash. It works with Windows XP, samba/Linux and macOS shares, but indeed crashes with Windows 10 on anonymous logins. We will work on that as soon as possible.

Indeed, the shared folder I am trying play video from via SMB in the VLC AppleTV app is on a PC running Windows 10.

[Venomouse]

@fkuehne

You are welcome to share a debug log with me. There is an option to enable logging at the bottom of the Settings screen both on tvOS and iOS. To get the log from an Apple TV, use the web interface of VLC. On iPhone/iPad, you'll find a folder called Logs in the VLC folder when looking at it using the Files app. To generate a debug log, just try to play your media.

Logs here:
Working File:
https://pastebin.com/0vM12YNf

Not working:
https://pastebin.com/GTR3qVPX

This occurs on files that previous played without issue.

Thank you

[yoshiyike]

i am un able to create any kind of log file not for the lack of trying due to the fact of VLC crashing before i can even log into my SMB/get to my media files.


edit: i did some looking and found some info. since i dont have a password set to my account i found this website and followed its instructions. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/win ... Windows_10 what i did was created a secondary administrator account, a *dummy* account and put a password on it. with a brief testing i was able to use my iphone to connect to an SMB. now i am going to get it set up on my actual so called "media server" to se what happens.



edit2: doing the above has allowed me to connect and play video files .avi .mp4 .mkv via SMB on apple tv again. the only thing that has changed is no i have provided a username and password. where my file sharing is set up to not require a password. but for some reason VLC now requires it. so to sum it all up at this point in time. i created a dummy secondary account on my media server pc to be able to provide vlc with information it never seemed to need before. i hope this helps others and i hope the devs see this and can make some sense out of it.

[CoNSpiracy001]

since i dont have a password set to my account i found this website and followed its instructions. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/win ... Windows_10 what i did was created a secondary administrator account, a *dummy* account and put a password on it.

YES! Finally! Thank you. I can now play video in the VLC AppleTV and iPad/iPhone apps again. I just followed the first part of the guide and created a local user account (not via Microsoft account) - but without following the second part of the guide tab out changing it to administrator - and used that new local user account to log in to the SMB shared folder in VLC. I have always just logged in by clicking log in without providing a user name or password, or by clicking anonymous login, but as reported in my previous posts above this no longer works (in VLC builds up to 425 I could log in and see the files but the video wouldn’t play, and in build 426 the app would crash when trying to log in).

[yoshiyike]

@CoNSpiracy001: i am so glad that the info i provided was able to help along with thank you for further testing its compatibility by doing something that sounds a little bit different than what i have done.

all in all over the past week or so i have more or less been testing tech and being told that i CANT get it to do what it is supposed to do. even apple has told me this. and well. i did exactly what i have wanted said tech to do. i have proved many wrong in doing it. i may not be a developer, programmer, coder, hacker or even be formally educated in tech. what i do have though is dedication and willpower. with those i will find a way to accomplish my goal.

[CoNSpiracy001]

@fkuehne: Logging in to the SMB network folder I am now able to play video again. That is, most video... I have many mkv files and while many of them now play just fine there are also many of them which do not. Some of the problematic videos will “chop up” (play some milliseconds and then freeze and then play some milliseconds from later on in the video and so on), and others will play a second or so and then stop and return to the folder view in VLC. These are all files that used to play fine.

You gave me access to beta testing via TestFlight some days ago and I have now installed many of the different VLC builds to test and can see that the problem was introduced in build 425. Up until and including build 424 all videos play fine, but with build 425 and 426, only some of the videos play fine and the others have the problems described just above. I have tested the different VLC build versions on AppleTV, iPad and iPhone and it is exactly the same on all three platforms.

[dan_m]

In VLC tvOS 3.3.4 browsing of subdirectories on legacy FTP (non MLST) servers appears to be (still?) broken. When I select a folder from the root it starts automatically playing video instead of browsing the subdirectory. (Microsoft IIS FTP on Windows in my case)

Possibly this was broken in earlier 3.3 releases as well, as I recently saw the same issue when using vsftpd on a Linux server, but proftpd (with MLST support) worked.

@fkuehne has previously mentioned that there was a special patch to deal with legacy FTP servers in previous versions of VLC tvOS -- https://code.videolan.org/videolan/vlc/-/issues/26046

[yoshiyike]

for nearly a month it seems as if vlc has been, well there is no other word to use than, broken. before 3.3.x you did not need a username and password to be able to view/watch media on an smb. now in my experience, you do. a link that i posted in a previous post helped me create what i call a *dummy* account that i use to connect vlc to my so called media server. so here is the process that i go through. i open vlc, select my smb, enter my credentials and i am able to see all of my media files and then if i choose i may actually watch my media. here is the thing though. before 3.3.x i have never used a username and password. i always just clicked login and everything was fine. now that i have to use one, after entering my credentials i click save which i would guess make it to where i dont have to enter them every time i freshly open the app. somehow i am completely wrong about that. if i completely close the app, i have to renter my credentials every time despite logging in by selecting save. can someone let me know if i am doing something wrong?

edit: just noticed an update for vlc. installed it and have found that it does prevent the sudden crashing when you dont put in a username and password. but once again it just flashes the orange screen and then back to the file you selected. henceforth, it still requires you to input a username and password to play files. at least in my experience.

[fkuehne]

@CoNSpiracy001: please try again with today's build 427.

@dan_m: that patch is sadly for another problem where the MLST extension is supported but not treated as case-insensitve. This patch is already part of all releases of VLC iOS and tvOS since 3.2.0.

@Venomouse: does this depend on the file size? Does it fail for the big files and work for the small?

@yoshiyike: thanks for immediatelly testing the beta I did today and for confirming that the crash is fixed. It is very odd that media playback still fails for you as the reports on that are becoming a lot less. Are you logged in to your iCloud account on your Apple TV?

[yoshiyike]

@ fkuehne in regards to being signed into iCloud, yes i am. on every apple device i own i am signed in. along with every apple service i use. i think if i werent signed into iCloud on my Apple TV i would not be able to confirm purchases on my Apple TV with my Apple Watch or my iPhone.