"Unsafe Layout" Errors

[aramo]

Player Version

R301-1

Issue

Hello,

Recently we’ve had one of our signage displays suddenly revert to the default Xibo splash screen for no apparent reason. No one has altered a layout or playlist in any way, and it seems to be sporadic. We are going to try updating the player version to see if that resolves the issue. But here’s what we have found in the logs regarding that display.

I’ve been seeing these errors pop up in a few of the players for some time now, and I’ve seen these error in other versions of Xibo as well, but I’m not quite sure what they mean.

“…marking unsafe and expiring” could probably mean that the media itself could be bad? But that doesn’t seem to make sense, because the layout itself can work fine for some time before randomly reverting to the splash screen after a few loops of the layout. Surely the media is fine if it was able to be played once or twice before.

I’m thinking “unsafe layout” may mean that the layout is invalid? But the layouts that the displays are using are reporting as valid.

So my question is, what do these errors mean exactly? How is a layout “unsafe”? How can I prevent this error from happening again? The error messages do not seem to tell me how I may be able to fix the problem. I’m aware that an update may be able to solve the issue, but I would like to know what it means in case this error appears again in a newer version of Xibo instead of randomly trying different solutions that may or may not be relevant.

Thanks for the help!

[natasha]

The log is saying that we told the Windows Media Player component to open and play a video, after 4 seconds the video had not started so we marked the video as unsafe and moved on. This is to prevent the Player getting into a spiral.

If the videos have not changed then try a reboot to clear it.
If it keeps happening then ensure the videos are in a sensible format (MP4 H264) and if they are not then you could try and re-encode as detailed here: My video wont play properly - what is happening? | Xibo Digital Signage. Otherwise apply Windows updates and it is an intel graphics card, install the latest drivers for the graphics card from Intel and not from the Windows update.