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Intermittent freezing during direct play


thebnich

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thebnich

Hello, I'm having an issue where movies intermittently freeze (for 1-5 seconds) during direct play. The problems are usually exacerbated by pausing/rewinding. It's 100% reproducible with this particular movie, so I went ahead and sent in a log from my Fire TV.

 

 

What I did for the submitted log file:

  • Fast forwarded the video to around 4:00, then hit rewind a few times. The movie played briefly, then froze for several seconds before continuing.

Time I sent the log in:

  • 1:03AM EST

Name of Emby user on the server:

  • brian

 

 

I don't believe this is network-related for a couple of reasons:

  1. This happens only when direct playing. If I set the streaming bitrate limit to 10 Mbps (the maximum Mbps that uses transcoding for this particular file), I don't see any freezing issues. If I bump it up to 11 Mbps, direct play kicks in--and so does the intermittent stuttering.
  2. I have a stable connection to my media server that should be more than capable of direct play in this case, as evidenced here:
iperf3 -R -c XYZ
Connecting to XYZ, port 5201
Reverse mode, remote host XYZ is sending
[  6] local X port 59940 connected to X:: port 5201
[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bandwidth
[  6]   0.00-1.00   sec  2.18 MBytes  18.3 Mbits/sec
[  6]   1.00-2.00   sec  14.5 MBytes   122 Mbits/sec
[  6]   2.00-3.00   sec  18.6 MBytes   156 Mbits/sec
[  6]   3.00-4.00   sec  18.8 MBytes   157 Mbits/sec
[  6]   4.00-5.00   sec  18.4 MBytes   154 Mbits/sec
[  6]   5.00-6.00   sec  18.8 MBytes   158 Mbits/sec
[  6]   6.00-7.00   sec  18.2 MBytes   153 Mbits/sec
[  6]   7.00-8.00   sec  18.7 MBytes   157 Mbits/sec
[  6]   8.00-9.00   sec  18.5 MBytes   156 Mbits/sec
[  6]   9.00-10.00  sec  18.3 MBytes   154 Mbits/sec
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bandwidth       Retr
[  6]   0.00-10.00  sec   169 MBytes   141 Mbits/sec    0             sender
[  6]   0.00-10.00  sec   167 MBytes   140 Mbits/sec                  receiver
 
I mostly notice this on my Fire TV since that's generally what I'm using, but I was also able to reproduce using my laptop browser just now. It's reproducible on both Emby Server 4.2.1.0 and 4.3.0.23-beta (Ubuntu x64).
 
Let me know what other steps I can follow/logs I can submit to help resolve this. If it helps, I can set up a test user with access to this movie so you can try reproducing on your end.
 
Thanks!
Edited by thebnich
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If this is happening when you seek (which, from your log, looks like the case) then I think this is normal for how seeking to an exact position works.  The player actually seeks to the nearest "keyframe" and then has to decode the stream up until the actual frame requested - discarding the output - until it gets there and then it continues on.

 

This seems to be confirmed by:

 

 

...I was also able to reproduce using my laptop browser just now. 

 

 

In most cases, when direct playing/streaming, this process is so fast it isn't really noticeable.  Not sure why it may be more so in some circumstances.  Luke, could the specific encoding method of the video (like key frames at very far intervals) impact this?

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thebnich

Thanks for the response. If you’re talking about the delay that happens after I seek but before playback resumes, I’d consider that normal. That happens for every video (some worse than others), which I just chalk up to buffering/catching up to the seek position, like you said.

 

In my case, I’m seeing freezing happen *after* the video has already resumed play after seeking, and it will often freeze several times more after that. I’ll try to submit another log where this should be more clear.

Edited by thebnich
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kelly.clubb

I have a separate post, I thought the issue went away, but alas it's back.  Chrome is where I have issues.  Only seems to impact chrome in general.  It's been an annoyance because that's what I use to watch emby from my computer.

 

Start playback, about every 30 to 60 seconds there is a freeze while it rebuffers.  After it buffers in the 1 or 2 seconds, it resumes and does it over and over.  I had tried to reset the flags in chrome last time and it seemed to go away but this time it's not going away.

ffmpeg-remux-b58ae3d4-a03e-4417-8754-aecb2166a4c2_1.txt

Edited by kelly.clubb
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thebnich

In my case, I’m seeing freezing happen *after* the video has already resumed play after seeking, and it will often freeze several times more after that. I’ll try to submit another log where this should be more clear.

 

 

@@ebr I've submitted another log for Fire TV that freezes twice after the seek.

 

 

What I did for the submitted log file:

  • Watched the video from the beginning to 4:00, then hit rewind three times. The video played normally from 3:30 to 3:46, but then froze for ~20 seconds. It continued playing briefly, then froze shortly after at 3:49 for ~10 seconds.

Time I sent the log in:

  • 12:16PM EST

Name of Emby user on the server:

  • brian
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@@ebr I've submitted another log for Fire TV that freezes twice after the seek.

 

 

What I did for the submitted log file:

  • Watched the video from the beginning to 4:00, then hit rewind three times. The video played normally from 3:30 to 3:46, but then froze for ~20 seconds. It continued playing briefly, then froze shortly after at 3:49 for ~10 seconds.

Time I sent the log in:

  • 12:16PM EST

Name of Emby user on the server:

  • brian

 

 

Was any ffmpeg log generated for that session?

 

Also, the user actually wasn't Brian that time, correct?

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thebnich

Was any ffmpeg log generated for that session?

@@ebr I don't see one. There should only be a log for sessions that are transcoded, correct?

 

Also, the user actually wasn't Brian that time, correct?

Sorry! You're right -- that one was The Loves.

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Happy2Play

Only a true Direct play (no server involvement) will not create any ffmpeg log.  All remux/transcoding will create ffmpeg logs.

 

If a item is truly Direct playing this would have to be a device specific issue as the server is not involved in a true direct play.

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Only a true Direct play (no server involvement) will not create any ffmpeg log.  All remux/transcoding will create ffmpeg logs.

 

If a item is truly Direct playing this would have to be a device specific issue as the server is not involved in a true direct play.

 

That isn't completely true.  When the streaming boxes (that cannot access the remote file system) direct play they do it by asking the server to feed them the file directly.  ffmpeg is not involved and, therefore, no ffmpeg log is produced.

 

Unfortunately, the old version of the Fire TV you have produces no timestamps in the log file so I can't really see the timing of everything but it just looks like normal seeking behavior.  Since you can reproduce this with the web app, it really appears it must be a delivery issue as opposed to an app issue.

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Try lowering the in app quality setting so that it transcodes. See if this resolves the stuttering. Thanks.

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  1. This happens only when direct playing. If I set the streaming bitrate limit to 10 Mbps (the maximum Mbps that uses transcoding for this particular file), I don't see any freezing issues. If I bump it up to 11 Mbps, direct play kicks in--and so does the intermittent stuttering.

 

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  • 2 years later...
eeeeeesy

this is happening to me too while watching an sd show with direct play in live tv. it pauses while it buffers for a few seconds every 2 minutes or so. i know its not my internet speed because other channels are fine on 1080p. 

 

Edited:

this does not appear to be happening when i use external player set to mx player. However, I would rather not use an external payer because i can not display the tv guide over the video this way.

 

my device: beelink gtking

emby for android tv

Edited by eeeeeesy
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Sounds like you're direct playing it this way.  Are you able to rewind, FF, pause and things like this with the external player?

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eeeeeesy
2 hours ago, cayars said:

Sounds like you're direct playing it this way.  Are you able to rewind, FF, pause and things like this with the external player?

i can pause but i cant rewind or fast forward. i do not want to use the external player. the internal player should just work. there has to be a setting i can change to get it working properly.

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4 hours ago, eeeeeesy said:

i restarted my server computer and so far so good.

Hi.  That would suggest that there was some sort of bottleneck at the server.  I would look at your transcoding temp setup and make sure that is pointing to a fast drive that has plenty of space on it.

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eeeeeesy
14 minutes ago, ebr said:

Hi.  That would suggest that there was some sort of bottleneck at the server.  I would look at your transcoding temp setup and make sure that is pointing to a fast drive that has plenty of space on it.

its the default which is my brand new 1tb wd nvme which is pretty much empty. i only download to my external drives so nothing is stored on my 1tb nvme

Edited by eeeeeesy
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  • 2 weeks later...

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