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One of the remote users on my server has been reporting freezing and stuttering quite often despite waiting for the transcode to reach 100%. It has happen across several different movies. It will play fine for some time but after 10-30 minutes the movie will freeze and it will never stutter and freeze from that point on. The movie is always 100% transcoded before playback begins and both of our speeds are quite sufficient for streaming and we experience no problems on any other sites. Were mainly using the web interface and google chrome for the remote user to play movies but have tried using embycon for kodi and experienced the same problem but much worse (froze every 2 minutes). I've tried enabling and disabling hardware acceleration as well as limiting the bitrate. In the past we've had success using 1080p 5mbps and waiting 30-45 minutes before playback. Now with the same settings were experiencing way more problems. Not quite sure what more i can try.

I have couple of users who are outside my network but still can access my server via vpn. I set a bitrate in the playback settings of 1mbit. "An optional per-stream bitrate limit for all out of network devices. This is useful to prevent devices from requesting a higher bitrate than your internet connection can handle. This may result in increased CPU load on your server in order to transcode videos on the fly to a lower bitrate." But it doesn't look like it's working. I want to limit anything outside of my network to 1mbit and force transcoding. Here is my setup: There is NO access from WAN. Server side: 192.168.1.0/24 <-- SITE TO SITE VPN --> 192.168.10.0/24 Remote site It seems when the users access server from 192.168.10.0/24 emby just direct plays content there is no limit. the files that are being played are huge (1080p/ 4k etc... ) so that saturates my upstream immediately. Plex solves this by a setting that you can set "Networks that belong to local net" and anything that's outside that range is considered remote and limits are enforced. Is there a way to implement this?

Hi Team. The server is FreeNAS 11.1 U4 w/ Emby 3.3.1.0 using the ASRock Avoton 2750, 16GB ECC DDR3, and 6 x 3TB in RAID6 ZFS. Content (nearly 500 movies) was digitized from Bluray/DVD using MakeMKV using H.264 and DTS audio streams with no further modifications made. All Roku clients on latest firmware (3, 4, and an Ultra) and are CAT5 connected at gigabit speed. The setup had been functional for the last 3 years, but towards the end of 2017, client began reporting the 'Loading' message displaying intermittently during playback. Despite the server-side hardware capable of transcoding multiple clients, my approach was to eliminate the need for the 'direct-streaming' - which was due to the audio stream being DTS-encoded. Initial review suggested the most appropriate encoding should have been AAC, but this also resulted in transcoding being performed. Review of Emby ffmpeg transcode logs indicated the Roku was in fact requesting AC3 content, and by making this switch to the source, direct-playing was indicated at the client, and the 'Loading' was gone (suggesting despite the hardware sufficing in the past, something on the server-side was causing the delay?) My question is, before I manipulate every one of these files - is this the best approach to solve the underlying problem? And should I convert the DTS audio streams to AC3? Lastly, this had the effect of stripping out the subtitle streams in the MKV (using ffmpeg in a Linux environment to convert). Perhaps this is OK given the user had complained some content was enforcing the subtitles against their wishes. Thank you so much in advance for any feedback!

I noticed Emby is not HW transcoding on my machine anymore. I'm certain it has used hardware to transcode in the past, and pretty sure it was as recently as a couple weeks ago. Now when I play media, I am seeing high CPU utilization from ffmpeg, and 0% GPU utilization. I have an i7-7700, and 2 streams is too much for it to even handle. Any ideas on why it isn't using HW? I checked to make sure HW encoding is enabled in the server settings, and checked the log and it appears that quicksync (libmfx) is enabled in the ffmpeg config (though to TBH I'm not the most experienced with ffmpeg and what don't really know what I'm looking for when it comes to diagnosing). Any thoughts, or anyone else notice this? Server-Log.txt Transcode-Log.txt

I just noticed that Task Manager is reporting 2 instances of ffmpeg when ever i transcode one stream....Is this normal? (there also is 2 Electron instances that are always there when sever is running)

Is it possible to pre-transcode video files to avoid transcoding on emby server side? I want to host emby server on low power router(celeron j1900) and put transcoding tasks on my work pc. So I will create seperate files for 480p, 720p, 1080p, WHATVERp. And how to make emby to use them instead of calling ffmpeg for transcoding?

Some server targets, such as the synology emby server are by design hosted on low powered hardware. Even if your server is running on decent hardware, there are use cases for this. I would like to have a way to offload and load balance transcoding tasks to other hardware. Building a transcoding client would allow this. load balancing could be done across the transcoding clients, and one or more could be co-hosted with the server to handle some transcoding there. It would allow availability of the server and clients needing transcoding. I saw a thread briefly discussing this from 2015, but can't find anything more recent, so I wanted to bring it up again.

Hi, I've been using XBOX 360 as an extender and now i'm having pause/resume/skip issues. It seems that only transcoded files from server are unable to pause or skip. When I try it I receive an error and have to start from beginning. But when files are "Direct Playing" pause/skip.. works Do you have any solution to my problem? Reg, Arni Thor

Hey guys, I have finally setup emby with docker. Now that I tried to play a movie, I have noticed that the max media playback time starts fairly low and increases every two seconds. I cannot navigate to the middle or end. It looks like the time I see belongs to the copy of the movie which is being transcoded and therefore growing. Does someone have an idea why I do not see the original playback time/duration?

Hi all, Is there an option to set playback buffer size in Emby Theater (or in server)? It seems to stream very direct with low delay in transcoding. But when there is a hick-up in transmit data, the Theater app tends to freeze and needs re-start. I can't use the back arrow to click away from the frozen picture. Is there a way to improve "immunity" to data hick-up's by changing playback buffer, or other means? I don't mind if there is a delay in start-up of a strem. I haven't proven it scienficically, but it appears that playback is smoother if I start a stream, hit pause (to let it build up buffer for some seconds), and then resume playback. But Theater player for Windows can get really upset when stream stutters. My android app doesn't crash. It freezes, and then resumes after a bit. I suppose something similar can be made in a Windows player program? Just not sure if it's server- or client side, or both which need adjustment. Other than that, a cool set of server / client SW.

Hi everyone. I'm done with Plex, the support stinks and I have lifetime emby from mb3 days. If they fix their stuff I have lifetime there as well. Currently my content is all mkv format video from DVD/bluray. 25TB of storage on flexraid (snapshot) with 2 parity drives. I have a p9x79-ws workstation Mobo with a 3930k, 32gb of 2133Mhz ddr3, an IBM m1015 flashed to IT mode (jbod) and a hauppauge 2250 dual tuner, with an EVGA gt 730 2gb. We have a couple iPads, a couple androids, a Roku 3, an Xbox one s, and a couple laptops/desktops. Playback is primarily thru the Xbox and the Roku (still doing 1080p). I wanted to know about a couple upgrades to my hardware. First, I ordered an e5-2670v2 decacore, which is a hit on single thread but pushes my passmark up over 15,000. It also enables true pcie 3.0 and the other stuff ivy-e improved from sandy-e. (Overall performance gain). For Plex transcodes, this is the right move. For emby? Second, is it worth dropping a pcie ssd for the transcode folder? The 128gb is only $100 right now. Third, would it help with network throughput to jamb another 2-4 ports of gigabit Ethernet in? I already have 2 gig-e ports on the mobo. Any feedback is welcome!

I was having problems while watching DVR and a new show would start recording. Instantly needed to reload buffer every minute or so. I remembered the option existed to transcode and turn file into a more streaming friendly file so I tried it. Show started to record and I watched my temp directory that I designated (I had copied the two required files from the original install directory) Directory started to fill with 2 second files! Nothing blew up, at the end of the half hour an .mkv file appeared in my real target directory, and the transcode directory stopped populating. OK, lets's do this again! Nope. No activity in the transcode. Same old files. My real target directory started an .mkv file for the show, eventually it was there but nothing changed in the transcode directory. Eventually I restarted the server and the temp files disappeared. Stumped. What did I do wrong?

Hi, Ran into a new issue today, if I try to play a file who's bit-rate is under my max internet streaming bit-rate value then it tries to direct stream it however direct stream doesn't work for whatever reason. My preferred solution would be to force transcoding for all files even if there's no need to. This would be an option on a user basis or a global option if streaming over the internet i.e. not locally within the network. Thanks!

I am trying to watch Live TV using an HDHomeRun Prime, mostly on an Nvidia Shield. Via the native HDHomeRun app, everything works flawlessly. However, when trying to stream in Emby, the transcoding starts successfully and the ffmpeg speed quickly drops below 1x. I have an Intel i5-6600, and the OS is Ubuntu 16.04 Server. I've tried hardware transcoding and software trancoding and just about every configuration in the transcoding setting I could think of (super fast, ultra fast, changing CRF, moving transcoding directory from HDD to SSD), and nothing has worked so far. I have the transcoding issues with streaming on Chrome on my laptop, too. I've attached 4 log files, one pair of server and transcoding logs from when I was trying hardware transcode, and the other when trying software transcode. Any advice you guys can provide would be great. I'm a happy Plex switcher because of a huge number of bugs with their software lately. I find yours to be far superior, and if you could get this working for me, I would have a family of converts! serverlog_hw.txt serverlog_sw.txt transcodelog_hw.txt transcodelog_sw.txt

I am CPU transcoding to Android mobile client over the internet (LTE). When I seek using the scrub bar server CPU utilization goes from 90% to 100% and stays there for at least several minutes. When I look at the running processes in task manager, I see a second ffmpeg process was started, I presume to support transcoding from the new seek location. Yet the previous ffmpeg process was not shut down - the two ffmpeg processes are hogging 100% CPU, at 50% each. When I stop playing the Android client one ffmpeg process stops, while the second ffmpeg lingers at 10% CPU for several minutes before terminating. I did check transcoding without seeking through the movie, in this case the server and transcoding are well behaved with ffmpeg using the typical 90% CPU (i7-6800K, slow and 22 quality settings). If I stop playing at the client, the single ffmpeg process terminates immediately. It seems the server would be much more responsive if the unneeded second ffmpeg process were terminated promptly. I suspect this unnecessary server load is degrading the user experience. Perhaps it is not that hard to track down and resolve? Please let me know if there is anything further I can do to help troubleshoot besides the attached logs. Android client is 3.8.x.x beta within the past two days, not sure where to find the version number in the app. Thanks! server-63633825041.txt ffmpeg-transcode-4099a602-80de-4868-a1c2-6ced9ef179f6.txt ffmpeg-transcode-ccf995f1-dae1-460d-974a-1cdca25b27f8.txt ffmpeg-transcode-4b804d44-38b4-437a-98b8-c9572c19c3ae.txt

Hello, Whenever I try to play a video that needs to be transcoded , I get blank screen with circles or progress bar that won't complete (Roku 4) or app will close the playback. QNAP TS-251+ (FW v 4.3.3) QMono 4.8.1 Emby v 3.2.15 iOS - iphone 6s (iOS v10.3) Andoid - Samsung S8 (Emby app v 2.8.97) Roku 4 - Beta app and regular app both seems to have the same problem. Logs are attached. Let me know if you need more information. server-63630177405.txt ffmpeg-transcode-eebaedc5-9ad2-4869-9c2b-97345f959759.txt

Sometime in the past week playing video files that are transcoded stopped working in the Android app for me. I was using the Beta, but have also uninstalled and tried the release version, both behave the same. If I direct stream, it plays, but when I changed the bitrate, it will just stay paused with a black screen. Everything seems fine on the server side (it transcodes the entire video, don't see any issues there) but it will not play. I have tried a few different devices with the same result. Using the chrome browser on those devices or on a PC works as expected. I have attached the logs from the Android client, server, and transcode logs. I replaced the server external IP with {SERVER_EXTERNAL_IP). One thing that was interesting to me was that the Android client seemed to try using the server's external IP even though it is connected via WiFi. I am guessing that is the problem, but don't know why it is doing it. Android_App_Log.log Server_Log.txt Transcode_Log.txt

This issue is present for me on the current version of Emby server, not sure what version the issue began. I have not changed any of my server setup settings. The issue I am currently now having is accessing the Emby server and beginning to stream media, the full duration of the video starts at about 0:09 and gradually increases as watching. For example, if a video were to be 45 minutes long, when beginning to stream emby will show 0:00/0:09 and as I jump to the end the duration increases incrementally. This is very annoying especially if I am trying to seek through the playback or continue where I may have left off on another computer or account I have to have the video playing and continuously click the end of the video to expand my available seek. Looking for any help I can get with this. Its happening more frequently now, especially with newly added media content. I have tested on different browsers and client devices. Have attempted setting the quality to different levels, including auto, issue is present throughout all tests. This issue occurs when connecting inside of my LAN via HTTP and externally via HTTPS with the emby generated self signed cert. My server is running on Windows server 2008 R2 Virtual Machine 16 thread Xeon E5 2660 dedicated to the machine 8GB of RAM 12TB 7200RPM RAID 5 NAS for storage 70/70MBPS WAN and Gigabit LAN with a dedicated port on motherboard and switch for the VM. Maximum bandwidth for server is set to 35mbps via emby server management.

So I am having a strange issue with playback, I have 2 Roku streaming sticks and certain shows cannot play one 1 of them. After some searching and testing I noticed something interesting in the logs, on the Roku I use there is a remux log and everything plays perfectly FPS is at like 80+. Play the exact same file on the other stick and it transcodes instead which sits at like 11fps. I have a lousy atom in need of replacement housing the server, so I am very particular about what formats I download to prevent this exact issue. Is there something substantial that changed with the beta version of the Emby app on the Roku that makes it direct stream instead of transcode? If so is there something I can do to work around this, as getting the latest version on the one will be a problem as it's user account was not registered in USA and Roku sucks, sell the thing in my country all nice and stuffs and then limit the features, does not support my time zone and lolz of all lolz I cannot download the roku remote app on my phone. Thanks

Hi there, This report is meant as a »please note« notice to the emby developers. TL/DR: Internal text subtitles in large videos cause transmission time-outs when transcoding. In long: Setting: I try to play back a movie on my Sony smart tv using DLNA. I select a film that has a large filesize and embedded text subtitles that need to be burnt in during a transcode step. Symptom: My tv starts a »processing« animation and after some time i get a »failed to connect« message. Playback never starts. All logs look OK. The transcoding log shows a successful transcode start that is either successfully finished or aborted later. (Success or not doesn’t matter) What happens without indication: ffmpeg processes text subtitles in a two step way: First extract the subtitle stream from the video, then burn in/transcode. The culprit is the first step, which happens fully transparent and without any notice in the ffmpeg log. To extract a subtitle stream, the whole file has to be read once. When a transcode starts, the following things happen: emby starts ffmpeg to transcode a video ffmpeg reads the whole file once to extract the subtitle track that it will burn in ffmpeg reads the file again, this time transcoding. Let’s do an example calculation based on this observation: Assume Alice has ripped a movie on a Bluray she owns to her hard disk. The video file is about 20GB in size. She muxes text subtitles into the video file. (She OCRs a PGM forced subtitle stream found on the disc or downloads a free one.) The movie is stored on a new SATA SSD disk that can read at a rate of about 500 MB/s. When a transcode is requested for that file, the subtitle extraction is done by ffmpeg in 20000MB/(500MB/s) = 40 seconds. So it takes ffmpeg 40 seconds to extract the subtitle track, which means that the actual transcoding start and video delivery is delayed by that time. This time frame should be enough to time-out many DLNA clients. Things get worse when the read bandwidth is lower. On a USB2 connection (40MB/s), every file greater than 2.4GB[*] will have an initial delay of over one minute. [*]: when it has text subtitles and transcoding with subtitle burn in is required. How to reproduce: Take a large video (preferably >10 GB), some text subtitles and mux both into an MKV container. Flush your disc cache, so that ffmpeg has to actually read it from disk. Let it transcode by ffmpeg. Watch the process hanging right before the actual transcode starts for several seconds. Observe high disc activity during this »hang«. As long as this is not fixed by ffmpeg, the only possible work around is to not use ffmpeg for transcoding under this circumstances… A proper fix from ffmpeg side would be parsing the text subtitles in parallel to the transcode and not delay the start. At the current state transcoding using emby server will work for many users and most files, but large files with text subtitles will cause issues every now and then. I assume most users will blame the specific emby app or platform used instead of ffmpeg… Proposed »fix«: Put a note about this external issue into the wiki. Some reference links to ffmpeg bug reports regarding this issue: https://trac.ffmpeg.org/ticket/4499 (»Parse internal subtitles in realtime«, marked as duplicate of bug…) https://trac.ffmpeg.org/ticket/2067 (»Support subtitles in libavfilter so seek is honored for subtitles filters (like hardsubbing)«)

Greetings All, First off, I would like to commend the group for the great support that is consistently provided to this forum. Having spent some time searching on the issue I'm experiencing I've been wowed by just how much the community gives back to those in need of assistance. The ongoing efforts for Emby, Emby for Roku, Blue Neon Night are just fantastic. Keep up the great work and Kudos. Secondly, I've noticed a degradation in playable content over time when trying to play media via Emby for Roku. The common thread appears to be content that is not available for DirectPlay and requires transcoding which I seem to be requiring more of as time goes on. The transcoding is required due to my inability to play 5.1 content and need to remux the stream down to 2.1 as I do not have a device do the work for me. My current setup is a Roku 2 4210X running the latest firmware (7.5.0 b4099-04 at the time of writing) with Emby services provided via the FreeNAS plugin updated to the current plugin release (3.1.0 at the time of writing). I've attempted to play the transcoded content via both the release and beta versions of the Emby for Roku App, as well as the Blue Neon Night app and appear to have the same trouble across all three. I've also upped the Video Quality setting to 30Mbps to rule out any issues related to that (if any). This didn't appear to have any effect. Tailing the server log, I can observe the Roku requesting the .m3u8 link and Emby responding with a 200. A short while later the Roku times out and returns to the movie menu (timeout confirmed by Blue Neon Night debug logs). It appears that transcoding doesn't happen here as there are no logs to support that FFMpeg is doing any work, which is interesting as I initially thought there might be a resource issue with FreeNAS. I've confirmed that the .m3u8 links are valid and playable via VLC. Playing the content here does start the transcode; this appear to be working as expected here. Sorry for the lengthy read! If there's anything else I can provide or try, let me know. I really don't know what else to do in order to play this content outside of purchasing a receiver to convert 5.1 to PCM Stereo.

Unraid Server: v6.2.4 Emby Server: v3.1.2 Fire TV Box: v5.2.4.0 Fire TV App: v1.3.12a Can't stream live tv to fire tv's that use transcoding. Live tv (transcoded) in browser - works fine Live tv (transcoded) on iOS app - works fine Remote streaming live tv (transcoded) in browser - works fine Remote streaming live tv (transcoded) on iOS app - works fine I think the issue is related to the new version of ffmpeg as discussed in the following thread: https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/43135-android-apps-will-not-play-anything-that-needs-transcoded-audio/ Suggestion provided by Luke was to roll back the ffmpeg version in the Transcoding menu, however, that option isn't visible. Another thread mentioned the ffmpeg path was only available on specific platforms. Would be great if there was a quick fix to get this working remotely again quickly while I'm away from home. Thanks guys!

Hi, If i'm on the same LAN and have access to the same folders that Emby has, why do my files not direct play when I watch them via the browser Also, how do i check that Emby for WMC is playing direct play? Emby server is running in a docker on unRaid. thanks Griz

I was doing an (unrelated) test of 24p content on my television, via a number of apps, plus via a laptop and on the TV's own media player. In the process I discovered that Emby was showing an extremely-degraded image compared to everything else! It appeared to be transcoding the source video, and really screwing it up in the process. Have a look at this photo of the screen: http://s378.photobucket.com/user/wintrmute/media/Hisense%2024fps%20judder/DSCF0172_zpsvmslmofj.jpg.html From there, click the link back to the album that its part of, and look at the other photos. (Ignore the ones testing motion interpolation) See how in the Emby photo, my "/u/wint_rmute" signature is all blurred? And how the rectangles have gained dark borders? And that the pattern of rectangles is uneven? What's going on with this? The source video is 1080p 24Hz x264 and everything else can play it directly.

Hey, I have read several threads, but I'm still trying to understand why I have the issues I do with streaming h264 video with HD audio in an mkv container. My server: A6-based lxc container with lots of BR Rips (mux to mkv, so they're >30GB), but I have issues with typical 10GB h264/mkv files as well. My issue is streaming to the Shield TV and I think it's caused by the audio format. What is puzzling is that either my system is so slow that just transcoding the audio brings it to its knees (avg 17 fps, so it's unwatchable), or emby is transcoding the entire video stream when it only needs to transcode the audio. Transcode Log to Shield TV Emby App (Beta) I even tried VLC on the shield through DLNA, and it did the same thing, pegged the CPU at 100% and was unwatchable. According to the VLC DLNA parameters it should announce that it can play anything, but that's obviously not what happened. The transcode log from this doesn't seem to announce the player's capabilities like the Emby App did: Transcode Log to VLC DLNA I get that bitstreaming doesn't work correctly, but it should be a relatively light load to transcode these audio streams. I am struggling to decode these logs, but it appears that it's transcoding the entire video stream vice just audio. Thanks