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I have seen many people have been switching to using mkv over mp4 in recent times and others complaining about playback issues with mkv. Many know that remuxing can help but it's very time consuming to do so, but it works. The issue is that the cues of a mkv file are normally written to the end of the file. This is an issue that's been corrected with mp4 files with -movflags faststart option when encoding mp4 files, but with mkv it's a little different. The script I have put together makes use of a program to move the cues to the front of the mkv and optimize the file for faster playback and better skipping and resume support. So I have a rather large library and it's become a bit of a problem for me so I found a program called mkclean from matroska that is used to fix and move the cues to the start of the mkv file. With very little documentation on the issue I had to go through a lot of trial and error to get things to work properly, but I put together a python script to fix this. Attached is that python script for those of you who would like to try it out. As of right now this guide is only for Windows machines but I still believe those that are using linux are more than capable of adapting this info for their environment. Step 1: Download the MKClean file to a directory. https://www.matroska.org/downloads/mkclean.html My files are located in a separate drive lettered K: so I created a folder called K:\mkclean to house my mkclean.exe file. Step 2: Download and install Python on your machine if you don't already have it installed. You can see the link below for that. https://www.python.org/downloads/windows/ Step 3: Open a command prompt as administrator and update pip to the latest then download the watchdog feature to python to be able to monitor your folders for newly added files. Use the following command python -m pip install --upgrade pip when done then run python -m pip install watchdog Step 4: Once both of these commands are completed update your system environment PATH with an entry for mkclean. Settings -> System -> About -> Advanced System Settings -> Environment Variables... In the system variable section scroll down and select path and click on the edit button. Then click on New to add an entry for the folder containing the mkclean.exe file. (In my case it was K:\mkclean) Once done click ok and reboot your system. Step 5: Not it's time to create your python file. Attached is a .txt version of the python file I created for myself and have been running. You will need to edit it some, but I'm here to help with that. NOTE THAT WHEN ENTERING A PATH YOU MUST ENTER IT WITH \\ AS EXAMPLE BELOW K:\mkclean WILL FAIL BUT K:\\mkclean WILL WORK. (Below is the path were you want your database of the the files it's processed to be stored at, update it to the path you want your database created at, but please leave the files_processed.db name for ease of use of you will have to edit more lines.) LINE 9: DATABASE_FILE = 'K:\\mkclean\\files_processed.db' (Below is the path to make the connection to the database you created on line 9, be sure that the path matches what you have entered on line 9) LINE 65 conn = sqlite3.connect('K:\\mkclean\\files_processed.db') LINE 77: conn = sqlite3.connect('K:\\mkclean\\files_processed.db') (Below are lines identifying the folders to work it's way through looking for .mkv files and running this mkclean optimization script on. Change each line to identify your library folders. You will need 1 line per folder that you are looking to process and it will search recursively through them for any .mkv file) LINE 95 process_existing_files("K:\\TV_Shows") LINE 96: process_existing_files("K:\\Movies") (Below is a line to identify the folders to monitor after it has completed it's initial task of recursively working it's way through your files and checking for .mkv files to optimize. When new ones are added it will find them and run the optimization on them again making them perfect for streaming.) On this line all the folders to monitor should be comma seperated values inside of double quotes and AGAIN take note of using \\ when entering a path vs a single \. LINE 99: folders_to_watch = ["K:\\Movies", "K:\\TV_Shows"] Step 6: Now when you go to save this I recommend saving this in the same folder as your database and the mkclean.exe file so you can locate it easily, but save it once with a txt extension for ease of updating later, and then save it again with a .py extension. Step 7: Now you can run the file by opening a command prompt and entering this command. python "K:\mkclean\mkclean_optimization_script.py" NOTE: To stop the running program hit CTRL+C with the command window active. Step 8: Many of you would probably like to have this also start up when your system starts so it's easy enough to do by creating a .bat file and placing it in your startup folder. I'm not going to walk you though that in this tutorial, but the code is simple enough to add for you and for you to make your edits to so it's below. @echo off python "K:\mkclean\mkclean_optimization_script.py" PLEASE NOTE I AM NOT THE BEST PYTHON PROGRAMMER OUT THERE BY FAR AND THIS IS A PERSONAL PROJECT OF MINE THAT I'M MAKING AVAILABLE FOR YOU TO USE IF YOU LIKE, BUT I TAKE NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR IT IN ANY WAY. PLEASE TEST OUT ON SOME COPIES OF FILES FIRST AND USE AT YOUR OWN RISK. Other than that enjoy and let me know if this helped you out at all. mkclean_optimization_script.txt

Hello, I am encountering an issue when playing media via my Android mobile device where playback freezes after ~5 minutes. It is not related to the media source, as this is occurring with multiple episodes of various TV shows. Attached in my most recent server log, from about 5 minutes ago. The episode in question in this example is Back to the Future - The Hill Valley Chronicles S01E01. Taking a quick look at the log, I wasn't seeing anything out of the ordinary. Perhaps running IntroSkip simultaneously could cause issues, but this has only occurred in the past few days, and IntroSkip has been integrated/running for the last couple of months. Can someone give me a hand? No rush on this, it's not urgent. Thanks! EDIT: This can be moved to the Android App subforum. I didn't realize there was one. embyserver.txt

I have a weird problem. Some days I can watch movies for 6-8 hours without a problem. Other days, Emby on Samsung (Tizen) freezes playback after 10 minutes - and to fix it, I have to 'wake up the pc' by pressing a key on the keyboard/moving the mouse every time 10 or so minutes has passed! - love the exercise but after 8-10 runs I get tired Notes: The PC is not at sleep, not hibernating, screen saver is turned off etc. For some reason, Emby goes to sleep and 'wakes up' if the mouse moves / keyboard pressed. Google yields no solutions. Using Emby 4.6.7.0 Emby for Samsung 1.1.06 on a Samsung Smart TV (UA49RU7100KXXA). Connection between TV and PC is a Wifi router - Netgear AC1750. Strong signal. Running Emby as a service via via NSSM - the Non-Sucking Service Manager (nssm 2.24-101-g897c7ad (2017-04-26)). Thinking it could be related to certain file formats or the NSSM service perhaps, but then again that does not explain why it does happen all the time. Last movie played has these characteristics and then it Emby froze. Nothing out of the ordinary (many other movies do the same)... Any help / troubleshooting appreciated. Title1080p H264 CodecH264 AVCYes ProfileHigh Level40 Resolution1920x1080 Aspect Ratio16:9 InterlacedNo Framerate23.976 Bitrate5,100 kbps Color Primariesbt709 Color Spacebt709 Color Transferbt709 Bit Depth8 bit Pixel Formatyuv420p Reference Frames1 hardware_detection-63776144843.txt embyserver.txt

Hi all I'm having strange issue when I cast normally everything works fine, but as soon as a skip forward the screen freezes (at the right point) and the audio continues. This happens when casting from Android app and chrome on laptop

When playing a video on my iPhone with lots of and/or heavily stylized subtitles, the video + subtitles would lag for a while (but audio still plays). This occurs even when I download the episode. The video runs perfectly fine through VLC (via UPnP) or when I disable the subtitles in Emby. Is there any way to fix this? I've attached an example video + server logs (no ffmpeg) embyserver.txt 04:48:35.777 Extra Info: IPhone SE 2nd Gen iOS 14.6 Emby App 2.0.8 Emby Server 4.6.4.0 slow_subtitles.mp4

I updated the Android TV app today and the app freezes when I try to start. The tips is: The app has no responed close or wait. The version of the Andorid TV is 8.0.082S_0902. I'm not sure the version 8.0 is Android version or something else. Please check this issue and help Thanks a lot.

Like the title says, videos load fine on my android phone. But when casted it plays for 1-2 seconds, then the screen freezes but audio continues to play. Even fast forwarding the same issue arises. Is there any solution to this?

Hi friends, since a couple of days now even low bitrate direct play freezes frequently in my Sony Bravia. (Like once every 15 to 30 minutes everything freezes for 10 to 60 seconds) It was working perfectly for months If not years. All other apps and other devices, no problems. Testet LAN and WLAN. Bandwidth is stable. Server settings didnt change like forever. Does anybody experience the same issues? Was there a recent app update maybe? Thanks Soki

Morning guys, Emby for iOS was continuing to have an issue with pausing and resuming content on older iPads (I have both an iPad 3 and iPad 4 that it would happen on) for quite a while, but the app was still playing content fine as long as you fully backed out of the playback and then resumed that way rather than with the pause button. However, after updating Emby on my iPad 4 (which maxed out at iOS 10.3.3 for operating system and can't upgrade beyond that), attempting to play any type of video content (.mp4, .m4v, .mkv at least are the three I have consistently in my library) results in a start of the video for a second or two and then it pauses the playback on the screen. Tapping the play button on the screen at that point has the same resume glitch that has been there for a while. So, unfortunately, it seems version 1.9.7 is now stopping at the initial playback even, which has made the app unusable on older iPads. I'll send a server log and two ffmpeg transcode logs to @@Luke in a message so he can get them to any other developer that wants to see them, or I can forward them on additionally if anyone else lets me know they need them as well. -Roh

First of all I love all the work that has been done for this great product and I’ve been using Emby for 2 months without a hitch. However, yesterday I noticed Emby server was only sending stereo audio to my chromecast where surround sound with a range of different transcoded codecs always worked before. I could not find an easy fix, I had the feeling it was ffmpeg related but no errors occurred and software I believe was not updated. However, the Emby logs said it was sending out a stereo signal. I reinstalled Emby Server and everything works except when Emby is casting, the chromecast freezes (loading circle) when I play a movie. I tried a range of files with different audio codecs and containers, AC3, AAC stereo, DTS, Dolby, DTS-HD etc. It keeps freezing What works: Other apps cast fine to the chromecast including surround sound. Casting is initialised by Emby through the android app and the item metadata appears on the casted screen. Emby server plays the items perfectly on my android phone or Mac laptop. Everything worked perfectly until some change somewhere this week. What doesn't work: Once I press play the chromecast shows the circle loading icon over the Emby interface and nothing happens. Hardware/Software: - Chromecast, Firmware 1.42.172094 - Synology DS418play, DSM 6.2.3-25426 - Emby Server (4.4.3) - Emby Client Android (3.1.23) - Marantz SR6006 I believe it has something to do with ffmpeg but don't know why this would just change from one day to another. I attached the log files where the embyserver.txt log ends with the chromecast freezing. Any tips would be highly appreciated. hardware_detection-63735854706.txt embyserver.txt

I had been running Emby on Windows Server 2016 for some time and watching movies and TV shows on my Mi Box S (MiBox4) Android box on Kodi with Emby plugin without any problem. Last week I migrated my PC to Windows 10 Pro and reinstalled Emby server on it, also did a fresh install of Kodi on my Android box to re-sync everything. Since then, it's been a debugging nightmare for me as no matter what video, large and small, high bit-rate and crap sd, video playback stops randomly every few minutes! First I thought that it might be my router configs (It's a 2.4GHz running at 40MHz wide channel 150Mbps N)... I kept playing with the configs, replaced DD-WRT with OpenWRT, then with the original D-Link firmware, then back to the latest version of DD-WRT; no matter what I did the videos kept stopping. Then I started messing with Kodi on Android's advancedsettings.xml's cache/buffer values, I even installed Emby's Android app, still the same, video drops randomly, sometimes with the "source too slow" message. I then came to my PC, changed the Realtek NIC's configs, Windows registry values, Firewall settings, routes, even reinstalled and reconfigured Emby numerous times, it even got worse! Now I come to thee completely exhausted and out of ideas, looking for help... Any ideas? Here's the most usual error on Emby's logs: 2020-07-20 10:20:55.583 Info HttpServer: HTTP Response 206 to 192.168.0.155. Time: 162278ms. http://192.168.0.125:8096/emby/Videos/1939/stream?static=true&MediaSourceId=72b02541420c7e39fc9d4796d965a2df 2020-07-20 10:21:26.604 Info SessionManager: Session 8b7b1e843b7e2410fdd159d7908f4244 has gone idle while playing 2020-07-20 10:21:26.604 Info SessionManager: Playback stopped reported by app Kodi 4.1.19 playing Deeper, Deeper, Deeper Still. Stopped at 713000 ms I bet it's some kind of f*-up on Microsoft's side as I did not have ANY problem with the same PC, Router, and Box on Windows Server 2016 even with playing very-high-bitrate 30GB 1080p 4-hour movies! If it needs mentioning, there's no problem playing videos on Emby server localhost.

I trying to reproduce 4k content (90% of my library) on Samsung smart TV but its impossible to repodruce 4K content, it freezes for a few seconds and continues for another few seconds and freezes again. The same happens when I try to reproduce it directly on the server! embyserver.txt ffmpeg-remux-e437d4d7-8c6d-4f95-9307-4372b3064bed_1.txt embyserver-63722246400.txt ffmpeg-remux-5072ef32-c4ed-4aa2-a68e-acd42725ecb4_1.txt

Working on an upgraded box for my Emby server. I created a new user account and installed Emby 4.3.1.0. When Emby Server is running, my system will hang (hard freeze) at some point to where I have to power-cycle to get it back up. Right now, the server is not really doing anything ... I have two 30 minute OTA shows "loaded" into the one library for testing and such, but no clients attempting to access this server. Right now, I have the server turned off (still installed) and the system seems to be staying up. Here are a couple logs from the most recent "hang". Thanks in advance for any help you can share! embyserver-63717281767.txt hardware_detection-63717281523.txt

hey guys, just wondering if anyone else has had any issues with MBT completely locking up the PC, forcing a hard reset? and if so - are you using an AMD GPU, radeon card? i've been using MBT forever with my old graphics card which was a radeon HD 4850, but because the card was so old, catalyst control center was no longer available for that model in Windows 8.1, so the card used legacy drivers. with these i never had an issue in MBT. A mate of mine was trying to get the whole mediabrowser server and MBT setup a go because he really liked my setup, and his PC would lock up completely after a few minutes of using MBT with an R7 200 series. getting frustrated he eventually gave up on mediabrowser and went back to the old navigate with a mouse through folder structures on explorer. i figured it was something to do with his hard drives or something because he wasn't attempting to watch a video or anything, just navigating the UI. Then i recently upgraded to an R9 270x for my dedicated media pc; no format required, no changing my setup in MB server required; and literally 10 mins into having everything how i want it, i got the same complete lock up as my mate gets trying to navigate the MBT interface. the whole pc becomes unresponsive except for select things, for example i have an ALT F4 function programmed to the soft keys on my logitech harmony one, and sometimes if i hit that during a lockup, the MBT screen will stay frozen, but i'll get the mouse pop up in front of it. CTRL ALT DEL won't work to try and log off and log back in, plugging something into the USB i'll hear the connect/disconnect chime, but nothing will pop up. my only option is to hold down the power button for a few seconds to kill it. short press to trigger a proper shutdown won't work either. any ideas/experiences? a conflict with radeon's drivers? if so i figured alot of you guys would've been experiencing it if you had radeons. Cheers

Hi everyone, been having a weird issue where playback stops every ~26 minutes. I'm streaming via lan (wired) an MKV bluray remux with DTS-MA audio. It plays great, then after ~26 minutes the playback freezes and Emby Theatre is unresponsive, nothing happens if I press play/pause/stop. I kill Emby Theatre and then resume the movie, it plays fine for another 26 minutes. If I play using an external player, the player quits and returns to Emby Theatre.. Nothing is in the server's log, just regular heartbeats. Nothing is the Theatre log, I did set to EnableDebugLevelLogging=true but nothing extra is shown in the log. Anyone else?

So I figured I'd start my own tread here since all the other playback threads are covering a variety of different issues and wanted to be more specific. I used to have this issues with "AVI" files where when playing would random pause about 2 seconds every 30 to 60 seconds though episodes. I do not have this issue playing the file directly and it's currently using direct play when I watch. I use google chrome as my browser and mostly watch stuff from chrome. When the issue happens it seems the little white buffer bar goes about 30 seconds at a time until the buffer runs out, it pauses (buffers) and then continues. This is a MP4 file and I'm on a gigabit lan with COX Gigablast (1gbps down and 35 mbps up). The files are all on my local lan. I attached the playback log of the one of the local files (Shadowhunters) I was having issue with. Not limited to this file at all. It's random. I have a 16 thread (8 core) cpu that is not being overused at all. In addition this server has terabytes of free disk space where any transcoding would take place. I seem to get a lot of 14:58:48.997 Error while decoding stream #0:1: Error number -16976906 occurred which seems to indicate that I don't have enough ram but my computer has over 6 gb of free ram so I don't think that's an issue. I did attach the log. Notably I'm running this from a rack server. On the note that it doesn't have any kind of fancy video card, should I maybe disable hardware acceleration and would that help this particular issue? ffmpeg-remux-b3e4fbe2-a3de-4718-b487-792e845d1a72_1.txt

I'm putting this issue seperate from another issue to keep the replies clear. When I scrol through the EMC home screen to the "Music" entry, WMC freezes and throws an error message pop up. I will attach a screen shot, although it doesn'tshow much. The "Latest" music widget is also empty too. MBClassic-19920199454183a5a4a4f56a26dc8709a4b4d80.log embyserver.txt

I just purchased Gran Torino (2008) on blu ray, and ripped the movie to my server as a .mkv file using MakeMKV. The file plays without issue on VLC media player. When I try to play the movie on Emby, however, the server freezes up. I originally tried playing the movie on the Roku app (beta version and regular), and the Retrieving purple bar would fill about 1/3 of the way and then just hang forever (I let it go about 5 minutes). So I thought it might be the Emby Roku app, so I tried again with the Chrome browser web app, and the say thing happened. Only instead of the purple bar, the web app has a spinning circle that just goes on and on. I thought there might be something wrong with the file, so I deleted the entire folder, emptied the recycle bin, and rebooted the computer. Then ripped the file again. No difference. This is the only movie that has this problem. Others play just fine. My computer is running Windows 7. Log Jeflatt 6-6-2019.txt

Ever since updating to version 4 (on 4.0.3.0 currently), I've been having some playback issues (freezing) on almost everything I play. This happens on two separate servers in two separate locations streaming to different types of devices. One server runs on Windows 7 and streams to a Roku+ streaming stick. The other runs on Windows 10 and streams to a Shield TV. Both servers have been experiencing the problem only since version 4 and have worked flawlessly for 2 years prior without a single freeze. I currently only have logs saved for one of the servers which I've uploaded below. In the first log while watching Jaws, there was one freeze which I was able to get past by simply pressing pause and then un-pause on the remote. In the second log while watching Slumdog Millionaire, it froze about 20-30 mins into the movie. I tried pause/un-pause again which resumed the movie. However, it froze again shortly after and would continue to do so until I just got frustrated and stopped watching the movie. In the third log while watching Skyfall, playback froze about 1 hour and 30 mins in. I was able to resolve by pausing/unpausing and it didn't freeze again. It's at the point now where I don't even want to watch something because I'm constantly thinking that it will freeze (which it does 80% of the time it seems) and it takes away from the enjoyment of watching. Hopefully there's something in the logs that can help get to the bottom of this. Thanks for any help! embyserver-jaws_freeze.txt embyserver-slumdog-freeze.txt embyserver-skyfall.txt

Hello all. I've been lurking for a short while as an unregistered user and couldn't find the answer for which I searched. So first... Turned an old gaming rig into a server with linux mint 18 because I had an USB handy that had mint on it. i5 processor 8GB of ddr3 I don't have all the specs on hand but that's the baseline of the machine. After running for so many hours, the server freezes. But this ONLY happens when the emby service is running. Doesn't matter if anyone is using emby or not. The server eventually just freezes. If I turn emby off, this doesn't seem to happen. Any ideas or anyone seen this exact issue before? If there's a specific log or error I should be looking for, sorry in advance for not knowing where it should be!

Hello all, Has anyone else run into issues with playback when off your local network? I have had users reporting this recently (I believe only since updating to server v4.x) and have not had any luck in resolving it, I have tried adjusting the transcoding options, and even turning it off. I have also had the users try using much lower quality settings on their end. It all made no difference. Users are trying to playback files using various methods and it is always them same. While on my LAN, everything runs smooth as butter though. Would love to get some help trying to troubleshoot this. Thanks! N

I attached logs directly from Emby Server on my QNAP TS251 at 10:05 CST username logged in "Mike". Started log on Channel 11 at about 9:50, only one freeze, switched to Channel 5 at 9:58 and the "normal" freezing (occurring every minute or so, with a 5-10 second delay). Network is gigabit ethernet direct wired to Android TV (device X96mini version 7.1.2) running Emby for Android TV Version 1.5.32g. Can use HDHomerun app and no freeze. Playback movies, and stream from HBO, no freeze. Only live TV. Settings are default. Freezing happens on every channel. Suggestions? Thanks.

Hi Folks, I am using Emby for a while now and I really enjoy it for DVD playback - I have digitised all of my DVD library which works great. I have recently moved on to my BluRay library and I am noticing a playback issue using the browser as a player, I also have an emby app on an android TV box and notice the same issue. The server Emby is on is purpose built CPU: AMD FX 6300 Hexa Core Processor 3.50GHz RAM: 32 GB OS: Currently Windows 10, Planning to switch to Server 2016 Storage: OS Disk 500GB SSD 500meg Read 500meg Write (where Emby is installed) Video Storage Disk 1+2 8 TB HDD 7200 RPM 128meg cache The MKV's from the BluRays are usually circa 30GB in size I will say that I am extremely new to emby and video stuff in general so I am not sure what info is useful and what's not. The settings on emby are defaults as per the installation. One thing I noticed when playing the Blu Ray files from Emby is the Network usage shoots up on the emby server - Not sure if its expected/normal or if I need to consider NIC teaming The other thing I noticed is if I sit and suffer the freezes (and there are lots) usually mid way through the movie it will stop freezing and/or happen less frequently unless you rewind or fast forward. Does anyone have any setting recommendations I could try just to rule out simple stuff?? I have done all the usual host stuff such as ensure power management is not switching off stuff, all drivers are up to date, disk read/write is fine and tonnes of space for the temp/cache directory. Any/All suggestions greatly welcome Also if there are some logs I can provide to help, or do a debug during playback, just tell me what and Ill get it done. Cheers M

Hi, So i half posted on a different thread. figured i would start a new topic. My issue has only showed up in the past week or two. When i try to play movies on my Xbox One Emby app sometimes they will just not work, After i click play it brings up a "Background" image like it is loading the movie and will not leave the screen. It seems to be random movies, and just based off the temperment of my xbox for the day as some days it will play one file fine, the next it wont, and vise versa. And the files that wont work on Xbox will work find on PC. I have included the Transcode for not working Xbox attempt and the working from my PC I do also have a video to show you what i mean with the problem if you need it, since i dont explain things well lol Thanks for any help guys Log.txt New Bitmap Image (2).bmp Transcode - Not Working.txt Transcode - Working.txt

While testing setting up connection externally with a few different rokus had some weird issues in 1.19.16. Not using emby connect, entering server in manually, change host, change port, click continue. App froze on two different occassions didnt advance past this screen waited patiently for a few mins until I was returned to the Roku home screen. Upon relaunch of the app it saved the server info I had and entered and was presented with the user login screen for server, which all worked fine from this point.