Emby theater for linux: videos don't play

[lennartack 0]

On Emby Theater for linux (with a remote linux server), videos are stuck at the initial loading stage after clicking play. Music and photos do play in Emby Theater. Videos also play fine in the iOS app and the web app.

Emby theater version: 3.0.15

Emby server version: 4.6.4.0

The command line reports:

fs access result for path: Error: ENOENT: no such file or directory, access '/server/path/to/video/file'

I attach an anonymized portion of the server log (embyserver.txt), the part right after I click play on emby theater.

I hope this can be fixed. I'm trying to migrate from Plex to Emby but a number of bugs still prevent me to do that.

embyserverlog

[Luke 37022]

Hi, when did you install Emby Theater?

[lennartack 0]

20 minutes ago, Luke said:

Hi, when did you install Emby Theater?

Yesterday.

[Luke 37022]

OK please supply the complete console output from Emby Theater. Thanks.

[lennartack 0]

5 minutes ago, Luke said:

OK please supply the complete console output from Emby Theater. Thanks.

Complete output below:

Initializing cec-client...

{
  cecExePath: 'cec-client',
  cecEmitter: EventEmitter {
    _events: [Object: null prototype] {},
    _eventsCount: 0,
    _maxListeners: undefined
  },
  cecHdmiPort: 'null'
}
UDP Client listening on 0.0.0.0:48074
starting udp receive timer with timeout ms: 1000
cec-client exited with code 1
timer expired 0 servers received
[]
fs access result for path: Error: ENOENT: no such file or directory, access '/path/to/video/file'

 

[lennartack 0]

On 07/10/2021 at 16:35, Luke said:

OK please supply the complete console output from Emby Theater. Thanks.

Hi Luke, it seems it was a problem with the intel VA-API driver. This happens at the end of the MPV log:

[   5.099][v][vd] Looking at hwdec h264-vaapi-copy...
[   5.100][d][ffmpeg] AVHWDeviceContext: Trying to use DRM render node for device 0.
[   5.100][d][ffmpeg] AVHWDeviceContext: libva: VA-API version 1.12.0
[   5.100][d][ffmpeg] libva: Trying to open /opt/emby-theater/extra/lib/dri/iHD_drv_video.so
[   5.112][d][ffmpeg] libva: Found init function __vaDriverInit_1_12

And then nothing. After removing iHD_drv_video.so videos are playing, apparently with the other intel driver i965_drv_video.so.

[Luke 37022]

43 minutes ago, lennartack said:

Hi Luke, it seems it was a problem with the intel VA-API driver. This happens at the end of the MPV log:

[   5.099][v][vd] Looking at hwdec h264-vaapi-copy...
[   5.100][d][ffmpeg] AVHWDeviceContext: Trying to use DRM render node for device 0.
[   5.100][d][ffmpeg] AVHWDeviceContext: libva: VA-API version 1.12.0
[   5.100][d][ffmpeg] libva: Trying to open /opt/emby-theater/extra/lib/dri/iHD_drv_video.so
[   5.112][d][ffmpeg] libva: Found init function __vaDriverInit_1_12

And then nothing. After removing iHD_drv_video.so videos are playing, apparently with the other intel driver i965_drv_video.so.

That's interesting, thanks for the info. We'll see what @alucrydthinks.

[alucryd 214]

We have a similar issue on the server side, the iHD driver always takes precedence, but clearly doesn't work in some instances. The iHD driver is still the better choice overall so defaulting to i965 would be worse.

@lennartack Could you restore the deleted driver and try the following in a terminal?

export LIBVA_DRIVER_NAME=i965
emby-theater

If that works, please try setting this environment variable globally: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/environment_variables#Globally

[lennartack 0]

2 hours ago, alucryd said:

 

@lennartack Could you restore the deleted driver and try the following in a terminal?

export LIBVA_DRIVER_NAME=i965
emby-theater

If that works, please try setting this environment variable globally: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/environment_variables#Globally

That works, thanks. I found out my Intel processor isn't actually supported by the iHD driver.

Playing a video with mplayer works fine. It also tries the driver but it correctly returns:

libva info: VA-API version 1.10.0
libva info: Trying to open /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/dri/iHD_drv_video.so
libva info: va_openDriver() returns -1

I also got videos playing in emby-theater after pointing iHD_drv_video.so in emby-theater to the system's iHD_drv_video.so. The system version is 21.1.1.

[alucryd 214]

Thanks, we're still figuring out how to seamlessly switch between our included drivers and the system drivers in emby-server, looks like we'll have to come up with a similar thing on the theater side. We still want to ship our own drivers in case the system doesn't have one, but since the theater targets non headless systems it might make sense to prefer the system drivers which could contain specific fixes for that particular system.

Ultimately you can still play with the above env variable, although it might be more user friendly to have that option in emby-theater directly.