DSM7 freezes for some minutes at started video playback on new emby

[Ragnarok2345 1]

Hell there,

DSM7 on DS220j (ARM8)
Occures on freshly installed emby 4.6.4.0 and with update to 4.6.7.0. (non-premium)
Attached log ist from 4.6.7.0
The movie I tried to play is in x265, mkv.

Reproduction: open emby web interface by Firefox browser, open library (which has about 10 movies), open movie details, click on "play".
Result: Fanart shows, nothing more, no icons wthatsoever, no indication that movie will start to play. The complete NAS is frozen for about five minues. Even system resource stats won't update each second. Nothing is working. Meanwhile heavy harddisk usage!

Any guesses?
Greetings

embyserver.txt

[Luke 37129]

Hi, was any ffmpeg log file generated? Please attach that as well. thanks.

[Carlo 4330]

Hi, looking at your log, Emby was still loading things when you started playback.  Your server log is full of errors trying to playback the media.

Which NAS/device do you have Emby Server installed on?
What media were you trying to play?  Can you post a screen capture of the detail screen for it.?  This is at the bottom of the detail screen for the media.

As Luke mentioned we need to see the log(s) that start with ffmpeg that correspond with the playback.  You can get these from the Log menu on the Dashboard.

You can try this again and as soon as it fails go to the logs menu, download the ffmpeg files at the top of the list with date/time matching your playback and attach them here.

Thanks

[Ragnarok2345 1]

ffmpeg-transcode-d1193f7a-c8e7-4ed2-b591-f0453cce6c1a_1.txtffmpeg-transcode-540f9fc0-78ee-4817-ad24-dd9441834e75_1.txtffmpeg-transcode-4724d185-e235-460c-96bf-fa4b469dca5c_1.txtembyserver.txt

I'm using a Synology DS220j as NAS. OS is DSM7.

I tried again today at around 20:43 o'clock (see logs attached) -> the system froze again.

System came back to live at around 20:49, and a message showed up at 20:50:
(roughly translated from German to English:) Playback error. There are no compatible streams.Please try again later, or contact system administrator for details.

By the way: all the Xvid-movies are working.

Edited December 15, 2021 by Ragnarok2345

[Luke 37129]

8 hours ago, Ragnarok2345 said:

ffmpeg-transcode-d1193f7a-c8e7-4ed2-b591-f0453cce6c1a_1.txt 11.83 kB · 0 downloads ffmpeg-transcode-540f9fc0-78ee-4817-ad24-dd9441834e75_1.txt 9.85 kB · 0 downloads ffmpeg-transcode-4724d185-e235-460c-96bf-fa4b469dca5c_1.txt 11.78 kB · 0 downloads embyserver.txt 140.91 kB · 0 downloads

I'm using a Synology DS220j as NAS. OS is DSM7.

I tried again today at around 20:43 o'clock (see logs attached) -> the system froze again.

System came back to live at around 20:49, and a message showed up at 20:50:
(roughly translated from German to English:) Playback error. There are no compatible streams.Please try again later, or contact system administrator for details.

By the way: all the Xvid-movies are working.

Hi, that's strange. Do you see the same with Chrome?

[Carlo 4330]

Hi, I'm seeing errors being return to Emby that appear as Permission Denied but this could be due to the strange way the transcode logs end.
Your log shows what appears to be the default Transcoding temporary files path: /var/packages/EmbyServer/var/transcoding-temp

How much free space do you have on this volume?

[Ragnarok2345 1]

7 hours ago, Luke said:

Hi, that's strange. Do you see the same with Chrome?

Yes, same with Chrome and Brave.

[Ragnarok2345 1]

6 hours ago, cayars said:

[...] How much free space do you have on this volume?

3 TB

[Carlo 4330]

Storage space certainly doesn't sound like a problem.
Could we setup a remote support session to get a look at this?

I think I can help you with the freezing issue as well as investigate this first hand. I'd like to try duplicating the transcode being done outside of Emby to get a better look and see if any additional info is being generated that we may not be reporting in the logs.

Being this is an ARM8 based NAS there is only so much that can be done trying to transcode h.265 to h.264 in software alone but we could try a couple of things to see what's possible or if there is a way to boost transcode speed as well.

Let me know,

Carlo

[Ragnarok2345 1]

1 hour ago, cayars said:

[...] Could we setup a remote support session to get a look at this? [...]

Sure. I'll download "Anydesk" for the remote sesssion, and will tell you my Telegram username in a private message. Guess thats easier for making an appointment.

[Carlo 4330]

1 hour ago, Ragnarok2345 said:

Sure. I'll download "Anydesk" for the remote sesssion, and will tell you my Telegram username in a private message. Guess thats easier for making an appointment.

I'm sending you PM in a couple of minutes.

[Carlo 4330]

We did a remote support session and found with the file formats being use the little NAS CPU doesn't stand a chance at transcoding.  1.5 fps to 1.7 fps is the best we could get on a low bitrate 265 to 264 transcode (3K bitrate).  There is no hardware decoder on the box only an encoder so there is nothing to gain that way either.

However, @Ragnarok2345 is rocking a really nice high end i7 PC.  So he's going to try setting up Emby Server on the PC using the NAS for storage.

I think once he tries that he will be very happy at the night and day difference of playback regardless of format!

All the best.

[Ragnarok2345 1]

Analysis summary: The Synology DS220j NAS is not suitable for playback of most video files at all, due to its slow hardware, which is a real bottleneck.

The video file we wanted to play only reached about 1.5 FPS.

Best way to use this NAS is as storage only. The emby server should be on a fast hardware (like my gaming PC), which accesses the NAS files.

(The NAS operating system wasn't really frozen, but very slow)

Thanks for this perfect support!

Edited December 16, 2021 by Ragnarok2345

[Luke 37129]

Thanks for the feedback.