Constant buffering on Roku TV after 4.7 upgrades

[jliebau 0]

I have also come to the conclusion that transcoding is not the root problem (I'm getting significant buffering sometimes with and without transcoding on 4.7.5). Also, not sure the transcoding info in "stats for nerds" is reliable. Was playing a video yesterday, everything seemed to be working, out of curiosity looked at transcoding and it reported it was not transcoding. Looked again a few minutes later (still no problems with playback), and it then reported it was transcoding. Seems unlikely you would start transcoding in the middle of a playback, but what the hell ...

The other observation is that it really seems to be something with Roku Emby app. I recorded two shows tonight, back to back. Waited till both recordings were complete, then tried playing both. First one played fine, second one started massive buffering shortly after started playing. both reported they were being transcoded. Exited the Emby app on Roku, restarted it, and lo and behold the second one now played fine. But when I went back to the first one, it then started buffering. Again exited app and restarted it, first one then played fine again ... are we somehow using up memory on Roku and not releasing or managing it appropriately? Just a thought.

Anyway, this is getting really frustrating, not least b/c nothing seems reproducible. Best wishes

 

 

[speechles 1917]

40 minutes ago, jliebau said:

I have also come to the conclusion that transcoding is not the root problem (I'm getting significant buffering sometimes with and without transcoding on 4.7.5). Also, not sure the transcoding info in "stats for nerds" is reliable. Was playing a video yesterday, everything seemed to be working, out of curiosity looked at transcoding and it reported it was not transcoding. Looked again a few minutes later (still no problems with playback), and it then reported it was transcoding. Seems unlikely you would start transcoding in the middle of a playback, but what the hell ...

LiveTV starts in DirectStream since we cannot DirectPlay the TS/M2TS containers and keep a seekable stream. We choose to use seekable streams. The Roku player will actively abort and reject streams. When it does during DirectPlay we can then go.. hmm.. and try again with DirectStream. When it errors during DirectStream (which is how LiveTV starts up) it fallsback to transcoding. So it is entirely possible the stream has errors and the recovery of playback tried to resume. We have automatic playback recovery inside the Roku application.

Once transcoding there is little else we can do since ffmpeg is in control with the Roku player. Once the Roku player locks up while transcoding the video stream we have lost the battle. Hope you understand. It is up to the Roku to tolerate what ffmpeg is sending and not skip a beat which it usually does. But Roku is becoming less reliable with resuming streams with errors these days. Perhaps on purpose to keep bad encodes from playing back.

Roku only have to stick to what they want to for their implementation of their video player. We have very little control over how playback is processed other than reading events and acting on them. Their MPEG2 implementation isn't perfected.. yet? ever will be? maybe?

40 minutes ago, jliebau said:

The other observation is that it really seems to be something with Roku Emby app. I recorded two shows tonight, back to back. Waited till both recordings were complete, then tried playing both. First one played fine, second one started massive buffering shortly after started playing. both reported they were being transcoded. Exited the Emby app on Roku, restarted it, and lo and behold the second one now played fine. But when I went back to the first one, it then started buffering. Again exited app and restarted it, first one then played fine again ... are we somehow using up memory on Roku and not releasing or managing it appropriately? Just a thought.

Anyway, this is getting really frustrating, not least b/c nothing seems reproducible. Best wishes

 

 

The stats for nerds is polling sessions for updates every 10 seconds. It does this so as to not overwhelm your server with requests. These are not in real time. These are broadcast-just-in-time and what you see in stats for nerds is already outdated. We do our best to stay as accurate as we can though.

The probem you see is with what we call the "playback recovery transition" and we can do better and have that update the playmethod and possibly blank it during interim/transitions and make it easier for users to understand what is happening there.

Apologies this is difficult. Thank you for the feedback. The entire point of stats for nerds is to give you eyes into playback and make it easier for you to see what is going on as playback progresses. It wasn't meant to be realtime. It was meant to be useful. Hopefully it is. We will do better and give stats for nerds some love.

Any other questions about this? We have answers. Feel free to ask.

https://community.roku.com/t5/Playback-Issues-Audio-Video-Power/Mpeg2-Support/m-p/499721
Roku can add the MPEG2 codec royalty free. How this all began. Read the history of how Roku battled against MPEG2 support to begin with. Not the full thread either Roku went in and edited it to death and cut it down to just 2 posts on 1 page. It had over 30 pages and 700+ posts. Roku doesn't like to brag about MPEG2 and its horrible support for it.

https://community.roku.com/t5/Channel-Issues-Questions/Media-player-won-t-work-for-my-roku-3-after-the-last-update/td-p/782960/page/16
Roku purposely broke their own Roku Media Player app to drop support for NTFS (large) hard drives using external USB on legacy Roku devices (best to start at the last page and read inward)

https://community.roku.com/t5/Playback-Issues-Audio-Video-Power/Media-Player-and-NAS-used-to-work-great-now-not-so-much/m-p/705330
Newer Roku devices are much more strict about how and what they play back then normal. This is again about Roku Media Player their own app.

So as you can see it isn't just Emby with these issues. We have tried to be patient and I've even posted about them repeatedly on Roku forums. At this point is neglect because they are not monetized by their portion of their userbase. We are crying at deaf ears. We are giving hand signals to a blind man. Roku isn't listening or watching anymore. Not that I have given up. But at this point every firmware update I get a little wishful then get those wishes shattered. Maybe one day. Maybe soon. But not today. Sorry you have the issue and wish we could shake Roku to address it.

 

 

Edited July 14, 2022 by speechles

[ChipL 6]

All the Roku issues make sense, but it doesn't explain why this started happening only after the 4.7 release. Before then, playback on the Roku was flawless. In the last week I have determined that it's not at all the Emby transcoding being delayed, or errors with OTA signals. The problem is completely random.  I can watch an entire program with no errors and then another one that is so bad that's completely unwatchable. 

What's the status of the beta Roku app that was being worked on?

[speechles 1917]

@ChipL Roku has a hard limit on the number of users that can get invited into the Beta.

@ebr Is there room for another user?

[ebr 14912]

@jliebau If you happen to have the "Debug Option" turned on in the app, try turning it off.

[ChipL 6]

I got a Firestick last week and the Emby app has performed flawlessly. It does appear that the problem is with the app on Roku devices and nothing to do with the server backend.

[Luke 37061]

1 hour ago, ChipL said:

I got a Firestick last week and the Emby app has performed flawlessly. It does appear that the problem is with the app on Roku devices and nothing to do with the server backend.

Do you get any improvement with the Emby Server 4.7.6 release?

[ChipL 6]

11 hours ago, Luke said:

Do you get any improvement with the Emby Server 4.7.6 release?

I didn't notice that 4.7.6 was released, so all my viewing was done on 4.7.5.  I'll try the newer release with the Roku to see if there is any change.