Playback Causing Crash

[TolkienBard 54]

Yesterday I started running into an odd problem. This problem exists across all of my clients; Samsung, Android app, and MBT. A similar but slightly different problem exists using direct connect via the web client. When using any client that should read as direct play, there is a problem.

 

I load the film. If it is starting from the beginning, and does not have a resume point associated with it, the film will start from the beginning as it should. The client will show "Direct Play". The server dashboard shows "Direct Play" when I hover over the user access entry. However, the progress bar across the bottom is not the normal single direct play bar. Instead I am getting the dual play progress and transcode progress bars. At first, I thought little of it. However, if I attempt to jump to a chapter of fast forward, the client will send the request. The play progress bar jumps, but the transcode bar does not. The movie freezes, waiting for the feed to catch up. Eventually, after receiving no response to play, the client becomes non-responsive and must be shut down. Trying to resume the movie, all that pops up is a black screen. If I stop the movie quickly enough, I can still navigate elsewhere. But if I let it run for too long, the client again becomes unresponsive.

 

Depending on the film, the play progress itself can start stuttering if it runs faster than the transcode bar (Serenity). Others (9) remain largely unaffected so long as I merely play and do not try to skip ahead. No title can be started from anywhere other than the beginning though, not even from the menu screen which shows the chapters. Starting from one of those merely jumps play ahead of transcode, eventually resulting in a time-out of the client.

 

This is a very new development. Until yesterday, direct play clients had little in the way of issues. Generally speaking, the only time they ran into difficulty is when I was unaware that the server had crashed for one reason or another.

 

I just restarted the server and recreated the problem.

 

Here is the server log

Here is the transcode log

Here is a screenshot of the dashboard showing the transcode progress in direct play

 

 

Does anyone have any thoughts?

 

[TolkienBard 54]

This looks like it is very, very similar to what is being reported here:

 

http://mediabrowser.tv/community/index.php?/topic/10787-clients-repeatedly-unable-to-stream-videos-over-the-internet/page-4

 

 

The difference is, I'm playing on devices that should be using direct play (and say they are) but the behaviour is still that of transcoding, including the stream stuttering if it "catches up" to the transcode. However, once there has been one of these interruptions due to the transcode having to catch up to the play stream, no client is able to play media until I actually restart the server. The other clients can access the server and browse about. But once they select something to play, the blank screen comes up and nothing further happens.

[TolkienBard 54]

It seems that other clients being locked out when this issue occurs has been fixed. However, I am still getting "Direct Playing" movies that are transcoding.

 

Here's a Dashboard Screen Grab

Here's the transcoding log 

 

 

Edited October 10, 2014 by TolkienBard