Why is Emby trying to transcode this on my Roku TV?

[flashls82 4]

I'm running Emby on a Synology DS214play.

I'm having an issue playing a handful of 1080p AC3 5.1 files on my TCL Roku TV (all happen to be HBO shows, not sure if that's a coincidence). These are all known good files that play perfectly fine on my iPad and on an older Roku hooked up to another TV. When I try to play them with Emby on my TCL Roku TV, it loads to 33%, then restarts a few times, then errors out with "no compatible stream available." Logs suggest it is trying and failing to transcode the audio, which shouldn't be necessary in the first place since I'm passing through to a receiver that handles Dolby 5.1 of all kinds just fine (and does with Emby on most other files).

Attaching logs from a representative file—read up from the bottom on the main server log (it's the most recent set of events). Transcoding log is one of many it generated before it errored out. 

Would love any thoughts/advice on:

1. Why is Emby even trying to transcode this?

2. Why is it failing?

3. How can I get it to just DirectPlay these files like it does most others?

Really bummed to be running into this after using Emby with almost no problems for the last couple years. 

embyserver.txt ffmpeg-remux-61573b7f-3045-4d2e-b2a1-ea166e2b31b8_1.txt

[flashls82 4]

For what it’s worth, I noticed in the “stats for nerds” that all the files I’m having trouble playing on the Roku TV say “recovering from playback error” on the iPad app (but all are direct playing on there still). Files that play fine on the Roku TV don’t say that. 

Edited December 31, 2022 by flashls82

[ebr 14904]

Hi.  How did you install Emby?  It looks like there could be something missing or possibly a file permission problem in the system.

 

[flashls82 4]

Manually through the Synology package center. Works fine with other files, though, including these same ones where there’s apparently some fixing necessary when I play on the iPad. Or, e.g., if I play this same file on the Roku in the other room (which requires AC3->AAC transcoding), works fine. Can share logs from those successful plays if it’d help. 

Edited December 31, 2022 by flashls82

[flashls82 4]

4 hours ago, ebr said:

Hi.  How did you install Emby?  It looks like there could be something missing or possibly a file permission problem in the system.

 

Follow up here, I checked the permissions on the /volume1/Emby folder and it's fine; actually even created a new temp folder for it to use for transcoding, gave everyone full access, and same problem.

Here's what I don't get. Why is Emby handling the exact same file 3 different ways on 3 different devices that should all be able to play it without any modification?

On my iPad: It runs a "ffmpeg-directstream" process successfully (example attached). Plays fine with the note "recovering from playback error" in the stats for nerds.

On my old Roku 3 (now hooked to the same setup as my Roku TV): Direct plays without ANY processing. No errors noted in stats for nerds.

On my TCL Roku TV (which is later hardware than the Roku 3): Tries and fails to run a bunch of "ffmpeg-remux" processes.

Shouldn't the Roku TV be able to handle the file in the same way as the Roku 3, or at least with an attempt at a "directstream" fix? And why would some EAC3 5.1 files be triggering these attempted fixes but not others? Is there something I should try to change manually in whatever profile Emby uses for the TCL Roku TV?

 

ffmpeg-directstream-3287c8a9-a473-425b-b3f8-efbf94a724f4_1.txt

[flashls82 4]

@ebr @Luke Sorry for spamming my own thread here but did some additional playing around and regardless of what's causing the errors on the transcoding processes, something wonky is definitely going on with Emby's trying to transcode in the first place. This is a "TCL TV A113X," according to Emby, AKA a TCL Roku TV 6 series. In its settings, I've got the audio set to "passthrough" since it's connected to a receiver. This is what works fine for most files but is causing a failed burst of transcodes on certain EAC3 files. Same result when audio setting is "auto" (which I'm guessing defaults to passthrough all the time with this receiver).

However, when I change the audio settings to "custom," which causes the Roku TV itself to do some audio processing before it goes to the receiver, the same files that failed before play fine without any attempts at fixes/transcodes. This shows up as direct playing in stats for nerds, with no notes about errors.

It's nice to know this is a workaround if necessary but obviously not ideal to have audio processing happening pre-receiver. Any idea why Emby would be determining it needs to fix something or not based on the audio pass through setting on the Roku TV? Is there a way I can force it to just try to play the file, or is this the result of some sort of error on the Roku TV side that Emby is reacting to? The receiver I'm using handles everything (EAC3, DTS, DTS-HD, Atmos, you name it); Roku TV is correctly detecting it can handle all that stuff; it plays the majority of AC3/EAC3 files from Emby just fine via passthrough; so it's not a compatibility issue.

(PS: When I told Roku to pretend it couldn't handle DTS audio, a DTS file played with Emby transcoding audio on the fly to AC3 just fine, so continue to be puzzled why only the unnecessary transcodes that kicked off this thread would be erroring out—if there were a permission issue, etc., wouldn't all transcodes be failing? Whole thing is really bizarre.)

Edited December 31, 2022 by flashls82

[speechles 1917]

Please see the above comment I have made in a similar thread.

When you use "AUTO" you are telling the Roku to trust the HDMI chain it has detected. The Roku may not "see" your AVR active if it is using the ARC/eARC output of your television. This is why you must use "Custom" and tell the Roku how your audio is set up. Using "Auto" will have the Roku enable audio processing. Using "Custom" will disable this audio processing. The comment above in the thread explains all of this.

Does this answer your question?

[flashls82 4]

43 minutes ago, speechles said:

Please see the above comment I have made in a similar thread.

When you use "AUTO" you are telling the Roku to trust the HDMI chain it has detected. The Roku may not "see" your AVR active if it is using the ARC/eARC output of your television. This is why you must use "Custom" and tell the Roku how your audio is set up. Using "Auto" will have the Roku enable audio processing. Using "Custom" will disable this audio processing. The comment above in the thread explains all of this.

Does this answer your question?

Right, but my TV is correctly detecting the AV receiver in auto/passthrough—it reports a device capable of DD+ and Atmos. And it plays most files with AC3/EAC3 5.1 correctly with that setting. What would cause it to fail on only a handful of them?

My understanding of “custom” on the Roku TV is that it reencodes stuff on the fly to either Dolby or DD+ depending on what you pick—and it introduces a noticeable audio delay compared to pass through which makes me think some processing is going on.

[Happy2Play 8246]

Looks correct to me as the device is reporting ac3 2 channel, so there is a connectivity or setting issue.

ac3-audiochannels=2

TranscodeReasons=AudioChannelsNotSupported,DirectPlayError

But yes there are other issues happening also.

[speechles 1917]

55 minutes ago, flashls82 said:

Right, but my TV is correctly detecting the AV receiver in auto/passthrough—it reports a device capable of DD+ and Atmos. And it plays most files with AC3/EAC3 5.1 correctly with that setting. What would cause it to fail on only a handful of them?

My understanding of “custom” on the Roku TV is that it reencodes stuff on the fly to either Dolby or DD+ depending on what you pick—and it introduces a noticeable audio delay compared to pass through which makes me think some processing is going on.

We cannot fix this on the app side. This must be fixed on your Roku side. There is streaming audio format and digital output format to use to fix it.

The "streaming audio format" is what controls audio processing. You leave that on "Auto" if you have something to decode both DTS and Dolby.

The digital output format is how you control pass-through. If you leave it on "Auto" on certain Roku models it will do audio processing. If you choose "Custom" you are telling it you want pass-through for specific codecs. You can enable "Dolby+" and enable "DTS" iff you want and expect full pass-through of DD, DD+, DD+ (w/ATMOS), and DTS.

---

The Emby Roku app reads whatever you have set the audio to support on the Roku itself. That is why there are no audio settings inside the app. Everything is polled from the device to build the capabilities. If anything is detected incorrectly with "Auto" it will impact your experience with Emby. That is why I suggest using Custom and forcing the pass-through for the codecs you wish. That is the only way to ensure it works every single time.

Emby is just reading what the Roku is giving as answers to the polling. Emby isn't doing it on purpose. Your Roku is telling Emby to transcode those audio codecs/audio channels. Hopefully you understand the app is merely trying to make the media playable with what it has been told by your Roku it supports.

Edited December 31, 2022 by speechles

[flashls82 4]

1 hour ago, speechles said:

We cannot fix this on the app side. This must be fixed on your Roku side. There is streaming audio format and digital output format to use to fix it.

The "streaming audio format" is what controls audio processing. You leave that on "Auto" if you have something to decode both DTS and Dolby.

The digital output format is how you control pass-through. If you leave it on "Auto" on certain Roku models it will do audio processing. If you choose "Custom" you are telling it you want pass-through for specific codecs. You can enable "Dolby+" and enable "DTS" iff you want and expect full pass-through of DD, DD+, DD+ (w/ATMOS), and DTS.

---

The Emby Roku app reads whatever you have set the audio to support on the Roku itself. That is why there are no audio settings inside the app. Everything is polled from the device to build the capabilities. If anything is detected incorrectly with "Auto" it will impact your experience with Emby. That is why I suggest using Custom and forcing the pass-through for the codecs you wish. That is the only way to ensure it works every single time.

Emby is just reading what the Roku is giving as answers to the polling. Emby isn't doing it on purpose. Your Roku is telling Emby to transcode those audio codecs/audio channels. Hopefully you understand the app is merely trying to make the media playable with what it has been told by your Roku it supports.

Makes sense, and that was my question: whether Roku was telling Emby to give it something different on these files or whether Emby was somehow deciding for itself. Still puzzles me that Roku seems to like most standard Dolby 5.1 files and detect an issue with others (which are also just plain old Dolby 5.1), but good to know "custom" basically fixes it. This Roku TV doesn't actually have separate options for digital and streaming audio like you see on Roku boxes, BTW; it's just the one "audio output" setting. And if I pick DD+ for Dolby it'll send DD+ to the receiver even on stuff I know is regular Dolby. But now we're into Roku issues, like you said.

[GiGo 103]

Sorry to spam a 6 month old thread, however I'm having an issue with my Roku 3940EU and EAC3 files, ie, they are transcoding and transcoding at a slow rate. I have tried the above and set my Roku to DTS (on) and changed it to Custom, have tried both Dobly and Dolby+ but still getting the same issue transcoding. FWIW the files are h264 and I haven't checked if HEVC files are experiencing the same issue as most of my collection is h264.

Just wondering which Roku you have this sorted on?

[Luke 37010]

12 minutes ago, GiGo said:

Sorry to spam a 6 month old thread, however I'm having an issue with my Roku 3940EU and EAC3 files, ie, they are transcoding and transcoding at a slow rate. I have tried the above and set my Roku to DTS (on) and changed it to Custom, have tried both Dobly and Dolby+ but still getting the same issue transcoding. FWIW the files are h264 and I haven't checked if HEVC files are experiencing the same issue as most of my collection is h264.

Just wondering which Roku you have this sorted on?

@GiGo

 

Hi there, let's look at an example. Please attach the information requested in how to report a media playback issue. Thanks!

 

[GiGo 103]

21 hours ago, Luke said:

@GiGo

 

Hi there, let's look at an example. Please attach the information requested in how to report a media playback issue. Thanks!

 

Hi there, thought I replied to this last night with a log file, obviously not! Please see the attached log, server was restarted just before the attempted playback.

embyserver.txt

[Luke 37010]

And the ffmpeg log?

[GiGo 103]

1 hour ago, Luke said:

And the ffmpeg log?

Damn it forgot that, pretty sure this is the one. Thanks.

ffmpeg-remux-e63abe8a-56e2-4859-9b7a-a594e75382c7_1.txt

Edited June 15, 2023 by GiGo

[ebr 14904]

Hi.  The item was not transcoding in that log.  It was just remuxing into a new package.  Exactly what problem did you observe?

[GiGo 103]

3 hours ago, ebr said:

Hi.  The item was not transcoding in that log.  It was just remuxing into a new package.  Exactly what problem did you observe?

Thanks for the reply. In my dashboard it says 'recovering from playback error' and it stats Transcoding, it starts off nicely at 70+fps and then goes terribly slow to 18ish fps which then makes it un watchable.

Edited June 15, 2023 by GiGo

[ebr 14904]

Then that is not the proper log and the issue is basically that your server cannot transcode fast enough for the item.  Can you find the proper ffmpeg log?

[GiGo 103]

5 hours ago, ebr said:

Then that is not the proper log and the issue is basically that your server cannot transcode fast enough for the item.  Can you find the proper ffmpeg log?

I assumed the server cannot transcode fast enough, but the issue that the Roku 3940U, which is 4k and HEVC codecs built in should also do EAC3 audio direct as well rather than transcode.  Which log do I need to get?

[Luke 37010]

4 minutes ago, GiGo said:

I assumed the server cannot transcode fast enough, but the issue that the Roku 3940U, which is 4k and HEVC codecs built in should also do EAC3 audio direct as well rather than transcode.  Which log do I need to get?

You'd have to send an in-app log, and unfortunately, a direct play failure usually means a problem in the Roku video player. When that happens, the only thing we can really do is report it to Roku, and try to handle it by recovering and switching to transcoding (which we already do).

[GiGo 103]

11 minutes ago, Luke said:

You'd have to send an in-app log, and unfortunately, a direct play failure usually means a problem in the Roku video player. When that happens, the only thing we can really do is report it to Roku, and try to handle it by recovering and switching to transcoding (which we already do).

Right-o no worries then. I'll report the issue with Roku about failing to playback EAC3. Thanks for your help

[Luke 37010]

But please use the function in the app to submit a log so that we can confirm this. Thanks.

[GiGo 103]

2 hours ago, Luke said:

But please use the function in the app to submit a log so that we can confirm this. Thanks.

In the Rolu app? If so how do I do that?

[ebr 14904]

Can you please play that item for a few seconds and then follow the instructions to send a log from the app?