Recordings won't play back on Emby Theater

[sailracer 8]

Sometime in the past 4 or 5 days Emby Theater has stopped being able to play back my recordings.  It tries to play but nothing happens.  The recordings play back fine through the web interface and through the LG TV app, just not in Theater.  Here is the server log- the very end is an attempt to play a recording that didn't work.  embyserver.txt  Any thoughts on things to try?  There haven't been any windows updates to my machine since it was last working and now outside of the daily virus definition updates.

[Luke 37069]

Hi, is this only with recent recordings? Do you have older recordings that still play?

[sailracer 8]

Older recordings and ripped/transcoded DVDs don't play anymore either, except for one old ripped and transcoded DVD.  The only thing I notice about that particular file is the audio is AAC stereo instead of my more usual AC-3 5.1 or passthrough.  Could this be a codec problem?

[sailracer 8]

I finally had some time to work on debugging this some more.  I ended up doing a complete uninstall of Emby Theater including cache and settings.  I reinstalled and tested with the defaults and it worked.  I then went through and changed all the settings to my preferences and it didn't work again.  I was still suspecting the problem had something to do with audio, so I unchecked the 5 audio passthrough boxes (AC3/EAC3, etc) and it worked again.  I then checked the passthrough boxes one by one and tested between each and got to all 5 checked and it was still working.  I then tested it again after dinner and it was no longer working. 

This triggered a thought- my usual viewing mode is on my TV connected through an AV receiver connected to the HDMI output of my video card.  The receiver can process all the audio, so that is why I use the passthrough.  In one of the tests above, I had turned on the receiver, in the other it was off.  I confirmed this seems to expose the problem.  If passthrough for any of the audio is checked and I am not playing the audio back through the receiver, the video no longer plays.  If I have the boxes checked and the receiver on, it plays OK.

There are likely some permutations still missing, and it doesn't explain why, before the reinstall, it stopped playing at all with the receiver on or off.  Unless some setting in the receiver could affect this?

[generiq 113]

Are you using exclusivity? 

[sailracer 8]

Not currently.  There are times where I have Emby Theater playing a football game in the background while I'm doing other stuff on my computer that I want sound for, so I haven't played around with turning that on.

Edit: I should add that in that case the audio for the other programs is coming from speakers in another monitor and not playing over the HDMI to the TV/Receiver.  Maybe that would still work even with exclusivity checked?

Edited October 27, 2023 by sailracer

[generiq 113]

Exclusivity is for the audio device responsible for audio playing, not the speakers in a monitor. With exclusivity enabled, if mpv detects a device and allocates it, but if that device is somehow unavailable,  playback will not start. If you're not always using the same device, I would suggest disabling exclusivity. 

[generiq 113]

On 10/26/2023 at 3:29 PM, sailracer said:

 This triggered a thought- my usual viewing mode is on my TV connected through an AV receiver connected to the HDMI output of my video card.  The receiver can process all the audio, so that is why I use the passthrough.  In one of the tests above, I had turned on the receiver, in the other it was off.  I confirmed this seems to expose the problem.  If passthrough for any of the audio is checked and I am not playing the audio back through the receiver, the video no longer plays.  If I have the boxes checked and the receiver on, it plays OK.

This is the expected behavior. Your secondary output device doesn't support those codecs, so playback will not start.

If your system isn't configured for Atmos or DTS-X, I'd suggest disabling passthrough. But make sure Windows audio is correctly configured for your speaker configuration. mpv will decode all of the audio (possibly better than your receiver) and you will have a great audio output. 

There are more complicated configurable solutions, but I would recommend the solution I suggested, above. 

[sailracer 8]

My receiver is Atmos capable, though I don't have all the speakers I really need to use it properly.  That still doesn't explain the original problem where the recordings wouldn't play on the receiver which should have worked whether passthrough was selected or not.  Somehow the reinstall fixed whatever was wrong and the passthrough/no passthrough works as expected now.

[generiq 113]

2 hours ago, sailracer said:

My receiver is Atmos capable, though I don't have all the speakers I really need to use it properly.  That still doesn't explain the original problem where the recordings wouldn't play on the receiver which should have worked whether passthrough was selected or not.  Somehow the reinstall fixed whatever was wrong and the passthrough/no passthrough works as expected now.

OK, so let's be methodical. One issue at a time. It would appear that you've understood the audio passthrough / not playing issue. So let's look at whatever the other issue is... which isn't clearly defined nor understood.

First, try replacing the mpv library (there have been issues with that). 

Go to: C:\Users\YOURNAME\AppData\Roaming\Emby-Theater\electronapp\libmpv\x64

Replace mpv-1.dll by downloading and extracting this file, Then renaming libmpv-2.dll to mpv-1.dll

In the the Theater settings, set Video Output to GPU-next.

If this doesn't resolve the issue, then I'll need more details.

Begin with setting up logging for mpv. 

To do that, you will need to create an mpv.conf. Instructions here and scroll down to FILES ON WINDOWS

In that file, you need to add the command for creating a log file.

example: log-file="C:\Users\USERNAME\Documents\mpv logs\ mpv log.txt" , with the appropriate username and location of your choice.

Attach log here with an explanation of what you did to make the log. IMPORTANT TO REMEMBER THAT YOU SHOULD RUN ONE TEST PER LOG, AS EACH TIME YOU RESTART PLAYBACK, THE LOG WILL BE WRITTEN OVER. PLAY ONCE, REPRODUCE ISSUE, ATTACH LOG.

Edited October 29, 2023 by generiq

[sailracer 8]

My follow up post was not as clear as it should have been- the reinstall fixed the original issue of recordings not playing back in Emby Theater on either the monitor or the AV receiver/TV and I can no longer reproduce it.  I will keep the steps above in mind if the problem reproduces again, unless you think there is value in capturing a log now with it working?

The side discussion on the passthrough was something I found while testing after reinstall.  It could create the same type of failure to play, but only on the TV monitor with the AV receiver off.  This was not the cause of the original problem, but it confused my testing results and I thought it might have been related for a bit.

[sailracer 8]

The problem just happened again where the video wouldn't play on the receiver/tv.  I was able to figure out what is going wrong this time.  I turned off the passthrough settings when it wouldn't play and it played this time but the audio was coming through my monitor speakers, not the receiver as I expected!  I had earlier played a game that was updated recently (Zwift) and apparently it is somehow changing my windows default audio output selection so that when I turn on my receiver, windows no longer switches to it as the primary audio output.  I changed this back to the receiver and everything worked as intended.  So, the problem was the combo of having passthrough selected with the audio output being set to an unexpected output that doesn't support passthrough.

Edited October 29, 2023 by sailracer

[generiq 113]

In the mpv.conf you can specify the audio device. Then Theater will always use that device regardless of what windows does.

[sailracer 8]

58 minutes ago, generiq said:

In the mpv.conf you can specify the audio device. Then Theater will always use that device regardless of what windows does.

That's good to know.  Would it be possible to have the mpv.conf detect the output selected and enable/disable passthrough based on the device?  Don't bother putting much time into answering this question.  After reading a few threads on mpv.conf, I don't think I want to mess with creating my own.  It will likely cause me more effort, time and frustration than I want to put into making this work!

[generiq 113]

You'll need to create an auto-profile using the audio-device property, then populate it with the commands you require. So, yes, it should be possible to do what you want.

https://mpv.io/manual/master/#command-interface-audio-device