ruest 3 Posted February 16 Share Posted February 16 Having a problem with playback on some 1080p HVEC mp4 video files, these are all Direct Play with no transcoding or remuxing. I have narrowed it down to the Emby Android app and tested the problem on Samsung Galaxy Tab S7, Samsung Note 10+, Unihertz Atom XL ) They play fine on these: 1) Emby Samsung App 2) Emby iOS App 3) Emby Theater on Windows 10 4) Android native Video Player They have problems on 5) Emby Android App - has choppy video 6) Web browser interface on Android browsers - has severe studdering and indicates dropped frames. Emby Server is fine an I have Issolated the Problem to the Android Client by testing and seeing the same playback problems with these videos (2mbps video stream) over: a) n wifi b) ac wifi c) wired ethernet via usb-c dongle d) downloaded via client (original file/quality) then played downloaded file via client with all network connections disabled. Finally Playing the client downloaded video file through the native Android video player plays back perfectly with No issues. I checked the Android App data location and it does not have any client log directory or logs that I can find. If someone from Emby Support can direct message me I can provide a remote login details to my server so you can try the playback an/or download the failing videos to test as needed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luke 37066 Posted February 16 Share Posted February 16 Hi there, let's look at an example. Please attach the information requested in how to report a media playback issue. Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ruest 3 Posted February 16 Author Share Posted February 16 The server version is 4.8.1.0 on running on Win 7 The playback issue is consistant through the entire video regardless of being streamed or downloaded and played locally with no server involvement. Emby for Android client versions tested 3.3.66 3.2.50 The client is not producing any errors or a log, just choppy (not smooth) video. I have included screenshots of the video details and stats for streaming and local playback If needed I can run a test tonight and grab a log on the server I will PM you the server connection details. There is a "Bad Playback" library with 3 movies demonstrating this issue and a "Good Playback" library with 1 movie showing the same info for video details/encoding but that plays fine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ruest 3 Posted February 18 Author Share Posted February 18 For this test I rebooted the Server and played the video for a few minutes from my unihertz Atom_L runnning Android 11 Emby Android app 3.3.66 embyserver.txt Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luke 37066 Posted February 20 Share Posted February 20 HI, yes a sample video would be helpful. Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ruest 3 Posted February 21 Author Share Posted February 21 Sure thing Luke, If you check your Private Messsages, last Friday I sent you a message titled: Serve connection details for testing - Android App Choppy/Studdering It has server connection and library/video details, 3 videos demonstrating the problem and 1 with the same encoding that does not have the problem. The account is setup for playback and download. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kusano 0 Posted February 26 Share Posted February 26 Hey, i have exactly the same problem. Fire TV with the app from amazon or sideloaded android apk play some HEVC files only with heavy stuttering/freeze frames. in my case i found the reason but i still don't know why it is like that (keeps me from changing to emby for a week now) If the HEVC file is format profile: Main@L6.2@High it will direct play with no log errors but will stutter like hell. if i only change the metadata from Main@L6.2@High to Main@L1.4@High via a quick ffmpeg -i INPUT.mkv -map 0 -c copy -bsf:v hevc_metadata=level=41 OUTPUT.mkv the new file plays flawlessly. stuttering video: Format : Matroska Format version : Version 4 File size : 2.02 GiB Duration : 23 min 35 s Overall bit rate mode : Variable Overall bit rate : 12.3 Mb/s Frame rate : 23.976 FPS Encoded date : 2020-12-28 05:33:09 UTC Writing application : mkvmerge v51.0.0 ('I Wish') 64-bit Writing library : libebml v1.4.0 + libmatroska v1.6.2 Video ID : 1 Format : HEVC Format/Info : High Efficiency Video Coding Format profile : Main@L6.2@High Codec ID : V_MPEGH/ISO/HEVC Duration : 23 min 35 s Width : 1 920 pixels Height : 1 080 pixels Display aspect ratio : 16:9 Frame rate mode : Constant Frame rate : 23.976 (24000/1001) FPS Color space : YUV Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0 Bit depth : 8 bits Language : Japanese Default : Yes Forced : No Audio #1 ID : 2 Format : DTS XLL Format/Info : Digital Theater Systems Commercial name : DTS-HD Master Audio Codec ID : A_DTS Duration : 23 min 35 s Bit rate mode : Variable Channel(s) : 2 channels Channel layout : L R Sampling rate : 48.0 kHz Frame rate : 93.750 FPS (512 SPF) Bit depth : 16 bits Compression mode : Lossless Language : German Default : Yes Forced : No Audio #2 ID : 3 Format : DTS XLL Format/Info : Digital Theater Systems Commercial name : DTS-HD Master Audio Codec ID : A_DTS Duration : 23 min 35 s Bit rate mode : Variable Channel(s) : 2 channels Channel layout : L R Sampling rate : 48.0 kHz Frame rate : 93.750 FPS (512 SPF) Bit depth : 16 bits Compression mode : Lossless Language : Japanese Default : No Forced : No Text ID : 4 Format : PGS Muxing mode : zlib Codec ID : S_HDMV/PGS Codec ID/Info : Picture based subtitle format used on BDs/HD-DVDs Language : German Default : No Forced : No Menu 00:00:00.000 : en:Chapter 01 00:00:22.439 : en:Chapter 02 00:01:52.070 : en:Chapter 03 00:10:47.938 : en:Chapter 04 00:21:57.899 : en:Chapter 05 00:23:28.031 : en:Chapter 06 i would rather not change every file to fix this because they work in plex (windows/android) and in windows 11 emby theater Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luke 37066 Posted March 15 Share Posted March 15 @ruestare you still having an issue with this? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ruest 3 Posted March 15 Author Share Posted March 15 Yes @Lukestill have issues. I also tested Emby on a Roku Ultra and found it has the same playback issue as Android but they still play fine on Emby Samsung, iOS, and Emby Theater. I have seen this issue called out on other platforms as well with various suggestions for modifying the video files but have not had time to go through those to try to get to the root cause. I assume it will be something in the video encoding that is not playing well with the libraries Emby is using on some platforms vs others if there is anything specific that could help in addition to the access to the source files that have been provided just let me know. Overall i would like to get to an understanding of the root cause as it would be more beneficial to the Emby Platform as a whole if there is a solution where the Android and Roku playback engines could handle the issue like it does on the other Emby clients vs needing each user to modify or re-encode every source file they come across with the problem. Plays fine on these: 1) Emby Samsung App 2) Emby iOS App 3) Emby Theater on Windows 10 4) Android native Video Player 5) Web browser on Samsung TV Has problems on these: 5) Emby Android App - has choppy video 6) Web browser interface on Android browsers - has severe studdering and indicates dropped frames. 7) Emby Roku App - has choppy video Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luke 37066 Posted March 16 Share Posted March 16 13 hours ago, ruest said: Yes @Lukestill have issues. I also tested Emby on a Roku Ultra and found it has the same playback issue as Android but they still play fine on Emby Samsung, iOS, and Emby Theater. I have seen this issue called out on other platforms as well with various suggestions for modifying the video files but have not had time to go through those to try to get to the root cause. I assume it will be something in the video encoding that is not playing well with the libraries Emby is using on some platforms vs others if there is anything specific that could help in addition to the access to the source files that have been provided just let me know. Overall i would like to get to an understanding of the root cause as it would be more beneficial to the Emby Platform as a whole if there is a solution where the Android and Roku playback engines could handle the issue like it does on the other Emby clients vs needing each user to modify or re-encode every source file they come across with the problem. Plays fine on these: 1) Emby Samsung App 2) Emby iOS App 3) Emby Theater on Windows 10 4) Android native Video Player 5) Web browser on Samsung TV Has problems on these: 5) Emby Android App - has choppy video 6) Web browser interface on Android browsers - has severe studdering and indicates dropped frames. 7) Emby Roku App - has choppy video And it's direct playing each time? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ruest 3 Posted March 16 Author Share Posted March 16 14 hours ago, Luke said: And it's direct playing each time? Yes, All scenarios are direct play. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RanmaCanada 345 Posted March 16 Share Posted March 16 I would suggest you use mediainfo as the other user has, to post the actual information about the file, as Emby doesn't get anywhere near the details required to troubleshoot something like this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Morshu 0 Posted March 17 Share Posted March 17 Sounds a lot like the issue I'm having. 4k HEVC files, when starting then they stutter and video choppieness never recovers. HDR is broken too, like the signal to the TV to switch to HDR isn't sent. It's not all files though. And it's only happening on my Nvidia shield, plays fine on Android mobile app. They play fine on Plex (sorry if this is irrelevant), so this seems to be an isolated issue for certain files. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Solution ruest 3 Posted March 18 Author Solution Share Posted March 18 @Luke I have found what I believe is causing the playback issue in the files I have. I would ask that you take a look at the cause and see if you can determine why some Emby clients can automatically handle this problem in the video source and some cannot. Ultimately the goal would be to have all Emby clients being able to detect and automatically handle this non-fatal encoding problem. Root Cause Research led me to several old issues potential related to timestamp induced jitters. The one that turned out to be my issue was the MP4 file not containing a ctts atom (frame offset table) which induced the jitter with constant out of order frames. The bottom of this thread contains the technical description of the problem https://gitlab.com/mbunkus/mkvtoolnix/-/issues/2777 and a link to the detection and correction code added to mkvmerge to fix this issue during remuxing. https://gitlab.com/mbunkus/mkvtoolnix/-/commit/1813e97cbf8f3691c55207f6c72d046ec00a2381 In testing I confirmed that remuxing mp4 to mkv with ffmpeg does Not correct the problem, but remuxing with mkvmerge Does correct it. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luke 37066 Posted March 19 Share Posted March 19 On 3/17/2024 at 10:23 PM, ruest said: @Luke I have found what I believe is causing the playback issue in the files I have. I would ask that you take a look at the cause and see if you can determine why some Emby clients can automatically handle this problem in the video source and some cannot. Ultimately the goal would be to have all Emby clients being able to detect and automatically handle this non-fatal encoding problem. Root Cause Research led me to several old issues potential related to timestamp induced jitters. The one that turned out to be my issue was the MP4 file not containing a ctts atom (frame offset table) which induced the jitter with constant out of order frames. The bottom of this thread contains the technical description of the problem https://gitlab.com/mbunkus/mkvtoolnix/-/issues/2777 and a link to the detection and correction code added to mkvmerge to fix this issue during remuxing. https://gitlab.com/mbunkus/mkvtoolnix/-/commit/1813e97cbf8f3691c55207f6c72d046ec00a2381 In testing I confirmed that remuxing mp4 to mkv with ffmpeg does Not correct the problem, but remuxing with mkvmerge Does correct it. Hi, the problem is with the web app and the Roku app, we are dependent on the web browser video player and the Roku system video player. For those players to be able to automatically handle this,, the improvements need to happen at that level, not in the Emby user interface. What Emby could do is force transcoding on everything in order to correct the problem, but obviously that's not a desirable solution. Maybe you could report the problem in the Roku forums? Anyhow, thanks for the investigation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ruest 3 Posted March 19 Author Share Posted March 19 Thanks for the explanation. I agree that forcing transcoding is not a good option and fixing the bad encodes would be better. I'll followup with Roku and see what they say. In the meantime at least now I can now fix my own library as I run across files with this issue. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luke 37066 Posted March 19 Share Posted March 19 2 minutes ago, ruest said: Thanks for the explanation. I agree that forcing transcoding is not a good option and fixing the bad encodes would be better. I'll followup with Roku and see what they say. In the meantime at least now I can now fix my own library as I run across files with this issue. Android is the one platform where we work hands on with the video player and have more control over it, so yes in theory this could be handled and recovered from. However these are not always easy to solve and require a lot of developer time to rework the way things are happening with the decoders, renderers, etc. Users constantly throw all kinds of wrinkles at us with oddly encoded files, however we get so many of them that we have to pick our battles. Generally speaking, if we think the issue that you're running into could be applicable for other users, then we'll be more likely to want to build some resiliency into the video player for it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ruest 3 Posted March 20 Author Share Posted March 20 On 3/19/2024 at 1:52 AM, Luke said: however we get so many of them that we have to pick our battles. Generally speaking, if we think the issue that you're running into could be applicable for other users, then we'll be more likely to want to build some resiliency into the video player for it. I understand completely, and thank you for the assistance and support. I have also reported the problem to Roku referencing my tests with direct USB playback using the Roku player and will update here if/when they provide a response. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ScottyT 3 Posted March 20 Share Posted March 20 On 18/03/2024 at 15:23, ruest said: @Luke In testing I confirmed that remuxing mp4 to mkv with ffmpeg does Not correct the problem, but remuxing with mkvmerge Does correct it. Thanks, this helped me with my problem too. I have a large number of 'consumer' HEVC movie files (RARBG, LAMA) that show these timing issues on both the Android TV app and the Android app on my TCL TV. The problem files play ok in other apps, but then I don't get the Android TV app's option to convert "unknown audio" multichannel AAC to AC3 5.1 so only get stereo sound. Remuxing with mkvmerge fixes the playback issue, I just now have to batch convert hundreds of probable problem files. It would be great if Emby could work around whatever the issue is to allow smooth playback. I can provide multiple samples if needed. Thanks all. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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