Videos buffering in Web / PC App, phone works fine (Debian 12)

[Delyos 1]

Hello all,

I'm using Emby in a remote server with Debian 12 with 16 GB RAM and 1 Gbit connection (unmetered). I've got *Arrs apps running fine. A couple of weeks ago I installed a reverse proxy with NGINX and my own custom domain in cloudflare + SSL with Let's Encrypt. Around that time things got slower. I had Plex installed and everything stuttered A LOT, so I migrated to Emby and the problem persisted (but still did better than Plex).
 
My current problem is videos buffer a lot, even in lower qualities. I have a ~150 Mbps connection (WiFi. LAN is 800 Mbps but the problem was the same). I connected to my emby server through the phone app and it's playing the videofiles in crisp quality, no stuttering, no loading, while my Windows PC takes a while to play even in 720p 4 mpbs (tried mozilla, edge, chrome and emby theater). When I choose Auto quality it usually goes down to 720p 4 mbps and it plays *mostly* with no buffering, but sometimes it gets so bad I can't watch an episode.

Stats for Nerds when choosing 1080p 4 - 8 - 10 Mbps. All three of them buffered and wouldn't play continuously:

Attached are the logs from when I changed the quality while I was writing this post.

Thanks in advance!

ffmpeg-transcode-eb1f28fb-7adf-4801-8a8e-1cb89afea3cf_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-cbddfa79-45a6-4863-8f34-d5290e2b84f8_1.txt embyserver(3).txt ffmpeg-transcode-4d5276b7-b220-40e3-8799-4645fcfedb6f_1.txt ffmpeg-directstream-8d5c8bc6-02e1-4cad-b0ef-1610ddb996e2_1.txt

Edited February 19 by Delyos

[Luke 37259]

Hi, please try lowering the in-app quality setting even more. That will usually resolve issues such as this. I would also try Chrome for comparison purposes. Please let us know if this helps.

Also have you compared you nginx settings to this: 

 

Thanks.

[Delyos 1]

It took me an embarassing amount of time but IT'S DONE.

So in the end I tried Chrome for comparison purposes and also adjusted my nginx settings to those used in the how to. I have to do small modifications BUT in the end it worked.

a. When using Chrome it actually tries and says "Auto - Direct". It keeps buffering but I'm just going to go ahead and assume by bandwidth sucks, for whatever the reason

b. When using Mozilla something similar happens.

c. When using Emby Theater it also works

d. In the end I'm using the subdomain emby.domain.com and since it was already set up I just went ahead and redirected domain.com/emby to emby.domain.com lol...

Just to keep a record of things I hadn't done yet, and do not appear in the first post of that thread for anyone who may be as lost as me:
a. If you're using Cloudflare, remember to make an A record from emby to your IP address, DNS only.

b. In Cloudflare, set your SSL to Full (strict), that fixed a redirecting problem I was having

c. In the server block, for whatever reason nginx insisted http2 was not a thing so I had to write

 

server {

listen [::]:443 ssl http2; ## Listens on port 443 IPv6 ssl enabled

listen 443 sslhttp2; ## Listens on port 443 IPv4 ssl enabled


#Rest of the server block goes here

d. In Emby, set your public ports to 80 (HTTP) and 443 (HTTPS), Read proxy headers to determine client IP addresses "only when they contain remote network addresses", set your external domain to whatever you may want to use "emby.domain.com", and secure connection mode "handled by reverse proxy".  

I am also writing this down in case any of these things I did was a mistake and may be causing whatever residual error / buffering lol

The only thing I still don't understand is why it's so much faster / better quality on my phone than in my PC. My ignorance says it's because my pc screen is bigger than my phone (??) despite the quality of the video streaming (and I assume the data) being the same (I guess?)

Thanks for the help !

[Luke 37259]

Thanks for following up !