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Playback Problems - QNAP Server


JerryB01

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JerryB01

I installed the latest beta on my QNAP Server (QNAP 453 Pro). Unfortunately I'm having problems playing both Live TV and Recorded Content both on my Android TV (2015 Sony Bravia) and my Windows 10 computer.

 

Live TV: Audio and video start playing but completely freeze after about 5 seconds of material. There after there are intermittent 1 to 2 second bursts of video activity with greater than 50% pixelation of the image and very choppy audio. Overall, it's totally unwatchable.

 

Recorded content: The test recording is an H264 video and ac3 audio in an MP4 container. It plays for about 10 to 15 seconds and then starts intermittently freezing with dropped frames for 1 to 2 seconds intermixed with 1 to 2 seconds of video. Of note, both Plex and Kodi play the same test video file on the same TV and computer without any playback problems.

 

I then did some testing to see if I could figure out what's going on. I opened up the QNAP system in a web browser on my computer so that I could watch QNAP cpu activity while attempting to play the test file on my TV. Baseline QNAP average CPU activity was 0.8% to 0.9% before inititating playback in each instance. When I played the test file using Kodi average cpu activity increased to 1.2%. Plex was slight less efficient with an increase in average cpu activity to 2.9% during playback of the video file. As before, in both of these cases, no problems were detected during playback of the test file. In contrast, average cpu usage rapidly increased to 79.8% and the audio and video begain to break up as before as soon as I started playing the test file using Emby.

 

Does anyone have any idea what is I can do to resolve the problem with excessive cpu activity that interfers with playback when using Emby?

 

Because of the Live TV function, I'd like to be able to switch my system to Emby but I can't do that if I can't reliably play back both live TV and recorded content.

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For the recording, it is probably transcoding when it could be direct playing. What apps were you playing from aside from the tv? For the apps, it might be as simple as increasing the streaming bitrate to get it to direct play.

 

For the bravia's over dlna, we have mp4/h264/ac3 listed as direct play, so this could also be the bitrate setting. you can increase that in the dlna section by editing the bravia profile. And in general it's a good idea to supply logging info:

 

http://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/790-how-to-report-a-problem/

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JerryB01

With respect to Live TV, you don't have a profile for 2015 Sony Bravia TVs. Do I just copy the 2013 profile and then edit it to change the identifier and the bitrate setting?

 

With respect to playing back recording content, hopefully I now have everything you need. I rebooted the TV before my test so the only other apps that were playing on the TV were the default Android TV apps that Sony loads upon booting. The QNAP also didn't have any apps running other than the background services as indicated by the low cpu useage prior to attempting to play the video with Emby.

 

The Emby Server Version is 3.0.5713.1 and the Emby Android TV version is 1.0.80g.

 

I'm attaching the server and transcode log files from a repeat trial this evening. Note, I only let the show run long enough for about 30 seconds before stopping things since the video had already paused about 3 times and I figured that should be enough to capture what was going on in the log files. Hopefully you can figure out why Emby is trying to transcode a mp4 file that shouldn't need transcoding.

ServerLog.txt

TranscodeLog.txt

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Well I'm not really sure because I don't have a bravia 2015 to test on. I can try and dummy one up based on the existing profiles but we won't know if it's functional until users start playing with it.

 

As far as android tv goes, I would head over to the section of the forum for that app. I think the key issue is the fact that it's transcoding at all. I would think that file can direct play.

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JerryB01

Can you create a dummy profile for my Sony TV based on the existing profiles and I'll test it. The model/ID for the TV is XBR-55X850C where 55 inch is the screen size and can also be 65 or 75 in this model. There key is the C at the end which identifies the 2015 model year. The 2014 model year sets ended in B.

 

I doubt that heading over to the android tv section would help since the problem with transcoding is not limited to android tv, it also happens when I try and play the file on my Windows computer using Emby Theater (v 3.0.5686.19243). Attached is the transcode log file from my attempt to play the file using Emby Theater.

EmbyTheaterTranscodeLog.txt

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Yes, it is related to the app because the question of why is it transcoding is going to be specific to each one.

 

I have added a 2014 bravia profile for the next release but as it turns out i can't dummy up a 2015 profile because the detection is quite complex

.*(KDL-\d{2}W[5-9]\d{2}B|KDL-\d{2}R480|XBR-\d{2}X[89]\d{2}B|KD-\d{2}[SX][89]\d{3}B).*

So it's not as if I can just change something from 2014 to 2015. But maybe we will get lucky and it will be picked up by the 2014 profile.

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JerryB01

Okay, I'll post in the Android TV section and see if anyone can figure out why it is insisting on transcoding for playback.

 

I checked the logs and Emby is definitely not matching my TV with a profile. I'll wait and see if it matches the 2014 profile in the next release. However, I doubt it will. I suspect for it to match you'll need to, at a minimum, change the B to a C throughout the detection string since that letter is what distinguishes the model year. I suspect the correct string to match my and related TVs would be

 

.*(XBR-\d{2}X[89]\d{2}C).*

 

But this would only match their 2015 4K models, It wouldn't match their non 4K sets which still use the KD prefix in their model designation.

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raven-au

 

.*(XBR-\d{2}X[89]\d{2}C).*

 

But this would only match their 2015 4K models, It wouldn't match their non 4K sets which still use the KD prefix in their model designation.

 

And I suspect not all the 2015 4K models either.

How about the KD-55X8500C for example, is that matched somewhere else in the config?

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