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c_death
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I have been having problems with Live TV playback being very erratic.  Many times when I start to play TV it either never starts playing, or plays for 1 second then freezes.  This problem happens playing to a web browser or to a chromecast.  Sometimes it will play fine.  I have checked CPU usage when it does work and it never goes above 50%.  

 

I am using HDHomeRun with 3 tuners.  

Running on Server 2012 R2.

Quad Core Processor 4.2 Ghz

8 GB Ram

Emby Version 3.0.5781.3

 

I have 1Gbps connections to my computer and the HDHomeRun and the Server machine.  

The chromecast is connected to a 5Ghz wireless.

The transcoding directory has it's own dedicated hard drive.

 

I have been trying to fix this problem for weeks if not months and recently thinking that the built in tuner support would fix my problem.  But I am still having the issues.

 

I am also having general server issues that I will post in a separate thread, however will post log files in both in case there is some kind of connection with the issues.

I am including the latest transcode logs from when I attempted to play Live TV.  Also to note, that the most recent attempts to play Live TV generated no log files at all.

 

If there is any other information that could be useful please let me know and I will update accordingly.

 

Thanks in advance

 

---  Will insert link to other post below when created ---

http://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/28023-emby-server-random-connection-issues/

 

EDIT -----

 

Also to note, that there is no feedback when starting a Live TV stream.  Perhaps it would be a good idea to add some text "BUFFERING" or "TRANSCODING" or something with a % progress to see if it is actually doing anything.

 

After rebooting the server, I now cannot scroll up and down the channels list.  (reloading the page fixed this though.  Not the first time it's happened)

server-63584365503.txt

transcode-19b32f4e-d21e-4617-ad3d-e1286913625f.txt

transcode-e3a722fb-d1e0-49a5-9388-07c605f253bd.txt

transcode-eeb46e10-7268-485a-9fa8-cee2de3545dc.txt

Edited by c_death
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Please supply more logs with the new version just so that we can see if they are consistent or not. In the transcode log you posted here, you're only getting 17fps when transcoding, which is not fast enough to be playable. So if we continue to see that in your transcode log files, then I would just suggest to focus your live tv playback on Emby apps that can direct play it without transcoding.

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Thank you for the response.  I may not have been clear before, but I have played full HD live TV to my chromecast in the past with no stuttering whatsoever through a full 1 hour episode of a show.  Unfortunately I don't have logs from when it played good.  

Right now i'm trying to play to my Chrome browser.  (as a note i decided to try Internet Explorer 11 and the chromecast and I got no playback and no transcode logs) 

 

If i use the HDHomerun player program, there is no problems so I know the network can handle the playback.

 

I tried 2 HD channels, one played for several seconds.  The second one did for a second.  Then I tried an SD channel and I got no playback at all, after that any channel I tried just didn't even generate a log file.

I am also including a transcode from a few days ago that is showing 40FPS.

 

Thanks for the assistance.

 

EDIT

 

Now i've been having problems with LIVE TV suggestions, guide, and channels from even showing up in emby.  It just spins forever.  I just rebooted the server machine and this is now happening.  This has happened in the past too.

server-63584682384.txt

transcode-3d64cfaf-39d8-41b6-9965-bbf55804723f.txt

transcode-73193ca0-e236-4140-8d24-517a08cbc1dc.txt

transcode-a4c723bd-ca06-4f26-b810-101ef9c18e47.txt

server-63584682042.txt

server-63584624708.txt

transcode-439463f3-f348-4a7d-aef6-b16a2d47ebea.txt

transcode-f484f8b8-ba56-4e0d-b69d-a1d689fe6995.txt

Edited by c_death
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I do believe you but I can really only comment on what I'm seeing. You actually do have a few logs where the fps look fine, and a few others where it looks too low. that suggests maybe something going on on your machine that might be affecting performance? do you have other applications running that might consume some cpu?

 

In one of your server logs the refresh guide operation was running. it looks like throughout the entire server log it still hadn't finished, which is unusual. do you have a massive channel list?

 

Try this - go into live tv settings for that tuner, and then enable the option to only import favorite channels from the tuner. then go to the HDHR web interface and mark 2 or 3 channels as favorites. Then let the refresh guide operation run to completion, and see how it performs after that.

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I am actually checking the system itself right now.  While I haven't been getting any CPU or RAM issues, just now I noticed the hard drive my OS is installed on seemed to be running slowly.  I've run tests on all my hard drives and the transcode drive and media drives come back with high speeds.  The OS drive has been erratic.  I hadn't suspected any system problems because everything else runs fine on the system.  Maybe this is a new issue that wasn't there before....

 

As for my channels i only have 250, but if the hard drive is being slow that could explain it.

 

I will have to look into this more.

Edited by c_death
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OK.  So here is what happened.  My hard drive was randomly slowing down.  Sometimes 3MB / sec sometimes 100MB / sec.  I replaced it with an SSD.  Then my power supply died, so then I replaced that.  Now everything is running nice and smoothly.  

So here is where I stand now with emby:

Emby program is on SSD

Emby transcode is on a dedicated HDD with 135MB / sec average access time.

Emby media is on RAID 5 array with 350MB + access times

 

Now when I look in the transcode log, it shows 42 FPS, but it still stops at 100 frames or so.  The last time i was watching live TV and it was working, the ffmpeg.exe file was running at 40% CPU or so.  Now it has 0% CPU when I try to watch live TV.  I will check it and see if i can get something at all to show up to see if this uses any CPU or not.

 

Please advise on next steps.

 

EDIT

 

Ok I tried again after another reboot and Live TV seems to be working.  I will test this more and report back.

Edited by c_death
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  • Solution

OK i'm going to go ahead and mark this fixed.

 

Multiple problems at the same time have made this difficult to troubleshoot.

Problems

1 - Erratic hard drive speed that the emby program was located

2 - Bad power supply

3 - Corrupted file system

4 - Corrupted windows system files

 

How I diagnosed

1 - I used Hdtune to test the speeds of all my hard drives.  The main drive would sometimes report speeds of 3MB/sec to 6MB/sec and windows was running very sluggishly.  Sometimes It would report 100MB/sec.

2 - Computer just wouldn't turn on after a shutdown.  I shorted the green wire on the power supply unit to a black wire with a piece of metal.  This will simulate pushing the power button.  Nothing happened.  I opened the power supply case and it had leaking capacitors.  It is also over 8 years old.  A good run, time to replace it.

3 - I cloned my old hard drive to the new hard drive on my other computer and it failed due to "file system errors".

4 - Just figured this would be a problem with corrupted file system.

 

Solutions

1 - Replaced and cloned hard drive

2 - Replaced power supply

3 - Used the built in windows chkdsk program to fix the problems before the clone, then had to do it again once it was in the computer and running.

4 - I used the command prompt run as administrator and use the command "sfc /scannow".  It found and fixed corrupted operating system files.

 

 

Since this, i've been able to run live TV with barely any problems.  There is occasional hitching at the start of playback but once it gets going, it's good.

Hopefully this will help others with playback or server issues as it's not always a software problem.

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