Issues direct streaming live TV

[h.buckle 11]

Having some issues getting Live TV direct streaming to work consistently.

Sometimes remuxing works, but other times what seems to happen is the server either tries to remux and fails completely, starts remuxing the stream but fails after a few minutes, or it decides not to remux and instead transcodes. When it does transcode playback is fine, but there should be no need for it as the clients are all PCs on a 1GB wired LAN. Even when it remuxes succesfully it still transcodes the audio.

I can open the streams from the MediaPortal server in VLC and they play fine

The server is 3.0.5934.0 running on Server 2012 R2, clients are Emby Theatre 2.2.5 on Windows 10

Plugin options

 

Remux failure.log

Remux failure after 30 seconds.log

Server.log

[Luke 37051]

looks like there's an open ticket on ffmpeg for the error in those remux logs:

 

https://trac.ffmpeg.org/ticket/3339

[h.buckle 11]

Out of interest why does it need to remux at all? Can't the stream just be passed directly to the client?

[Luke 37051]

In order for that to happen, the reported media info by the tv plugin needs to fit within what the app supports. I notice the input audio is aac_latm, which I've not seen before, so that's probably why. we'll have to look into what apps can support that.

[Luke 37051]

Ok, Emby Theater is accepting all audio codecs so that's not the issue here. I think the issue is the use of the machine names in the url. Since the source is http, we don't really no if the client device is going to be able to reach it or not, therefore we just do a quick string comparison on the urls to try and guess if they're part of the same subnet or not. i haven't really done anything to that to handle machine names, so I think it's assuming the address is not reachable therefore it's streaming through emby server.

[h.buckle 11]

I updated the plugin settings to use the IP address instead of the host name, but the server still either transcodes or remuxes.

The streams with aac_latm are UK DVB-T2 HD streams

I've noticed that SD streams are always transcoded, see attached log

SD transcode.log

 

You seem to be right that the remuxing failure is an ffmpeg issue, specifically when going to MKV - I tried using the same command line to remux to a TS and that seems to work

[Luke 37051]

you're still connected to the app though by host name

 

http://emby.crucible.local:8096/videos/c1fa7fcb5d967ca713bd3c458bb8d719/stream.mkv?

[h.buckle 11]

Ah, see what you mean. Yes, if I sign out then add the server by IP address and connect then I get direct streaming. It would be good to have things working with hostnames though. I have Active Directory at home so I always just use the DNS names rather than IP addresses. Could you do something like an nslookup to determine if the machines are on the same subnet?

[Luke 37051]

no, it needs to be more primitive, something that just compares the strings. doing those kinds of things at the time of playback can cause long delays if it's not reachable and has to wait for a timeout to determine that.

[h.buckle 11]

Maybe just compare the domain name suffix then (.crucible.local) ?

[Luke 37051]

Yes something along those lines but at least until then you have some kind of workaround

[h.buckle 11]

Yes, thanks, will use IP address for now. What's the best way to track these issues so I know when it gets addressed, log it as an issue on github?