Live TV – Transcoding Issues

[taylorbourne 19]

My Emby setup consists of a custom m3u playlist with Schedules Direct for guide data.

 

I've noticed that when I try to play live TV from my browser (Chrome, latest) or FireTV Stick it seems to always transcode. Most channels will work for a short period of time, then eventually I'll get a pop up warning me that there is a problem with the channel, I think sometimes it says to ensure a tuner is available? Is there any way to force direct play to any device whenever possible?

 

Aside from that, when I try to play my channels on my Amazon Fire Stick they will play for about 30 seconds to a minute before restarting playback from the start of the stream. This will happen over and over again. I believe I've noticed the same behavior when trying to play on the Xbox. I have enabled direct stream of live TV – same result.

 

Looking for advice on how to get things running more smoothly. If I take any of my stream URLs from my m3u playlist and play them in VLC they work perfectly fine. Are these problems likely caused by emby? Or could this be a shortcoming of my server – being that it cannot transcode the streams fast enough for smooth playback.

[Luke 37132]

Hi, sorry to hear this. We would have to look at a specific example. best thing to do is supply the information requested in how to report a media playback issue. Thanks !

[taylorbourne 19]

Hey Luke!

 

Just now I was watching a channel via the web interface (chrome) and it was working fine for about 1 minute then the video disappeared and I was left back at the guide view. Attached is the ffmpeg transcode and my server log.
 

I'll update this thread again when I can provide logs for what's happening on my Fire TV stick.

 

Thanks!

server.txt

ffmpeg-transcode.txt

Edited October 15, 2016 by taylorbourne

[Luke 37132]

Thanks. please try again with the latest release of the server.

[taylorbourne 19]

Awesome thanks Luke, seems to be much more stable now. Did I read in another thread that there's an update in the pipeline for FireTV? Also, did something about channel mapping change with the latest release? I'm getting 

2016-10-17 10:02:54.5364 Info App: Schedules Direct doesnt have data for channel: NBC NBC

For all my channels when they were mapping appropriately based on channel-id last week.

 

Thanks!

[Luke 37132]

Yea take a look at this thread and make sure to leave your feedback:

https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/39601-naming-and-ordering-iptvm3u/

 

Thanks.

[taylorbourne 19]

Cool! Moved my guide data issue discussion to that thread. While my FireTV seems to be working better with live tv, I'm still having some issues in Chrome. When I try to play one of my channels (Bravo TV), I get the spinner for about 30 seconds then it just goes away with no action. Here's the relevant logs.

server.txt

ffmpeg-transcode.txt

[taylorbourne 19]

Didn't want to start a whole new thread again, but I'm also seeing issues with recording on the latest version of Emby for OSX. All my recordings last about 1 minute then fail. All the logs look similar to this:

{"Protocol":"Http","Id":"af7c9a57aa2b421e8eefd69901995df2_b8454f57a85d79e62b1ca3ee673942a5","Path":"http://smashtv.ddns.net:9090/load/xxx/782.mpegts","Type":"Default","ReadAtNativeFramerate":false,"SupportsTranscoding":true,"SupportsDirectStream":true,"SupportsDirectPlay":true,"IsInfiniteStream":true,"RequiresOpening":false,"RequiresClosing":false,"MediaStreams":[{"IsInterlaced":true,"IsDefault":false,"IsForced":false,"Type":"Video","Index":-1,"IsExternal":false,"IsTextSubtitleStream":false,"SupportsExternalStream":false},{"DisplayTitle":"","IsInterlaced":false,"IsDefault":false,"IsForced":false,"Type":"Audio","Index":-1,"IsExternal":false,"IsTextSubtitleStream":false,"SupportsExternalStream":false}],"PlayableStreamFileNames":[],"Formats":[],"RequiredHttpHeaders":{}}

/Users/Taylor/.config/emby-server/ffmpeg/20160124/ffmpeg -fflags +genpts -async 1 -vsync -1 -i "http://smashtv.ddns.net:9090/load/xxx/782.mpegts" -t 00:08:03.942 -sn -codec:v:0 libx264 -force_key_frames "expr:gte(t,n_forced*5)"  -vf "yadif=0:-1:0" -pix_fmt yuv420p -preset superfast -crf 23 -b:v 25000000 -maxrate 25000000 -bufsize (25000000*2) -vsync -1 -profile:v high -level 41 -map_metadata -1 -threads 0 -codec:a:0 aac -strict experimental -ab 320000 -y "/Users/Taylor/Media/Recordings/Series/The Simpsons/Season 3/The Simpsons S03E14 Lisa the Greek.mp4"


ffmpeg version 2.8.5-tessus Copyright (c) 2000-2016 the FFmpeg developers
  built with Apple LLVM version 6.0 (clang-600.0.57) (based on LLVM 3.5svn)
  configuration: --cc=/usr/bin/clang --prefix=/opt/ffmpeg --as=yasm --extra-version=tessus --enable-avisynth --enable-fontconfig --enable-gpl --enable-libass --enable-libbluray --enable-libfreetype --enable-libgsm --enable-libmodplug --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libopencore-amrnb --enable-libopencore-amrwb --enable-libopus --enable-libschroedinger --enable-libsoxr --enable-libspeex --enable-libtheora --enable-libvidstab --enable-libvo-aacenc --enable-libvo-amrwbenc --enable-libvorbis --enable-libvpx --enable-libwavpack --enable-libx264 --enable-libx265 --enable-libxavs --enable-libxvid --enable-libzmq --enable-version3 --disable-ffplay --disable-indev=qtkit --disable-indev=x11grab_xcb
  libavutil      54. 31.100 / 54. 31.100
  libavcodec     56. 60.100 / 56. 60.100
  libavformat    56. 40.101 / 56. 40.101
  libavdevice    56.  4.100 / 56.  4.100
  libavfilter     5. 40.101 /  5. 40.101
  libswscale      3.  1.101 /  3.  1.101
  libswresample   1.  2.101 /  1.  2.101
  libpostproc    53.  3.100 / 53.  3.100
http://smashtv.ddns.net:9090/load/xxx/782.mpegts: Invalid data found when processing input

Seeing the same issues when trying to play a channel normally as well – plays for about 1min (almost exactly) then fails.

 

UPDATE: Just tried my Amazon FireTV after the update, still seeing the same problem there as well.. plays for about a minute then just quits to the guide. Also worth noting it ALWAYS transcodes.

Edited October 18, 2016 by taylorbourne

[Luke 37132]

I don't think there's an Emby problem here. It looks like a bad url. When i test the url myself i don't get a video coming back, so of course ffmpeg is going throw an error.

[taylorbourne 19]

I've redacted my token – I'm only allowed one device so if someone found it I'd be banned! Let me know if you need me to pm you the stream

[Luke 37132]

Ok, I understand. Nonetheless if ffmpeg is complaining about invalid input, I don't think there's going to be much I can do to help. I'm wondering if maybe you need an additional something else added to the url to make it send back video, I'm not sure.

[taylorbourne 19]

Hmm ok I can follow up with the provider and see if there's anything to add. Shouldn't there be a way for me to play the streams directly without ffmpeg though? Also, although I was previously having trouble getting live tv to be stable on FireTV, I was at least able to set recordings and they would finish all the way through. 

Edited October 18, 2016 by taylorbourne

[taylorbourne 19]

After further investigation it seems like the issues I started seeing over the weekend were not an Emby problem. Looks like my streams are dropping off after about a minute for some reason. Weird – it produces the same result as what Emby was doing before the latest updates (server and Fire TV) when the streams were behaving properly.

[Luke 37132]

Thanks for reporting back.