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Emby Theater on Raspberry Pi


Luke

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Zebouski

So I've been using LibreELEC's Kodi setup as a frontend for Emby for TVs around the house which works fine for movies and TV, but gave me issues with music and the rest. I also want to unify the experience across devices, so this release of Emby Theater for the Pis looks perfect.

 

I just have a few questions on how to make it a full replacement

 

1. Autostart: LibreELEC boots straight into Kodi, for ET do I just run the electron command as a startup process?

 

2. Updating: looks like ET will soon be properly packaged, but for now, updating is simply git pull, correct?

 

3. CEC: How does this work? When I ran electron . cec-client, the TV's remote inputs still didn't work. I could only control it through another Emby app.

 

Thanks.

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charlied573

So, I have this more or less running... two errors that I haven't seen in this thread, I'm wondering if anyone has come across them:

 

1)  on videos with mp3 audio encodes, within Emby Theater no sound plays.  If I pass the command in a terminal with '-o hdmi', it plays fine.  Any way for me to add that?

2)  HEVC files will not play, nor will they transcode.  I dropped the max rate to 720p, still nothing. 

 

If I Switch to RPV, they play... but they're completely out of sync, and I have no navigation control.  Is there any way to force a transcode on x265 files *without* doing so server side?  The other boxes I have scattered about handle x265 fine, and I don't want to transcode to the lowest common denominator.

 

EDIT:  To note, this is on a Pi 3.  All of the original files are 1080p minumum, and it doesn't transcode for RPV either, it just allows for (choppy, horribly out of sync) playback.

 

So, I fixed number 1, by adding the following to playbackhandler/playbackhandler.js:

   args.push("--adev");
   args.push("hdmi");

The transcoding of HEVC files... remains a problem  :)

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charlied573

 

@@charlied573, what does this do?

-o hdmi

As I said, that works fine on the command line; that's why I added 

   args.push("--adev");
   args.push("hdmi");

That got the sound working with the mp3 streams.  I just need to figure a way to selectively get the hevc files to transcode atm

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charlied573

I understand that but I'd like to know what they do because I don't see any reference to those in mpv documentation:

 

https://mpv.io/manual/master/

 

That wasn't in mpv, it was in the omxplayer.  Originally, it refused to output an mp3 stream in Theater, but passing '-o hdmi' on the command line got it going.  So I inserted that into playbackhandler/playbackhandler.js and got omxplayer spitting out the proper audio.

 

I probably didn't make that clear enough originally, sorry about that.  mpv plays the sound just fine on it's own, no need to force it.

 

I'm trying to stick with the native theater player for now, since it's more seamless (when running with mpv, the desktop shows for a few beats - the kids get antsy and start mashing buttons).  Since neither player works really well for HEVC (omx refuses, mpv is a horrible, choppy, out-of-sync mess), I'm trying to stick with native.

Edited by charlied573
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Ok, we are moving on from that version and focusing on mpv, so best thing to do is help us improve that one instead. Can you describe the desktop showing issue a little more?

 

as far as hevc, is that even realistic for Pi? thanks.

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Jdiesel

Ok, we are moving on from that version and focusing on mpv, so best thing to do is help us improve that one instead. Can you describe the desktop showing issue a little more?

 

as far as hevc, is that even realistic for Pi? thanks.

 

Running Kodi the RPi3 is capable of software decoding medium bitrate (10-20Mbps) 1080p HEVC videos. I can't recall the exact bitrate where it starts to choke but the encode parameters also play a part. Not really an ideal HEVC device but the RPi3 is a surprisingly capable device.

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charlied573

Ok, we are moving on from that version and focusing on mpv, so best thing to do is help us improve that one instead. Can you describe the desktop showing issue a little more?

 

as far as hevc, is that even realistic for Pi? thanks.

 

That makes sense then, I'll swap back to mpv this evening.  Putting mpv into the external player, when a movie is selected the Theater disappears and the PIXEL desktop shows for about a 2 count before mpv kicks in.  The actual Emby server is running on my NAS box, and the Pi is connecting to that locally, wired connection (E3 1230v5 server for reference).

 

HEVC being realistic... personally, I don't think so.  At least, not with reasonable encodes... that's why I'm trying to get it to transcode into something more palatable for the Pi.  The two 'main' HTPC front ends are more than capable of dealing with anything thrown at them via direct stream; the Pi 3's are small dumb boxes in the kids rooms.  

 

There is option that worked quite well with libreELEC  - it's a tick box that forces transcodes on all x265 files.  That said, I like to tinker so I swapped to raspberian and ET   :)  A similar option would be ideal.

 

It's my own fault for converting so much of my library to HEVC, but it just hasn't been an issue until the Pi's.  They're such tempting little kits though... I couldn't resist them.

Edited by charlied573
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Just a general announcement. The latest updates have added live seeking support for Live TV. Enjoy.

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  • 3 weeks later...
dennish

It's based on Arch Linux, it's apparently called pacman  here.

I got the MPV installed, but not sure how to use that as the default one. (had to grab it with wget, the auto mirror gave me a 404)

Getting a "no such file or directory, open 'tmp/omxplayerdbus.pi' when I try to play a movie.

Edited by dennish
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  • 2 weeks later...

been trying for ages to set this up, can't get electron to install. just says 

 

'types/node' is not in the npm registry 

 

fresh raspbian install, apt-get update/upgrade done, npm installed ect. Anyone else had this issue?

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  • 2 weeks later...
Strudo76

So, has anyone tried this on the new Raspian Stretch yet? About to give it a go now, but I'm not even close to expert at this stuff.

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  • 1 month later...
cbradley69

I have a very dark picture when using omxplayer on a Raspberry pi 3. Everything looks great using the HTML5, but i'd rather use the app. I have my back light maxed out and it's still very dark. Any suggestions? 

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It is unfortunately the app that is no longer updated what you are seeing is the osd overlay that is not disappearing. I would like to use it as well because omx version does deinterlacing the other electron version doesn't deinterlace nor does it have osd while this one actually does. I have fallen back to using kodi in the meantime as kodi on the rpi runs perfectly and it is much fluid but kodi has years of experience perfecting it.  

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cbradley69

Thanks Denz! That explains things. I'd rather not use Kodi, I want to keep things as simple as possible and Emby seems to do that perfectly. I think I'm going to experiment with booting to Chroium in kiosk mode and use the HTML5 option. I will need to write a short script to translate the CEC commands to keyboard buttons to control things. Should be fairly easy using xdotool. Unless someone has already done this. If you know of anyone that has, please let me know.

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