Emby Theater for Linux

[InnKeepNY 4]

@alucryd

Thanks and appreciate the prompt reply

[InnKeepNY 4]

@alucryd

Just FYI downloading and installing the emby-theater*.zst file ver 3.0.16-2 works fine. (Using download from mirror). Sorry I should have tried that first before posting.

[jayroos 1]

I am using Theater on a minimal Ubuntu 22.04 install. I have discovered that I get the blue spinner behavior when I try to autostart theater using Gnome Startup Applications. However, if I launch it from the terminal, content will play.

Does anyone have any ideas about that? I'm trying to create a media player that just starts up and runs without a KB or mouse. I'm assuming it's an environment issue.

[InnKeepNY 4]

Out of curiosity I'm wondering if there is anyone who uses SVP (Smooth Video Projects frame interpolation software) in linux has been able to get it to work with emby theater? I'm pretty close as in the logs shows that it recognizes emby theater, it doesn't change the settings in the program that is playing. Anyone?

@alucryd - any news on posting of the latest emby theater to Arch community?

[Luke 37066]

2 hours ago, InnKeepNY said:

Out of curiosity I'm wondering if there is anyone who uses SVP (Smooth Video Projects frame interpolation software) in linux has been able to get it to work with emby theater? I'm pretty close as in the logs shows that it recognizes emby theater, it doesn't change the settings in the program that is playing. Anyone?

@alucryd - any news on posting of the latest emby theater to Arch community?

Does that integrate with mpv?

[InnKeepNY 4]

@Luke,

Yes it does with the only requirement that it is compiled with vapoursynth. According to Chainik (developer) that is what the issue is.

@alucryd Thanks for posting the new version for Arch, much apprecated!

[InnKeepNY 4]

so getting frustrated. the SVP log shows that SVP is picking up the video steam but can't can't do anything with it as what emby is using isn't compiled with vapoursynth. I can make emby use mpv as an external player but it's ugly (won't save last point viewed, automatically matches it as watched etc). It looks like emby use a different mpv/libmpv than I am (obviously), does anyone know where the emby mpv/libmpv is located? I just can't seem to locate it. 

I hope everyone is having a great holiday season!

[alucryd 216]

@InnKeepNY On arch it's located at `/usr/lib/emby-theater/libmpv.so.2.0.0`. As you correctly assessed it's not built with vapoursynth support, but this is something we can look into in the future. Note that if you plan to replace the lib, please keep the `so.1` symlink as the current theater implementation is looking for that one, not the newer `so.2` (although it does work with the newer one for now).

[InnKeepNY 4]

@alucrydThanks for the tips. I'll give it a go. What's the best way to replace it? I'm not afraid to get my hands "dirty" so to speak but what steps would be the best way to go about it please?

[Bingie 99]

Hi all, old school Debian nut here, been running it for over 20 years, and UNIX since the 80's.

Thinking of trying Emby Theater on a mini pc with minimal Debian install, using the stable branch, currently version 11 "Bullseye".

I assume a lightweight GUI like Xfce will work just fine.  I'll also put an RF remote control on it, since most intel mini pc's still don't support HDMI-CEC yet, but I'm not worried about that.

Anyone else running this config?  I'd love to hear from 'ya... thanks

 

[Bingie 99]

Emby Theater works great on Debian stable.  Needed a few tweaks, like set default audio out the HDMI port instead of audio card, stuff like that.

Sadly, RF remotes are a hassle, I have 2 here, and both have issues in one way or another.  I ordered a new one, recommended by the kodi people to work, so we'll see.

 

[iammrcus 0]

Wondering if anyone can point me in the right direction.

Using Debian (testing) and the latest emby-theater.
I have HDMI out to a Denon AVR, if I play direct in mpv I get dolby digital with the following in my mpv.conf:
 

audio-spdif=ac3,dts
audio-channels=5.1,stereo
af=lavcac3enc

however the same videos when played via emby-theater just spin on the blue loading circle.

If I comment out those values, the videos do play, but only in downmixed stereo, not in 5.1 (amp does not say "dolby digital")

If I leave the mpv.conf settings commented, and  set those settings in the GUI of emby-theater, the same thing happens (loading circle, video never plays)

Can I make emby-theater use the system mpv instead of the packaged one?

 

[frabe8378910 3]

On 3/9/2023 at 8:16 AM, iammrcus said:

Wondering if anyone can point me in the right direction.

Using Debian (testing) and the latest emby-theater.
I have HDMI out to a Denon AVR, if I play direct in mpv I get dolby digital with the following in my mpv.conf:
 

audio-spdif=ac3,dts
audio-channels=5.1,stereo
af=lavcac3enc

however the same videos when played via emby-theater just spin on the blue loading circle.

If I comment out those values, the videos do play, but only in downmixed stereo, not in 5.1 (amp does not say "dolby digital")

If I leave the mpv.conf settings commented, and  set those settings in the GUI of emby-theater, the same thing happens (loading circle, video never plays)

Can I make emby-theater use the system mpv instead of the packaged one?

 

==> If you go into the emby-theater options you can select "externer player" and after filling in the required parameters you could run i.e. the system "mpv" or "vlc" player.
I have use that in the past on my zotac box (running debian unstable + emby-theater) while the emby-theater only showed a black window. 

I have a similar setup for some time now which works fine otherwise, but with also a non-functional passthrough: The setup is a PC runnig debian unstable with multiseat setup (Intel GPU + Nvidia card). PC screen (Intel GPU) is attached to seat=0 and running kde and the Nvida card is attached to seat=1 and connect to my Denon AVC-X4700 via HDMI. Also attached the Denon is a LG OLED TV. On seat=1 I have a "icewm-session" autostarted which fires up emby-theater. 
If I don't setup passthrough options in emby-theater all movies will work and the sound is playing 7.1 format. The Denon "Info" list the input as "pcm". 
If I enable passthrough play a movie with ac3 stereo or dolby 5.1 the Denon "Info" list the input as "unknown" and no sound is played. 

So I'm too looking for more insides why passthrough do not work or why the Denon does not understand the format send over the HDMI connection.
Will as soon as I have some time to digg into the problem I'll try your tip with the external mpv player.    

[acnp77 60]

I was really happy to see that there is an Emby-client for Linux, but:

@ Emby devs: What is the status of this project? I see the download points to "githubusercontent.com" . Is this an official part of Emby, or just a 3rd party unofficial project? Or what is the plan here?

I am asking because I do not like to use SW that is not part of the official project, for the common reasons...

Thanks a lot for some clarification.

[GrimReaper 3294]

18 minutes ago, acnp77 said:

I see the download points to "githubusercontent.com"

Which download? Where do you see that? 

Various distros are supported with install instructions as noted at:

https://emby.media/emby-theater-linux.html

All links/mentions lead to official github release page:

https://github.com/MediaBrowser/emby-theater-electron/releases/

[acnp77 60]

Thank you for your reply.

The download link at: https://emby.media/emby-theater-linux.html
points to: https://github.com/MediaBrowser/emby-theater-electron/releases/ and when clicking on the link you download from "objects.githubusercontent.com"

As opposed to Emby Theater for Windows: https://emby.media/emby-theater.html , the download-link points to "embydata.com"

So far so good, I am just confused why this is hosted somewhere else, and I need to know if this is an official part of Emby

Thank you!

[GrimReaper 3294]

Never looked at where from actual file is served - nor thought about comparing it with other releases - going through official repo is good enough for me (nor do I particularly care, tbh), but that's something only Dev can give an exact answer to. 

[acnp77 60]

2 hours ago, GrimReaper said:

Never looked at where from actual file is served - nor thought about comparing it with other releases - going through official repo is good enough for me (nor do I particularly care, tbh), but that's something only Dev can give an exact answer to. 

@Luke would appreciate much to know if the linux/rpi emby theater is an offical part of emby. Thanks a lot

[Luke 37066]

On 3/19/2023 at 12:29 PM, acnp77 said:

Thank you for your reply.

The download link at: https://emby.media/emby-theater-linux.html
points to: https://github.com/MediaBrowser/emby-theater-electron/releases/ and when clicking on the link you download from "objects.githubusercontent.com"

As opposed to Emby Theater for Windows: https://emby.media/emby-theater.html , the download-link points to "embydata.com"

So far so good, I am just confused why this is hosted somewhere else, and I need to know if this is an official part of Emby

Thank you!

They're just hosted in different places, but yes, all built by us.

[acnp77 60]

@LukeThanks!

[acnp77 60]

Hi,

I would like to use ET on my rpi2, instead of emby for kodi, so I downloaded the armhf .xz file, decompressed it and wrote it to an sd-card. All I get is the "raspberry desktop" welcome screen and then the screen turns black. I read something about "fake or full KMS" settings... no idea what to do. I can not even find an ssh user/pw. Can someone help me out here please ? Cheers

[daldana 47]

Hi acnp77,

The rpi2 may not have enough horsepower to run ET, but below is what I had to do to get it to run on an rpi 3b.

 I've found that a few changes in the raspi-config really made a difference. You may have already tried these so I apologize if I'm repeating anything.

1. Increase the GPU memory to 128 or 256.

2. Enable the "Fake KMS" driver. To do this go to Advanced Options, GL Driver, enable "Fake KMS". Note, this may kill HDMI audio, but there is a fix for that. You would have to modify the /boot/config.txt file with the below changes, then selecting the second choice for audio in raspi-config (in my case it was MAI PCM i2s-hifi-0).

# uncomment to force a HDMI mode rather than DVI. This can make audio work in
# DMT (computer monitor) modes
hdmi_drive=2
hdmi_force_edid_audio=1

Hope this helps.

 

[acnp77 60]

Hi daldana

Thanks a lot for your reply

I will try to test this. At the moment my problem is that I can not do anything, since the screen just turns black after the "raspberry desktop" welcome screen. I tried connecting a keyboard to Ctrl-C out of ET, but no luck yet...

[acnp77 60]

Ok, so I changed "dtoverlay=vc4-kms-v3d" in config.txt to "dtoverlay=vc4-fkms-v3d" - Now the display works. GPU memory is set to 128.

Playback is totally unusable with around 1fps even for SD content. I wonder if I am missing HW acceleration? The same rpi2 plays the 1080p video perfectly on emby for kodi.

@daldanaIs your ET on the rpi3 actually usable? meaning at least smooth 1080p playback? Cheers

Edited March 23, 2023 by acnp77

[daldana 47]

@acnp77

I was able to get version 3.0.19 working on an RPI 3b running Debian Bullseye (32-bit) as the OS. I get hardware acceleration on Live TV, Recorded TV, and Movies (mine are all mkv format) using the Auto (copy back) setting. I installed the OS separately, then installed the Linux version of Emby.