Playback problems since upgrade to 3.1.x

[jmangan 11]

Hi, I'm experiencing some playback problems since upgrading to Version 3.1. SD seems to be fine but higher definition video plays for a few seconds, freezes for a couple of seconds, play a bit more and so on. I didn't see this behaviour prior to the upgrade. I'm getting it on the web client and also Emby for Kodi running on a Pi3.

 

At first I thought it might be a slight issue with the new release and so waited for the next update and tried 3.1.1 but still had the problem.

 

Looking at 'top' while playing video I see ffmpeg top out at ~177% during each freeze and dropping back immediately afterwards.

 

I remember in this topic (https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/39281-new-installation-videos-wont-play/?hl=jmangan&do=findComment&comment=368049) you referenced a custom ffmpeg and so followed these instructions to download and install the custom version.

 

sudo wget https://johnvansickle.com/ffmpeg/builds/ffmpeg-git-64bit-static.tar.xz -O /var/lib/emby-server/ffmpeg/20160919.tar.xz
sudo tar -xvf /var/lib/emby-server/ffmpeg/20160919.tar.xz -C /var/lib/emby-server/ffmpeg/
sudo mv /var/lib/emby-server/ffmpeg/ffmpeg-git-20160919-64bit-static /var/lib/emby-server/ffmpeg/20160919
sudo chown -R emby:emby /var/lib/emby-server/ffmpeg/

 

I still can't see the custom ffmpeg path in my web client (as per the topic above) so I edited 'encoding.xml' to point to the new path and restarted emby-server. I still had the same problem and I'm not sure if the custom ffmpeg was picked up but here are the logs from immediately before and after I tried that.

 

 

Thanks.

 

P.S. I've also noticed that the web client is VERY sluggish following the upgrade but doesn't seem to he using much CPU or MEM which seems strange.

ffmpeg-transcode-92bb638e-8816-4f9d-8103-4832698015c9.txt

server-63618075992.txt

server-63618111342.txt

Edited December 23, 2016 by jmangan

[bradford 5]

If you mean you can't see the field to specify the ffmpeg binary to use in the transcoding settings page, then you may have to uninstall your system-installed ffmpeg to see the option come back (see this). I'm not sure what version you downloaded, but if it's the latest then it might have the same problem I'm having with ffmpeg 3.3.2.

[jmangan 11]

Sorry, been offline over Christmas. My previous editing of Encoding.xml actually seemed to make things worse. I could play one item of media and then the server would lock solid. Power off the only option. 

 

So I backed out the change and now everything is fine!? No stuttering, no lockups, web interface seems more responsive.

 

Very strange . . . . .

[Sir Launcelot 0]

Summary: emby-server-beta-3.1.261~beta-15.1.x86_64 uses system ffmpeg rather than hardcoded ffmpeg.

 

I too have been having problems.  I thought this was related to running OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, and ffmpeg being updated.  In the transcoding logs, it had a problem with -hls_time.  Plus, it explicitly referenced /usr/bin/ffmpeg.

 

The system has the following installed:

http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/openSUSE:/Factory/standard/x86_64/ffmpeg-3.2.2-2.1.x86_64.rpm

 

I had thought someone had changed some compile options in ffmpeg in this distro, but couldn't get any previous versions to work.  I attempted to compile from source, but didn't find the config option to enable hls muxing.  Still looking.

 

I also tried going to the latest, as the release notes mentioned:

Enable all muxers and demuxers as they are just descriptor of format thus do not change the behaviour in any relevant way.

 

https://build.opensuse.org/package/show/openSUSE:Factory/ffmpeg

https://build.opensuse.org/package/show/multimedia:libs/ffmpeg

 

... but wasn't sure if the changes got complied in via the variouse OBS build flags.  Either way it didn't work.

 

Then I was wondering why the RPM doesn't mention ffmpeg as a dependency.  I then searched and found this thread.

 

So it seem like ffmpeg is included with Emby, but despite having,

<EncoderAppPath>/var/lib/emby-server/ffmpeg/20160215/ffmpeg</EncoderAppPath>

,in the encoding.xml file, it still uses the system ffmpeg.

 

A workaround might be to uninstall ffmpeg from the system, but I need it for other purposes.  I might symlink it to Emby's version.  But something in the app needs to be fixed to use the hardcoded ffmpeg if it is set.

 

I have changed my PATH statement to search the hardcoded ffmpeg path.  I do see some other environment variables, "MAGICK_HOME," for example.  I am not sure there is one for ffmpeg.

[Sir Launcelot 0]

systemctl status emby-server.service -l
● emby-server.service - Emby Media Server
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/emby-server.service; disabled; vendor preset: disabled)
   Active: active (running) since Thu 2016-12-29 13:26:20 EST; 2min 17s ago
  Process: 2619 ExecStopPost=/usr/lib/emby-server/emby-server.sh clear (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
 Main PID: 2649 (su)
    Tasks: 0 (limit: 512)
   Memory: 1.0M
      CPU: 62ms
   CGroup: /system.slice/emby-server.service
           ‣ 2649 su -s /bin/sh -c umask $0; exec "$1" "$@" emby -- 002 env MAGICK_HOME=/usr/lib/emby-server MAGICK_CODER_FILTER_PATH=/usr/lib/emby-server/lib64/EmbyMagick-6.9.6/modules-Q8/filters MAGICK_CODER_MODULE_PATH=/usr/lib/emby-server/lib64/EmbyMagick-6.9.6/modules-Q8/coders MONO_THREADS_PER_CPU=500 MONO_GC_PARAMS=nursery-size=128m LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/lib/emby-server/lib64 /usr/bin/mono-sgen --optimize=all /usr/lib/emby-server/bin/MediaBrowser.Server.Mono.exe -programdata /var/lib/emby-server -ffmpeg /var/lib/emby-server/ffmpeg/20160215/ffmpeg -ffprobe /var/lib/emby-server/ffmpeg/20160215/ffprobe -restartpath /usr/lib/emby-server/restart.sh

It appears to have the correct path for the option -ffmpeg passed to it, but it seems to ignore it.

[Luke 37251]

Thanks for the info.