ffmpeg issue

[techywarrior 688]

Recently I've been getting:

Unable to get property 'Codec' of undefined or null reference

trying to play some movies. It's not all new movies I ripped and it happens in all web browsers as well as Roku.

 

There are other people reporting, what I believe is the same issue, in the Roku forum.

 

ffmpeg logs.zip

 

Attached are some ffmpeg logs to look at. The codec is the exact same I use for all my movies so not sure why this movie has an issue and the other movies don't.

[Tikuf 663]

Not sure. The ffmpeg logs look ok. It maybe the 5.1 aac it doesn't like?

 

I have a bit on over the next few days so I wont be able to delve into it until early next week.

[techywarrior 688]

Tikuf,

 

The thing is that all my movies are ripped AC3 5.1 audio. This seems to be the only one that is causing an issue (I just bought like 10 movies so I haven't watched all the new rips yet but the two I did worked fine)

 

Also, in the web client in the details section this particular movie doesn't list video or audio info (is ffmprobe (whatever it's called) maybe having an issue with the file for some reason?)

 

I can try rerip the movie and see what happens but I can play it fine natively in Windows Media Player, etc.

[Tikuf 663]

Also, in the web client in the details section this particular movie doesn't list video or audio info (is ffmprobe (whatever it's called) maybe having an issue with the file for some reason?)

 

Hmm Techy can you try a force refresh if you haven't already. Ffmpeg can read it so ffprobe should be able to as well. 

[techywarrior 688]

Hmm Techy can you try a force refresh if you haven't already. Ffmpeg can read it so ffprobe should be able to as well. 

 

I did not previously try that previously. And strangely enough the force refresh worked. I wonder why it didn't work the first time.

[Tikuf 663]

Ah good it worked bad it didn't for starters. By chance do you still have a log lying around from when you added it? 

[techywarrior 688]

Ah good it worked bad it didn't for starters. By chance do you still have a log lying around from when you added it? 

 

No, the oldest log I have is from 2 days ago and I added the movie 4 days ago

 

Luke, I think maybe the server should re-probe the file if no codec is listed for it in the meta data (this may add some overhead because I don't know if you currently do any meta data check before ffmpeg starts transcoding). If not then the clients and web client should handle errors more gracefully. Even if it's a generic "There was a problem playing this video". Currently the Roku app hangs and the web client throws a console error but as a basic user you don't see anything. All that happens is that you click on play and nothing happens.

 

It doesn't solve the root issue of why ffprobe didn't get the codec the first time. I had another file that caused a problem once before. ffprobe refused to get the correct info but replacing the file with a copy fixed it (in that case I don't think a refresh would have worked because I changed the name, which should have forced a re-probe right?, and it still didn't work.