csadoian 34 Posted February 12, 2018 Share Posted February 12, 2018 (edited) The last update appears to have messed up video playback on my Android Tablet. The version of Emby for Android is 2.9.86. Emby Windows Server is 3.2.70. What I am experiencing is this ... a program will be recorded by Emby. I have Emby set to automatically convert the recording to MKV. I normally use hardware transcoding, but it doesn't seem to make any difference if hardware transcoding is enabled or disabled (I have done both). When I play back the recording on any device other than my tablet, it plays fine. When my tablet plays it back the video is sort of "slow motion", while the audio is perfect. Of course, after just a couple of minutes of playback the audio is WAY AHEAD of the video (and the video is still playing back in "slow motion"). What's strange is that if I play this recording back on my Galaxy S5 phone, it plays fine. Only the Samsung Tablet is having problems. The Samsung Tablet is a Galaxy Tab A, SM-T550. Android version is 7.1.1. It has taken no updates since October of last year. My Galaxy S5 phone runs Android 6.0.1. Google Play says Emby for Android was updated to 2.9.86 2 days ago. The playback issue only seems to affect recordings done in HD. During playback there is no transcoding involved, Emby show the tablet doing direct play. If I open VLC and browse to the folder where the recordings are, I can play any recording without issues. No problems whatsoever. It's only when using Emby for Android am I having the problem. The "what's new" in the listing for Emby for Android in the Play store lists things like "Revamp media Playback" and "Resolve continuous playback issues". I'm assuming these changes might be the reason for the issue I am currently experiencing. Possibly something that only affects the app when used with Android 7.1.1. I have rebooted everything I could think of (server, tablet, network switches, router, etc), nothing helped. Prior to this latest update Emby for Android worked fine on my Tablet when watching recorded programs. Live TV playback continues to work fine. Movies work fine. The problem appears to be with recordings made by Emby and transcoded to MKV. Can I get a copy of the .apk of the prior version of Emby for Android so I can use it instead for the time being? Thanks. Edit: I should also mention I deleted the app's data/storage from my Android tablet and then uninstalled the app, then reinstalled it. No difference. server-63653973220.txt Edited February 12, 2018 by csadoian Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
speedingcheetah 39 Posted February 12, 2018 Share Posted February 12, 2018 (edited) When i had the setting set to "Automatically convert recordings to a streaming friendly format"...it started giving me severe issues with the files it recorded. As in corrupt files. Was told to simply disable that option. But u seem to have a different issue than i did. Recorded videos played fine after that (but are .TS). Been some time now. Not sure of that feature is still broken. I Often take the dvr files an run them through MkvToolNix anyway to trim out commercials so that makes them MKV fine. also, u can use ShanaEncoder to (Stream Copy) a file to MKV or MP4 (not Convert mode as that will do a re-encode). Edited February 12, 2018 by speedingcheetah Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
csadoian 34 Posted February 12, 2018 Author Share Posted February 12, 2018 (edited) When i had the setting set to "Automatically convert recordings to a streaming friendly format"...it started giving me severe issues with the files it recorded. As in corrupt files. Was told to simply disable that option. But u seem to have a different issue than i did. Recorded videos played fine after that (but are .TS). Been some time now. Not sure of that feature is still broken. I Often take the dvr files an run them through MkvToolNix anyway to trim out commercials so that makes them MKV fine. also, u can use ShanaEncoder to (Stream Copy) a file to MKV or MP4 (not Convert mode as that will do a re-encode). I don't think the root issue is with the transcoding of the recorded files to .mkv format. The actual transcoding is handled by ffmpeg, anyway. These files play fine on other Emby clients, and other media players such as VLC, Kodi, etc. The only problem I am experiencing is with Emby for Android on my tablet running Android version 7.1.1. While this problem does not show up on my phone that uses an older version of Android, it may also be the fact the phone has a very small screen compared to my tablet. Hard to know for sure. Edited February 12, 2018 by csadoian Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
csadoian 34 Posted February 12, 2018 Author Share Posted February 12, 2018 Here is some additional information. I went through my library and found a couple of video files that are in MKV format, but were not recorded and transcoded by Emby. Here are the "Stats for Nerds" for two of them. One plays fine, the other has the "slow motion video" problem. Problem file: Container: MKV Bitrate: 1.5 Mbps Video Codec: HEVC Main Video Bitrate: 1.5 Mbps Audio Codec: AAC HE-AAC Audio Bitrate: 320 kbps Audio Chan: 6 Sample Rate: 48000Hz This one plays fine: Container: MKV Bitrate: 1.3 Mbps Video Codec: H264 High Video Bitrate: 1.1 Mbps Audio Codec: AAC HE-AAC Audio Bitrate: 192 kbps Audio Chan: 2 Sample Rate: 48000Hz Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
speedingcheetah 39 Posted February 12, 2018 Share Posted February 12, 2018 (edited) Here is some additional information. I went through my library and found a couple of video files that are in MKV format, but were not recorded and transcoded by Emby. Here are the "Stats for Nerds" for two of them. One plays fine, the other has the "slow motion video" problem. Problem file: Container: MKV Bitrate: 1.5 Mbps Video Codec: HEVC Main Video Bitrate: 1.5 Mbps Audio Codec: AAC HE-AAC Audio Bitrate: 320 kbps Audio Chan: 6 Sample Rate: 48000Hz This one plays fine: Container: MKV Bitrate: 1.3 Mbps Video Codec: H264 High Video Bitrate: 1.1 Mbps Audio Codec: AAC HE-AAC Audio Bitrate: 192 kbps Audio Chan: 2 Sample Rate: 48000Hz one is HEVC...my guess thats probably why. ur device probably dont support hardware decode for HEVC h.265 and is software decoding and is not powerfull enough to handle it. Edited February 12, 2018 by speedingcheetah Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
csadoian 34 Posted February 12, 2018 Author Share Posted February 12, 2018 one is HEVC...my guess thats probably why. ur device probably dont support hardware decode for HEVC h.265 and is software decoding and is not powerfull enough to handle it. Unlikely. It worked fine before the last update, and I can play these files on my tablet just fine with VLC. If my tablet was not able to hardware decode H.265 it wouldn't have worked with the previous version of Emby, nor should it work with VLC now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
speedingcheetah 39 Posted February 12, 2018 Share Posted February 12, 2018 (edited) Unlikely. It worked fine before the last update, and I can play these files on my tablet just fine with VLC. If my tablet was not able to hardware decode H.265 it wouldn't have worked with the previous version of Emby, nor should it work with VLC now. new app uses MPV not VLC...far as i understand.\ I cant use the new app at all cause it will not stream video over LTE for me. Edited February 12, 2018 by speedingcheetah Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
csadoian 34 Posted February 12, 2018 Author Share Posted February 12, 2018 new app uses MPV not VLC...far as i understand.\ I cant use the new app at all cause it will not stream video over LTE for me. When playing on my tablet the "Stat for Nerds" shows it is using the "LibVlc Player". I played one my recorded programs a few minutes ago that produces the slow motion video and this is that the stats show: Container: mkv Bitrate: 3.2 Mbps Video Codec: H264 High Video Bitrate: 3.2 Mbps Audio Codec: AAC LC Audio Bitrate: 320 kbps Audio Chan: 6 Sample Rate: 48000Hz Since another video file encoded with H264 worked fine, I would think we could eliminate HEVC as being the problem. The only significant difference between this file and the other H264 file that played ok is this one has 6 channels of audio, while the other file uses only 2 channels. The other file in my previous message that had the problem also has 6 channels of audio. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
speedingcheetah 39 Posted February 12, 2018 Share Posted February 12, 2018 (edited) When playing on my tablet the "Stat for Nerds" shows it is using the "LibVlc Player". I played one my recorded programs a few minutes ago that produces the slow motion video and this is that the stats show: Container: mkv Bitrate: 3.2 Mbps Video Codec: H264 High Video Bitrate: 3.2 Mbps Audio Codec: AAC LC Audio Bitrate: 320 kbps Audio Chan: 6 Sample Rate: 48000Hz Since another video file encoded with H264 worked fine, I would think we could eliminate HEVC as being the problem. The only significant difference between this file and the other H264 file that played ok is this one has 6 channels of audio, while the other file uses only 2 channels. The other file in my previous message that had the problem also has 6 channels of audio. I know it still says VLC...but when u check the app logs its says MPV. Edited February 12, 2018 by speedingcheetah Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
csadoian 34 Posted February 13, 2018 Author Share Posted February 13, 2018 I got hold of some earlier versions of Emby for Android and tested each one. The following versions have the "slow motion" problem described at the top of this thread: 2.9.86 2.9.85 2.9.83 I went back to 2.9.76 (which was a December release) and everything works fine, no "slow motion" issues. 2.9.83 (which I think was released on Feb 2 of this year) was the version where the problem started. I just didn't notice it until a couple of days ago. I don't know if it is related, but the versions starting with 2.9.83 run noticeably SLOWER than the prior versions. When Emby starts, while the home screen is populating it displays the "busy" circle in the center of the screen. This circle spins slower in the later versions giving me the impression the whole app is slower. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
speedingcheetah 39 Posted February 13, 2018 Share Posted February 13, 2018 Yup. 2.9.76 is the last version i can use without issues. Newer versions do feel much slower and laggy to me and also, cant stream over Sprint LTE (I created a thread on that already) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
csadoian 34 Posted February 27, 2018 Author Share Posted February 27, 2018 Additional info ... I did join the beta program temporarily on 2/26 and downloaded/installed the latest beta. No difference. I reinstalled 2.9.76 and all is well. Since no Admins or programmers from Emby responded to this thread, is this being looked at? If yes, thanks. If not, it is disappointing. Samsung tablets are very popular and I can't imagine I'm the only one that is experiencing this problem with the latest builds. For the time being I have turned off updating for my tablet so I can stay on 2.9.76, and I have frozen my Emby Server at 3.2.70 (in case there may be future compatibility problems talking to an old Android client). Would appreciate any comments from Emby support personal as to whether or not the problem is being looked at. Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luke 37115 Posted February 27, 2018 Share Posted February 27, 2018 Hi, yes we are looking into it, thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
csadoian 34 Posted February 27, 2018 Author Share Posted February 27, 2018 Luke, Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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