Transcoding videos can't seek - duration is only the amount transcoded

[AceBlade258 3]

When playing a video on literally anything, if the title is being transcoded the timestamp is incorrect. It will say the total length of the title is only the amount transcoded; so initially 2+ hour movies show as being ~10-15 seconds long. It grows over time, but rarely gets more than ~10-15 minutes ahead. Another problem is that if playback stops unexpectedly (i.e. pause too long, and the connection times out), you cannot seek back to the same place in the title you were previously in, and cannot resume playback. it really puts a damper on watching a movie.

 

Any help would be appreciated; I'm not seeing any errors in the logs that look like they would be related, and as far as I can tell this should work just fine. Thanks in advanced!

 

PS: I'm running version 3.3.0.0 on CentOS 7 - this issue has been around since installation, so I doubt it's version related.

[Luke 37214]

Hi there, can we please look at an example? Please attach the information requested in how to report a media playback issue. thanks !

[AceBlade258 3]

Here's a shot from first starting playback:

 

 

A few minutes later:

 

 

Lastly from a bit further in playback (it is managing to get further than I remembered, in terms of duration):

 

[Luke 37214]

Hi there @@AceBlade258, can you please attach the information I requested above? thanks !

[AceBlade258 3]

Server log

 

Transcoding log

[Luke 37214]

Ok, there's no obvious problem here, but I think I can guess what happened. Your server was installed using our legacy installation package, which requires you to setup your own ffmpeg build. I am guessing you might not have had that in place before importing your library and as a result the server was unable to probe your files for media info.

 

What you can try to do as a test is go back to the detail screen of the video from the log you just posted. Click the 3-dot menu -> refresh metadata. Then give it a couple seconds and refresh the screen, and see if you have more media info displayed (including a runtime). Then try to play again.

[AceBlade258 3]

That appears to have done the trick! I could have sworn I had refreshed the library metadata since reinstallation, but c'est la vie. I'll try to refresh the whole libraries metadata and report back the results.

[Luke 37214]

if you are new to emby and don't have any attachment to your current server you could also consider a complete uninstallation followed by an installation using our newer packages:

 

https://emby.media/download

[AceBlade258 3]

I've had emby for a few years now, though I'm not opposed to a reinstallation (this server was reinstalled a month or two ago). Emby is installed via the OpenSuse build service repo currently; when was recommendation switched away from that? I like that it's managed by yum at the moment; would the new installation method be the same, or are updates handled by the app now?

 

Rescanning all the metadata fixed the problem, however new content that is added still does not pick up length without a manual refresh. How would I go about configuring or correcting Emby to not have a problem with that?

[Luke 37214]

The new packages are just manual binaries installed via terminal. We have not yet set up a repository. It was about a couple months ago that we switched over. You can stay with your current installation but you will see better performance with the new package, and also the ffmpeg build is self contained so that you don't need to worry about it.

 

I'm not sure about your issue with new media, we'd have to look at the log from the time that you added something. Thanks.