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Emby is not buffering when transcoding


Gerrit507

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Gerrit507

I have an issue with emby. When I play a movie remotely it has to be transcoded most of the times because I've set a remote bandwith limit to 4,5 Mbps. The problem is that the client isn't buffering correctly/enough when watching a transcoded video. For example I start a movie and pause it, the buffering stops after about five seconds. I monitor the network traffic with iftop and I can see it in the client too, as kodi and emby clients show a grey bar indicating the buffering progress. With directplay it's all fine. It buffers minutes or even the whole video depending on the client and it's buffering with a higher speed than the bitrate. In kodi for example, it completely ignores the settings of buffersize and speed(readfactor) when transcoding on the opposite to directly play where it does what it's supposed to do. The whole problem with this is that when a short interrupt or bandwith shortage occurs the playback stops. Instead the client could have used the extra bandwith to fill it's buffer. This issue happens with all clients I've tested so far. My upload should be plenty with 40 Mbps. Is this behaviour intended? In my opinion transcoding is mostly used on remote connections and there is always a buffer needed opposed to direct play which is mostly used at home. The transcoding is more than fast enough by the way. It usually transcodes with 3x speed or faster.

 

Server:

Version 3.5.2.0 Docker on Ubuntu 18.04

 

Clients:

Kodi Emby and EmbyCon (increased buffer/set it to unlimited)

Emby Theatre UWP

Emby Theatre Desktop

Web (Edge, Firefox & Chrome)

Android

 

Just say if you need any client or server logs.

Edited by Gerrit507
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Gerrit507

What I did:

I started a video and paused it after few seconds.

1) Emby Theatre UWP with transcoding: The video buffers about 2 minutes. Which seems to be actually fine to me.

2) Kodi with transcoding: As soon as I paused the video the buffering stops. There is basically no buffer at all.

3) Kodi without transcoding: The video buffers all the way through.

 

So I think I have to correct myself and this is more like a client issue. At least with kodi. I haven't installed ET Desktop anymore but it showed similiar behaviour. Besides that it worked generally worse than the UWP version.

 

And there is one more thing, might be a bit offtopic though. With ET UWP the video randomly hangs, sometimes after 3minutes, sometimes after one hour and after that the audio is async. Then I need to set the video back a few settings to enter a normal state again. I'd be fine with just using this client but this issue is kind of annoying.

serverlog-etuwp.txt

transcoding-etuwp.txt

serverlog-kodi.txt

transcoding-kodi.txt

serverlog-kodi-direct.txt

Edited by Gerrit507
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When we transcode we use HLS which is designed for just in time delivery. Pausing the video for a long period of time does not mean that your buffer will build up.

 

I think what you need to do is lower the in-app quality setting to sustain smooth playback. Thanks.

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Gerrit507

Thanks for explanation Luke :)

 

Most of the issue was caused by a malfunction of my ISP, which were connection interrupts every few seconds. Now it's up and running again.

Edited by Gerrit507
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