Playback stopped working on Amazon Fire Stick and LG TV

[steamhead 7]

Hi,

Been running Emby for a while now, and loving it, but at some point over the last 24 hours it has effectively stopped playback on my Fire TV stick, and my LG Smart TV, but still works fine on any PC over a web browser.

 

When I start to try and playback the screen goes black for quite some time, then will show a few frames, then wait quite some time again before moving on a few more frames. On the Fire Stick I sometimes get a message asking if I am experiencing playback issues, but it doesn't make any difference if I reply yes or no. On the LG TV I get no additional notifications.

 

I've restarted Emby, the underlying server and even the Fire Stick and TV, and this made no difference.  As far as the Fire Stick and TV are concerned I'm on the latest release of the Emby App, (Fire TV reports 1.6.15a).

 

I was on Emby Server for Ubuntu x64  3.5.2.0 and as luck would have it a new version 3.5.3.0 was available, which I've installed, but that made no difference either. The version of Ubuntu I'm on is 18.04.1 LTS.

 

The media I'm attempting to play is media that has played flawlessly many times before. I've even tried replaying the last program I remember that worked a couple of days ago, and that doesn't work now.  Again though everything works fine via the Emby Browser.

 

I've also noted that VLC is showing similar problems on the Fire Stick, so my suspicion is that a recent update on Ubuntu has introduced something that Emby and VLC are not compatible with.  I've attached my history.log file so you can see recent updates.  I believe my last successful viewing was around 11am on the 20th of September.

history.log

embyserver.txt

ffmpeg-directstream-882e8cfa-c951-4b51-9a00-8f7b56f7610a.txt

 

Cheers

Dean

[steamhead 7]

After days of trying all sort of routes to make this work, I tried to see if I could simply play my media without going through the Emby Apps.  I'd already tried VLC via Samba and that didn't, so instead I tried loading some of my collection into MediaMonkey using a PC to read the server via Samba, and then intended using DLNA on the TV to play via MediaMonkey, and then I noticed the Emby DLNA server (I'd forgotten it had one), so I tried that, and it played perfectly.

 

Just out of curiosity I went back into the Emby app, and that also worked perfectly, as did the Fire TV stick, playing stuff it had earlier failed to play repeatedly.

 

I've checked my Ubuntu update log and new updates have been applied since the 21st, so I've no idea what has fixed this.  I can only assume either the MediaMonkey scan, or playing via DLNA reset something on the server, that even a reboot wouldn't touch, other than that I'm mystified?

 

So I'm happy Emby is working again, but I'd be curious if anything in the logs gives a clue as to what caused the problem, and how it got fixed, so I can avoid it in the future.

[Luke 37238]

Interesting, thanks for the info. I don't see anything obvious in the log files.

[steamhead 7]

It's baffled me, it's not generating any ffmpeg logs now it's working, so I'm assuming that what was happening was it was failing to directly play the video files, and switching to transcoding, very slowly in spurts, But no clue as to why. 

 

The usual "cause and effect" wasn't present, in that none of the apps were updated either just before the problem, or just before it started working again. No software or config changes were made to Emby just before it happened, and even though I installed the next version to try and fix it, that made no difference, and no changes were made today in config or software for Emby to get it working again, yet now it does.

 

The only changes that happened between it last working and it failing were Ubuntu system updates, but then no updates have happened since then to put it right again, yet now it works.

 

I'll keep my eye on it, if it happens again are there any more detailed logs I can produce?  Because whilst the problem was happening it happened for everything I played and was persistent across restarts of every component, including Emby and the underlying hardware. So it should be easy enough to turn on extra diagnostics if it does,

 

In all my years of problem diagnosis I've never seen anything quite so persistent go away without making any changes  to software, settings or infrastructure.

[steamhead 7]

I thought it was fixed, but it turns out it has only improved a little. :-(

 

When this first manifested NOTHING would play via the LG App or the Fire TV app, and then without any real correction, things seemed to be working again.  But most of what I was watching was 720P or below. I've noticed if I try and play any of my 1080P movies in the apps (which used to work), it takes a while before it starts playing, then plays for about a minute and stops for a while before starting again.  So it looks like something is buffering.  However all these 1080P movies work perfectly well when played via the Emby Web client on a Windows PC.  So clearly the file is OK, and the server is able to keep up, but something is going astray in the Apps.

 

I did have one other anomaly, a 720P movie that just stayed as a Black Screen.  On the dashboard you would see it appear to play for up to 20 seconds and then restart back to 00:00:00. but nothing was showing on the TV.  This was an MP4 H264 file, like all my others, created using the same software as all the others, but wouldn't play.  However I experimented with this one and created an MKV version which did work.  Again, no problems seen via the Browser client, so the server is handling it, and the file was clearly OK, but the apps didn't like it.

 

Also this time no ffmpeg logs are being created for the films that aren't working properly, though I did get one when I played the mkv version of the 720P file which worked fine.

 

To help decipher the logs, most of my tests were in the last hour, anything on 192.168.1.63 is using the LG TV app, 192.168.1.118 is the PC.  Tomb Raider, Incredble Hulk and Star Trek Into Darkness stuttered, these are 1080P mp4 files, The MKV file of The Martian worked, and so did Star Trek Beyond which is at 720p, If you look earlier in the day for The Martian as an MP4 file, that was the one that just showed the blank screen and looked like it was restarted on the dashboard,

 

embyserver.txt

ffmpeg-remux-5315927e-6e40-4dc6-8092-7f165d075712.txt

 

Let me know what other tests and logs you want.

[steamhead 7]

And now today, with no further corrective action, it's working again.

 

I had wondered whether it was perhaps a network issue, but whilst the Fire Stick is WiFi, the TV is ethernet connected and the signal between it and the server goes through 2 switches, exactly the same as the desktop client - so I'm stumped.

 

If ever I spot a pattern, I'll post, but working now, so no worries at the moment.

[Luke 37238]

Thanks for the info. Based on your findings this sounds network related to me.

[steamhead 7]

I'd agree, if both the apps were on WiFi. However the TV is hardwired ethernet, and even if I plugged a laptop on the same switch as the TV, the PC would consistently play the same 1080P movies smoothly, whilst the TV would play in spurts. That and there being nothing else going off on the network, makes networking alone seem unlikely.  Unless buffering on the apps is less effective than buffering on a PC, I'd expect 2 devices on adjacent ports on an ethernet switch to have the same network performance.

 

One for the mystery bucket until it happens again.

[steamhead 7]

It happened again a few days ago, I'm still none the wiser what is causing it, but a network issue is looking less likely, as this time I made sure nothing was using the network other than Emby, switched off and on every switch in the network, including the router which provides the WiFi portion, and this made no difference.

 

Every web client in the house worked perfectly, but the TV and Amazon clients just black-screened every time I tried to play a video file, even SD ones. This time I also attempted to play music on the TV client and they would play OK for a while and then pause in the middle of a song.  The TV however would play 4K Netflix fine, so it's getting network traffic at high bandwidth.  The only thing pointing to a possible network issue is that the TV and Fire Stick ARE on the same Network segment, the one including the Router, as the router and the TV are in the same switch, and the Fire stick connects to the Router via WiFi. The server however is 2 switches away, whereas Netflix is coming in through the router.

 

I did notice this time that the Emby DLNA server was not visble to the TV for a while, but the SAMBA shares for the same server where, so the Network had a route to the physical box Emby lives on, but DLNA was somehow not showing.  When the DLNA server reappeared I played through the TV's DLNA client OK, and then the Emby client worked OK too.

 

So not sure what circumstances is causing the Emby server to stop being able to share DLNA around the network, or what brings it back (it was just back one day when I checked it again).

 

I'm going to look at getting a hard wired connection to the Fire stick which will at least put it on a different network segment, and see if that makes a difference next time it happens.

[Luke 37238]

Thanks for the info.