Emby Theater Xbox One S TV Recording Playback Issue

[jay343 0]

Hello, I am testing Emby as a replacement for Plex. So far, I like the app much better than Plex on the Roku, but on the Xbox, I cannot play recordings made by Plex nor Emby unless I set the quality low enough that the stream is transcoded.
 
The symptom is that the recording will play for a short time, then the video will either freeze, or start displaying one frame every 3 - 5 seconds or so. The audio also skips, but generally plays more smoothly that the video. Occasionally, the Emby app will abort soon after the video starts failing. 
 
If I set the quality to a low value, such as 4 Mbs 720P, the playback is smooth. Increasing the playback quality one step at a time results in smooth playback until 20Mb 1080p is selected. The native quality of the recording is 15.6 Mb/s, and when 20Mb/s quality is selected, the playback method switches from transcode to direct. It seems to fail the same way with every higher quality setting.
 
Interestingly, the Xbox Media Player app has the same problem when playing these recordings. The player is connecting to the Plex DLNA server running on the same Windows machine.
 
I have Emby Server version 3.5.3.0 running on a Windows server (4Ghz I5 running Windows 10), the Xbox app is version 1.1.242.70. The Xbox is connected via 1Gb ethernet to an ethernet switch that is connected to the router. The server is on a different switch, but all video traffic is switch-to-switch. The Xbox network test app measures 200 - 300 Mb/s to the Internet.

 

Thanks,

-Jay

[Luke 37022]

The reason the Xbox media player has the same problem is that we are using the built in Xbox video player and unfortunately it's just not that robust.

 

We plan to replace this with our own video player in a future release of the app. Thanks.

[jay343 0]

The reason the Xbox media player has the same problem is that we are using the built in Xbox video player and unfortunately it's just not that robust.

 

We plan to replace this with our own video player in a future release of the app. Thanks.

 

OK, I saw that you replied to a similar issue with the same analysis. So, short term workaround is to force transcoding, long term, wait for a replacement media player from you guys? How far in the future do you expect that to be?

 

Have you taken this up with Microsoft? Maybe they need some motivation to update or replace their player.

 

Thanks,

-Jay

[jay343 0]

FYI - when I search Microsoft's on-line help (using their AI), it suggests using VLC. Sure enough, the Xbox VLC app plays these recordings nicely (using the Plex dlna server), and there is no server load indicating that transcoding is not taking place on the server. Unfortunately, the VLC app doesn't have the "stats for nerds" information, so I'm not sure what resolution is is using. I'll try snooping on the network traffic to see what I can find there.

 

I discovered that if I disable the Plex dlna server, and then restart both services, the Emby dlna server is then accessible. VLC also successfully plays recordings from Emby's dlna server, and there is no load on the server side to indicate transcoding. If there is any transcoding being done, it must be VLC doing it, or VLC is successfully playing it direct. I'll let one program complete, then upload the log if you are interested. I enabled dlna debugging before restarting the server.

 

Is VLC an option for you?

 

-Jay

[Luke 37022]

Vlc has its own embedded custom player.

 

Yes libvlc is an option but libmpv will be our preferred option. Thanks.