Some DVR Recordings Fail to Play

[mchallis 9]

I am not having a good time trying to convert. It makes the computer lock up each time. Is there a way to resolve this so the files play on Roku correctly in the first place? Thanks

[mchallis 9]

Is this problem forgotten about? I cannot play several new recordings each week. What is causing this?  how can it be fixed?   

4.1.0.16 beta, Roku Ulra, HDHomeRun Connect Quatro. ubuntu-18.04.2

 

 

systemLog.txt

play tv showLog.txt

[speechles 1917]

Is this problem forgotten about? I cannot play several new recordings each week. What is causing this?  how can it be fixed?   

4.1.0.16 beta, Roku Ulra, HDHomeRun Connect Quatro. ubuntu-18.04.2

 

Have you tried using MKVToolNix GUI?

 

It has simple drag and drop. Drag your file onto the upper left panel once the app opens. It shows all the streams in the bottom panel. Make sure all are checked and copying. Press Start Remux. Wait a few seconds. Done.

 

This should immediately solve the issue. If this does solve the problem then it is something Emby is doing when creating the recordings that the Roku does not like. You might be able to drag these recordings that crash/cause problems on the Roku onto MKVToolNix GUI as well and fix them (if this is a header issue). The Roku is very strict about media headers and trusts them religiously (while most other media players trust the bitstream not the header). So Roku has a slight disadvantage when it comes to how files are encoded.

 

Other than that we are just out of ideas presently. We haven't given up there is just not enough information known presently to deep dive into this and keep progress in the app in every other area moving forward at the pace required. There is only so much time. This week(..and part of last) we've been in crunch time. I am sorry you feel we dropped you like a wet dog and told you "get outside!". It wasn't done because your issue isn't important to us. It is. We want everyone happy.

 

If none of this solves your issue we would need to deep dive this and set aside time to chase why this occurs. We will keep you posted when this happens. We need to do better with keeping users informed and that is what I am always trying to do. Stay tuned.

Edited March 28, 2019 by speechles

[speechles 1917]

@@mchallis

 

Reference: Issue #317: [Video Player] Roku will hang/freeze playing Emby recordings

 

I have put this in our tracker as well and this will get it the time to deep dive.

Edited March 28, 2019 by speechles

[mchallis 9]

One more piece of information. All the recordings I have trouble with are from one OTA channel only. ABC. It happens on pretty much every recording from ABC now. I might go check the antenna.

[speechles 1917]

One more piece of information. All the recordings I have trouble with are from one OTA channel only. ABC. It happens on pretty much every recording from ABC now. I might go check the antenna.

 

You may be onto something. I do have my Roku freeze when playing back KPIX channel 5. It is the poorest signal quality of all my channels. I can't record anything from that channel because of this. It might suddenly work fine for 15 minutes than have pixelization and breakage then just go black. Then 2 minutes later fine again for 15 minutes. Rinse + repeat.

Edited March 29, 2019 by speechles

[mchallis 9]

This is fixed in [server] 4.1.0.22 beta. I am so happy now, thanks

Edited April 7, 2019 by ebr
clarity

[speechles 1917]

This is fixed in [server] 4.1.0.22 beta. I am so happy now, thanks

 

Thanks for the follow up. Glad you are happy. You happy makes us happy. Happy is contagious.

[Jason'sEmby 29]

Hi I'm new to Emby:) My goal was to use 5 hdhomerun primes with a dedicated SSD i7 16GB server to power up to 12 TVs playing live tv. I also tried this with Plex but it didn't work after 6 devices it would make the server unavailable for unknown reasons.Emby on the other hand has worked but with a couple problems. The guide loading is extremely slow I do have about 667 channels I've also dropped it down to only having two days in the guide. The DVR option on the Roku is funny because it doesn't tell you which channel it's recording from when I want it to record in HD. It does tell you if you're using an Android device. Randomly weather remote or in network the TV service will just freeze or try to reload. Audio is very low when it does record via DVR. Luke you look like the man with the answers, do you have any resolutions for any of the above problems? My main goal is to have a reliable remote and in network TV server that play on roku's. I invested heavily into the system and fingers crossed it works:)

 

Little info,

I have turned off firewall on router, opened ports, direct line to modem, reduced TV Guide to 2 days, computer hibernate is off, computer set the performance, upgraded my upload speed to 200 megabits, everything's Hartline to a gigabyte switch unless remote access, required unsecure connection is turned off always. Any info is greatly appreciated.

[speechles 1917]

It might be the RAM. If you want 12 TV to play LiveTV via Roku? 16GB certainly isn't enough to accomodate this effortlessly. That would be the bottleneck. Doubling the RAM would certainly help. Check how much usage your page file has and if it truly is the RAM needs doubling. It may not be that issue but with 12 streams on 16GB that is pushing it. The page file def would come into play with that low of RAM.

Edited April 27, 2019 by speechles

[Jason'sEmby 29]

Thank you for the reply, I did check my RAM usage with 7 streams on there and it was using 42% but I'm definitely open to upgrading my memory to 32 gigs.

[speechles 1917]

The Roku is not very tolerant of faults in the signal. Our fallback recovery will start to initiate a full transcode when this happens if it was directstream or remux. This should give better stability to the stream as ffmpeg can act as the guardian against bad data arriving on the Roku end. But ffmpeg sometimes hangs with LiveTV when given poor signals. Then the Roku hangs.

 

We will be looking at improving this for LiveTV. So that a timer will keep track of how long we are waiting and when it sees the buffering never starts(stays at 0:00 without receiving data) for 30 or 60 seconds it will bail gracefully rather than just hang until the user backs out. With LiveTV as well this sometimes can lose focus when using back from the video player. So it thinks you are on the homescreen when you are not. The only option is to exit the app and restart. We will be looking at ways to improve this. It is on our radar. Yes we do notice this too. It will be wrangled in and made to behave correctly. We just have to get there. We will get there.

Edited April 27, 2019 by speechles

[Jason'sEmby 29]

Thank you so much! I actually just took my whole server and wiped it and redid it. In initially setting it up I change the guide to 4 days and only had the DVR going to the drive-in the server not the Nas. I also took away 300 channels via the hdhomerun app. I tried doing this with the old server but it would not erase the TV Guide or extra channels without wiping out the whole server even after removing the tuners and the guide. The guide is now a lot faster, I will try out stability. Look forward to the updates. And I'm definitely signing up for the yearly or lifetime subscription:)

Edited April 27, 2019 by Compmaster1231

[Jason'sEmby 29]

So the Rokus time out intermittently but not near as bad, running a lot smoother. The guide on the Roku is alot faster now. But the Xbox one and the server guide still load extremely slow (up to 60 seconds). Also by the way the Roku Express does not work well at all with Emby, it kepts pixelating really bad. Swapped it to a Premiere and it runs smooth. Once the time out errors are fixed I think it'll be pretty nice and the DVR option to see what channel it's recording on when you search for a tv show:)

Edited May 5, 2019 by Compmaster1231

[Luke 37007]

Thanks for the feedback. We are continuing to work on improving guide performance.

[Jason'sEmby 29]

Thank you, I know it's been a couple days but I'm back at it. I just ordered a p2000 and hopefully that will help too:)

[Luke 37007]

Let us know how you get on.

[Jason'sEmby 29]

Hi Luke and speechles.

Edited May 25, 2019 by Compmaster1231

[Jason'sEmby 29]

Been testing at the 4 megabit speed and for the past couple hours seems to work pretty well. The initial load times on Android TV is about 30 to 60 seconds when opening the channel or changing a channel on live TV. On Roku it's much faster but buffers more often.

[Jason'sEmby 29]

It's been a couple days now and here's where I'm at. I now have 14 Roku devices, 2 Android TVs and 2 Nvidia Shield TVs. 75% is remote users as this is primarily for my bed and breakfast. This is for live TV only. I have an i7 8700 with a P2000 and 16GB of ddr4, 200/200 internet. Server 4.2.0.8 Beta. Server is on a solid state drive and transcode folder is also on a separate m.2 solid state drive. The only thing I see is intermittently buffering on the Roku sometimes it doesn't recover. Direct streaming seems to correct that quite a bit but randomly it will switch it back to transcode and this happens on all Roku devices. Pixelating while direct streaming seems to be caused by seek mode on Nvidia Shield. If someone is watching the same channel on the server it can cause both users to lock up and have to back out and restart the channel. It's mainly happens when one is direct stream and the other ones transcoding. Android load times are much faster when direct streaming. Movies works perfect, it seems like live TV is a very hard thing to perfect. Having the bitrate set to Max seems to work better but with 18 users pulling close to 18 megabits I would run out of upload speed quickly. Is there an option in emby for the system to allocate bitrate into each user depending on the max upload speed available to the server? Do you think my best bet would be to transcode everything at 4-10 megabits? Would that be my most reliable setup? Or try to direct stream everything and not allow any of the remote accounts to transcode? By the way I let the people on the Plex Forum know how great you guys are in response times. Compared to Plex which never responds to you, I mean over a week ago and nothing lol. Thank you in advance!

 

Update, lowered all remote devices( roku Express and premieres) except for Android TVs down to 4 megabits. Android TVs are set to 10 megabits. On all Roku devices they buffer 3X when first starting the channels before playing smoothly on live TV. Android devices are back to extreme load times due to not direct streaming most channels at the 10 bitrate. Some Roku devices taking extremely long time on the welcome to emby screen before loading the server. This was tested with two Roku premieres right next to each other via remote access. One every time would load super fast and the other one would take up to a minute every time. By the way I throw a firestick into the mix. Haven't really tested it out yet. Testing continues:) I'm now committed to Emby and have left Plex:)

 

Update 2, enabling MPV in settings on Nvidia Shield corrects heavy pixelation with fast action live TV. It's actually really clear and almost flawless. Not sure what that setting is but it's pretty impressive. Excluding on 1080p live TV the audio is off by 2 to 3 seconds:( but now been testing for 24 hours and not one pixelation. Changing audio output to downmix to stereo fixes the audio issue in the MPV player for 1080p:)

Edited May 27, 2019 by Compmaster1231

[Jason'sEmby 29]

Log.txt

Log2.txt

Edited May 27, 2019 by Compmaster1231

[Jason'sEmby 29]

I have now started a new topic that is more in the correct spot for this. Plus this post is very old. New topic name Growing Pains of live TV hdhomerun.