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Live TV frequently sticks on "Loading"


pa32dude

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pa32dude

I've been having this problem forever, and I kind of keeping hoping that someday an app update will fix it. But I think maybe it's time to ask about it.

 

While watching live TV, frequently the video blanks and the "Loading" progress bar appears. Sometimes it goes away after a few seconds and the video resumes, which is annoying but more or less acceptable. But often it just "sticks" in that state. I can usually fix it by tapping Rewind a couple of times, then Play, but that puts me about a minute back. I can then FF to get close to the original point and resume, but that's kind of painful. Every once in a while the only way to fix it is to go Back and hit Tune to Channel.

 

This is a TCL Roku TV, but I had the same problem with the old Roku 3.

 

Any suggestions on what I can do to troubleshoot this would be greatly appreciated. Let's just say I am receiving a bit of negative feedback from other members of my household...

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@@pa32dude How strong is the signal on your LiveTV channel you are watching? You can use the stats for nerds in the app to see when this "loading/retrieving" is going to occur. Play your liveTV channel and press down. This opens the OSD. Look for the gear/cog icon on the bottom row. Move to that and click it to open the playback options. This menu lets you change quality, use playback correction, enable repeat.. and stats for nerds. Once you enable stats for nerds an semi-transparent overlay is omni-present on the right side of the screen. This will show everything the Roku does as far as how it is playing that item and what methods are being used. With LiveTV it can never directplay. This means the transcoding progress will appear along with the ones you want to watch "Transcoding FPS" and "Transcoding Buffer". The FPS might be too slow to do this in real time. Not likely.. The other issue is the signal strength is causing issues with buffering since there is likely times of no data in the stream (black sections of no video/sound). This would be shown in the transcoding buffer as it nears 0% and 0:00. The app updates stats for nerds every 10 seconds. You can force a faster update by open then close the OSD. Press up to open OSD and then up again to close it. Everytime the OSD opens the stats for nerds updates. Also please use the Emby Beta of the Roku app. This has more bugs corrected and features added. It might also already fix your issue. If it doesn't please follow the advice of @@Luke above and please give us screenshots/pictures of what the stats for nerds on your Roku looks like. Thanks. :)

Edited by speechles
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  • 2 months later...
pa32dude

Hi all, sorry for the long silence. I've been out of the country for a bit and not watching much TV. Now I'm back to looking at this issue and captured information as requested by @@Luke and @@speechles. I also upgraded to the Beta version of the Roku app, but no real change in behavior. The "Transcoding Buffer" field in stats for nerds looks kind of weird to me, but maybe I just don't know what I'm looking at. The second number after the colon is always negative, most of the time it's absolute value is small, but it seems like it jumps to -47000 -ish when this problem is occurring. I haven't watched enough to see if there is truly cause and effect there. In any case, suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

 

Hmmm, not quite seeing how to attach things other than images, so here's a Google Drive link instead:

 

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1JO36I1DYSQdWAHvp2Q8Rd15kOzqrES0a?usp=sharing

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  • 3 weeks later...

I have both a Roku express and Roku TV coming on July 18th (thanks Amazon Prime Deal Days!). 

 

I want to be able to do testing on these models directly and iron out these issues once and for all. Can only speculate without the correct device. I have them coming shortly. Stay tuned if you still have issues on your TCL RokuTV and I will be able to work directly with you. Thanks ^_^

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  • 3 weeks later...
AboveUnrefined

I am also getting this a lot. It seems to correlate with the quality of the signal coming through -- when it's stormy out or whatever other factors that could cause bad TV signals (I have Comcast and it does tend to dip for whatever reasons...) I'll get this more often than not.

 

A lot of the times the loading screen will appear very briefly to catch up with whatever happened with the buffer, while other times (maybe 20% of the time?) it'll just stick on an empty loading bar and I have to hit back and restart the stream.

 

Updates over time seemed to make the symptom better, other times worse... it's really tough to pinpoint what'd be going on exactly since it is TV and at least I taught my wife on how to deal with it, but it is an issue nonetheless.

 

I can try and contribute some details if you'd like, I am running emby server as a docker instance on my server and can fish out whatever logs might help pinpoint the issue when it happens, just point me in the right direction and I'll get around to it next time it happens.

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I see this sometimes with normal media on my Roku TV. It might be related to ffmpeg or might be related to Roku TV firmware. It does not look like it just happens with Live TV though when the "loading..." is just stuck on screen with no progress. It happens on normal media too and inexplicably. After this the Roku TV sometimes say it has no network connection. I tell it "select connection" then choose to detect network and it fixes it. But the TV then hangs and remote unresponsive and TV reboots. Then on reboot no problem again for hours/days. It seems to me a Roku firmware error on the 9.2x branch on Roku firmware. It exposes itself inexplicably and randomly.

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I am also getting this a lot. It seems to correlate with the quality of the signal coming through -- when it's stormy out or whatever other factors that could cause bad TV signals (I have Comcast and it does tend to dip for whatever reasons...) I'll get this more often than not.

 

A lot of the times the loading screen will appear very briefly to catch up with whatever happened with the buffer, while other times (maybe 20% of the time?) it'll just stick on an empty loading bar and I have to hit back and restart the stream.

 

Updates over time seemed to make the symptom better, other times worse... it's really tough to pinpoint what'd be going on exactly since it is TV and at least I taught my wife on how to deal with it, but it is an issue nonetheless.

 

I can try and contribute some details if you'd like, I am running emby server as a docker instance on my server and can fish out whatever logs might help pinpoint the issue when it happens, just point me in the right direction and I'll get around to it next time it happens.

 

Hi there, do you see this with the Emby web app?

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AboveUnrefined

Hi there, do you see this with the Emby web app?

 

Hi Luke!

 

I haven't noticed it with the web app but I have noticed other weird things while using some amazon fire sticks where if the bandwidth is too high it does get very choppy during broadcasts like soccer games or other sporting events (all devices are using wired ethernet).

 

I edited this to keep focus on the Roku loading issue, I can deal with the Amazon stick issue for now it's not a priority.

Edited by AboveUnrefined
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AboveUnrefined

I see this sometimes with normal media on my Roku TV. It might be related to ffmpeg or might be related to Roku TV firmware. It does not look like it just happens with Live TV though when the "loading..." is just stuck on screen with no progress. It happens on normal media too and inexplicably. After this the Roku TV sometimes say it has no network connection. I tell it "select connection" then choose to detect network and it fixes it. But the TV then hangs and remote unresponsive and TV reboots. Then on reboot no problem again for hours/days. It seems to me a Roku firmware error on the 9.2x branch on Roku firmware. It exposes itself inexplicably and randomly.

 

Hi speechles,

 

I actually have zero issues with local media and it's only to do with live TV. I've streamed tons of other content without issue, the only one doing this (for me) is live TV. I have tried changing my scratch disks to be faster for the transcoding operations -- maybe it's to do with that? I setup a RAID 0 array with 4 disks to help with any bottlenecks which seemed to help somewhat with the loading issue being described, but it's still happening for me.

 

Unfortunately, this seems to complicate things further to diagnose what's going on...

Edited by AboveUnrefined
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snodrog742

I've had this on both Rokus in our household.  Actually PM'd @@speechles about it.  It's regular media too, not just LiveTV.  Stats for Nerds shows plenty of buffer on the server side and it's just as if Roku "drops" the connection and decides when it wants to request the next chunk of the file.  There's no delays in the logs such as a delay from the sending server.

 

I'm actually ordering a second Apple TV tonight because I'm so fed up with this issue.  It's only the Emby app that has issues.

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I've had this on both Rokus in our household.  Actually PM'd @@speechles about it.  It's regular media too, not just LiveTV.  Stats for Nerds shows plenty of buffer on the server side and it's just as if Roku "drops" the connection and decides when it wants to request the next chunk of the file.  There's no delays in the logs such as a delay from the sending server.

 

I'm actually ordering a second Apple TV tonight because I'm so fed up with this issue.  It's only the Emby app that has issues.

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

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AboveUnrefined

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

 

The issue just popped up again and I was able to try and capture some information, however it doesn't seem very useful...

 

The tail end of the directstream log shows how it seems to still be doing work:

 

 

[segment @ 0x48f900] Opening '/config/transcoding-temp/3574b1c1be480dac8b7736a13452c6c5.m3u8.tmp' for writing
SegmentComplete=video:0 Index=2271 Start=6813.222067 End=6816.241744 Duration=3.019678 offset_pts=0 start_pts=-1776712525 Frames=183 filename=hls/3574b1c1be480dac8b7736a13452c6c5/3574b1c1be480dac8b7736a13452c6c52271.ts
[segment @ 0x48f900] Opening '/config/transcoding-temp/3574b1c1be480dac8b7736a13452c6c52272.ts.tmp' for writing
elapsed=01:53:33.60 frame=408561 fps= 60 q=-1.0 size= 7602908kB time=01:53:37.35 bitrate=9135.9kbits/s throttle=off speed=   1x    
elapsed=01:53:34.10 frame=408589 fps= 60 q=-1.0 size= 7603473kB time=01:53:37.82 bitrate=9136.0kbits/s throttle=off speed=   1x    
elapsed=01:53:34.60 frame=408618 fps= 60 q=-1.0 size= 7604034kB time=01:53:38.31 bitrate=9136.0kbits/s throttle=off speed=   1x    
elapsed=01:53:35.11 frame=408650 fps= 60 q=-1.0 size= 7604587kB time=01:53:38.84 bitrate=9136.0kbits/s throttle=off speed=   1x    
elapsed=01:53:35.61 frame=408679 fps= 60 q=-1.0 size= 7605164kB time=01:53:39.32 bitrate=9136.0kbits/s throttle=off speed=   1x    
[segment @ 0x48f900] Opening '/config/transcoding-temp/3574b1c1be480dac8b7736a13452c6c5.m3u8.tmp' for writing
SegmentComplete=video:0 Index=2272 Start=6816.275122 End=6818.994500 Duration=2.719378 offset_pts=0 start_pts=-1773659470 Frames=165 filename=hls/3574b1c1be480dac8b7736a13452c6c5/3574b1c1be480dac8b7736a13452c6c52272.ts
[segment @ 0x48f900] Opening '/config/transcoding-temp/3574b1c1be480dac8b7736a13452c6c52273.ts.tmp' for writing
elapsed=01:53:36.11 frame=408704 fps= 60 q=-1.0 size= 7605686kB time=01:53:39.74 bitrate=9136.1kbits/s throttle=off speed=   1x    
elapsed=01:53:36.71 frame=408746 fps= 60 q=-1.0 size= 7606374kB time=01:53:40.44 bitrate=9136.0kbits/s throttle=off speed=   1x    
elapsed=01:53:37.21 frame=408773 fps= 60 q=-1.0 size= 7606945kB time=01:53:40.89 bitrate=9136.1kbits/s throttle=off speed=   1x    
elapsed=01:53:37.72 frame=408803 fps= 60 q=-1.0 size= 7607477kB time=01:53:41.39 bitrate=9136.0kbits/s throttle=off speed=   1x    
elapsed=01:53:38.22 frame=408838 fps= 60 q=-1.0 size= 7608064kB time=01:53:41.98 bitrate=9135.9kbits/s throttle=off speed=   1x    
elapsed=01:53:38.72 frame=408863 fps= 60 q=-1.0 size= 7608615kB time=01:53:42.39 bitrate=9136.1kbits/s throttle=off speed=   1x    
[segment @ 0x48f900] Opening '/config/transcoding-temp/3574b1c1be480dac8b7736a13452c6c5.m3u8.tmp' for writing
SegmentComplete=video:0 Index=2273 Start=6819.027867 End=6821.997500 Duration=2.969633 offset_pts=0 start_pts=-1770906725 Frames=180 filename=hls/3574b1c1be480dac8b7736a13452c6c5/3574b1c1be480dac8b7736a13452c6c52273.ts
[segment @ 0x48f900] Opening '/config/transcoding-temp/3574b1c1be480dac8b7736a13452c6c52274.ts.tmp' for writing
elapsed=01:53:39.22 frame=408889 fps= 60 q=-1.0 size= 7609189kB time=01:53:42.83 bitrate=9136.2kbits/s throttle=off speed=   1x    
elapsed=01:

and the transcode log is showing this, but it seems like it's from over an hour before this happening:

>> ThrottleByStreamBufferSize: Initialize - TargetBufferSize: 120s - Hysteresis: 8s
2019-08-07 18:34:14.573
Emby Server version: 4.2.0.36

App: Emby Mobile 4.2.0.36
Chrome

http://192.168.45.10:8096/emby/videos/192082/live.m3u8?DeviceId=TW96aWxsYS81LjAgKFdpbmRvd3MgTlQgMTAuMDsgV2luNjQ7IHg2NCkgQXBwbGVXZWJLaXQvNTM3LjM2IChLSFRNTCwgbGlrZSBHZWNrbykgQ2hyb21lLzY3LjAuMzM5Ni43OSBTYWZhcmkvNTM3LjM2fDE1MjkyODQ4NTQ5OTg1&MediaSourceId=7286472ef19864d96299ba1700d86ae6&PlaySessionId=84f663c8c5ba448c89c14b1b6aae7bc4&api_key=4a9251ad1b2549dca09250e69f49dd7b&VideoCodec=h264&AudioCodec=mp3,aac&VideoBitrate=139808000&AudioBitrate=192000&SubtitleMethod=Encode&TranscodingMaxAudioChannels=2&SegmentContainer=ts&MinSegments=1&BreakOnNonKeyFrames=True&ManifestSubtitles=vtt&h264-profile=high,main,baseline,constrainedbaseline,high10&h264-level=51&TranscodeReasons=ContainerNotSupported&allowVideoStreamCopy=false&allowAudioStreamCopy=false

{"Protocol":"Rtsp","Id":"7286472ef19864d96299ba1700d86ae6","Path":"rtsp://192.168.45.31:554/11","Type":"Default","Container":"rtsp","Size":0,"Name":"Back House Pine","IsRemote":false,"SupportsTranscoding":true,"SupportsDirectStream":false,"SupportsDirectPlay":true,"IsInfiniteStream":false,"RequiresOpening":false,"RequiresClosing":false,"RequiresLooping":false,"SupportsProbing":false,"MediaStreams":[{"Codec":"h264","TimeBase":"1/90000","CodecTimeBase":"0/2","VideoRange":"SDR","DisplayTitle":"1080p H264","NalLengthSize":"0","IsInterlaced":false,"IsAVC":false,"BitDepth":8,"RefFrames":1,"IsDefault":false,"IsForced":false,"Height":1080,"Width":1920,"RealFrameRate":30,"Profile":"Main","Type":"Video","AspectRatio":"16:9","Index":0,"IsExternal":false,"IsTextSubtitleStream":false,"SupportsExternalStream":false,"Protocol":"File","PixelFormat":"yuv420p","Level":42,"IsAnamorphic":false}],"Formats":[],"RequiredHttpHeaders":{},"ReadAtNativeFramerate":false}

User policy for ZZZ: EnablePlaybackRemuxing: True EnableVideoPlaybackTranscoding: True EnableAudioPlaybackTranscoding: True

Affected codecs:
>>>>>>  libx264 Software Encoder
        Color Formats: YUV420P, YUVJ420P, YUV422P, YUVJ422P, YUV444P, YUVJ444P, NV12, NV16, NV21, YUV420P10, YUV422P10, YUV444P10, NV20
        Profiles: Baseline Profile (Level 6.2), Main Profile (Level 6.2), High Profile (Level 6.2), High 10 Profile (Level 6.2), High 4:2:2 Profile (Level 6.2), High 4:4:4 Profile (Level 6.2)


>>>>>>  FindVideoDecoder - MediaType: h264, Mode: Automatic
Info    FindVideoDecoder - Checking: 'Automatic software decoder' (Priority: 0)
Info    FindVideoDecoder - Check successful - selecting 'Automatic software decoder'

>>>>>>  FindVideoEncoder - Media: h264, UseHardwareCodecs: True, Mode: Automatic
Info    FindVideoEncoder - Checking: 'libx264 Software Encoder' (Priority: 0)
Info    Encoder supports input stream
Info    FindVideoEncoder - Check successful - selecting 'libx264 Software Encoder'

>>>>>>  FindVideoDecoder - MediaType: h264, Mode: Automatic
Info    FindVideoDecoder - Checking: 'Automatic software decoder' (Priority: 0)
Info    FindVideoDecoder - Check successful - selecting 'Automatic software decoder'

>>>>>>  FindVideoEncoder - Media: h264, UseHardwareCodecs: True, Mode: Automatic
Info    FindVideoEncoder - Checking: 'libx264 Software Encoder' (Priority: 0)
Info    Encoder supports input stream
Info    FindVideoEncoder - Check successful - selecting 'libx264 Software Encoder'

/bin/ffmpeg -rtsp_flags prefer_tcp -buffer_size 1M  -f rtsp -i "rtsp://192.168.45.31:554/11" -map_metadata -1 -map_chapters -1 -threads 0 -map 0:0 -an -sn -c:v:0 libx264 -pix_fmt yuv420p  -maxrate 139808000 -bufsize 279616000 -preset veryfast -profile:v:0 high -level:v:0 4.1 -crf 23 -x264opts:0 subme=0:me_range=4:rc_lookahead=10:me=dia:no_chroma_me:8x8dct=0:partitions=none -force_key_frames "expr:gte(t,n_forced*3)" -vsync -1  -f segment -max_delay 5000000 -avoid_negative_ts disabled -start_at_zero -segment_time 3  -individual_header_trailer 0 -segment_format mpegts -segment_write_temp 1 -segment_list_entry_prefix "hls/c916cced15e8e935e7fd7723b35fd7ae/" -segment_list_type m3u8 -segment_start_number 0 -segment_list "/config/transcoding-temp/c916cced15e8e935e7fd7723b35fd7ae.m3u8" -y "/config/transcoding-temp/c916cced15e8e935e7fd7723b35fd7ae%d.ts"

ffmpeg version 4.0.3-emby_2019_04_09 Copyright (c) 2000-2018 the FFmpeg developers and softworkz for Emby LLC
  built with gcc 8.3.0 (crosstool-NG 1.24.0)
Local Time: 18:34:14
T=0.001s
T=0.008s
>> ThrottleByStreamBufferSize: Playback position unknown
[tcp @ 0x471d80] Connection to tcp://192.168.45.31:554?timeout=0 failed: No route to host
rtsp://192.168.45.31:554/11: No route to host

5d4b65e431f4e_IMG_20190807_195129.jpg

 

The TV will remain in this state until I hit back and reload the stream...

Edited by AboveUnrefined
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I had this happen again last night on the 'ol Roku TV. Odd part is I press back. Then navigate to same show that wouldn't play now it does.. So odd..

 

It is almost like the Roku itself has issues with its video player internal playlist. 

 

@@ebr it is almost like we need to build our own playlist queue and not use the Roku internal one in the Video Player. The full item node shows. It should play. What I get is an async timeout and it will not move to the next item in a playlist. Seems arbitrary. I can reproduce faithfully as it happens once you get the "keep watching?" prompt and interact with it. Then pretty quickly after this after it plays one item after this successfully as it moves to the next item you get this odd hang. I have it on the list too to dig into. I now have 7 things all active working on from the TO DO list so I need to start finishing things and will today. It could be trying to use subtitles or something oddball but that should eventually time out the Video Player. This is an outright hang into infinity and beyond (Toy Story 4!)

 

@@AboveUnrefined Thanks for showing that timeout in ffmpeg. Most of my things should direct play so it is odd they hang too. It makes it hard to trouble shoot this not having ffmpeg logs. I may need to enable debug logging on the server and dig through server logs too. The app logs on the Roku show the playlist does exist, the item node does exist, it should play..but...no mediasource, no videostream, no audiostream. Only a playsessionID?? weird.

 

---- AA ----
bitrate: 964314
subtitlestream: invalid
playmethod: DirectStream
livestreamid: invalid
playsessionid: a01ef5e9950b4cc399da4716b3af4ba3
mediasource: unknown
videostream: unknown
audiostream: unknown
audiostreamindex: 1
canseek: true
subtitlestreamindex: invalid
------------   
[VideoPlayer] No default internal sub track 
MaxHeight is:2160
[Capabilities] prefHEVCuse60=OFF : HEVC using 30fps limit
getvideomode =2160p60                                                                                                   
[Capabilities] Roku 7000 - 2160p60=3840x2160
[Capabilities] Non-Legacy Device Model : Allowing Secondary Audio Streams                                               
4k Support: Enabled

 

Eric, are you sure there is no possible way these could be virtual/missing/future episodes causing this? They would have no mediasource, videostream, audiostream, and their subtitlestreamindex would always be invalid instead of -1. That is how I think this is caused by virtual episodes... maybe.. so many variables.. hard to tell but start naming suspects and interrogating. Get to the real killer. I think virtual episodes now is the real killer. Going to check on that now.

Edited by speechles
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AboveUnrefined

I just turned on debug options on my TV so next time this happens I'll try and provide some logs from the TV when this happens. I never turned this option on since it says something like "may affect performance" if enabled...

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It is almost like the Roku itself has issues with its video player internal playlist. 

 

@@ebr it is almost like we need to build our own playlist queue and not use the Roku internal one in the Video Player. 

 

This issue is for live TV.  There is no playlist or next item.  This has to be related to poor signal and the Roku player's inability to recover from it.

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This issue is for live TV.  There is no playlist or next item.  This has to be related to poor signal and the Roku player's inability to recover from it.

 

That is because we are attempt to recover live TV. I really think we should abandon trying to recover it because the outcome is hang every time I've tried.

 

This one --> #501 [LIve TV] Bail on any error with LiveTV

 

Now I know it is always preferable to have fallback. But with LiveTV and on Roku this is too fickle. We need to stop trying to fallback and just let people restart. At least this way it does not hang. Now if this cuts off recordings (which it should not these are done on Emby server) we would have outright panic. But this is just for playback on the Roku. The Roku is fickle she will love you one day and hate you the next. These are firmware updates causing the Roku to be this way. Once they get this part fixed we can perhaps look at putting fallback back together again for LiveTV but until then all it does it cause the Video Player to hang when we try. I really think it would be better to Bail on any error with LiveTV. I have been using this on LiveTV since June26th and I no longer see LiveTV hang. Not that I use it that much with poor signal quality and channel selection but it doesn't have the issue for me anymore. Just playlists do now...

Edited by speechles
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  • 2 weeks later...
bizarro252

... 

I really think it would be better to Bail on any error with LiveTV. I have been using this on LiveTV since June26th and I no longer see LiveTV hang.

 

Hi @@speechles, is this change something you are looking at internally or is this in beta now?  Thanks!

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Hi @@speechles, is this change something you are looking at internally or is this in beta now?  Thanks!

 

It is coming soon. We are still testing internally that was just my 2 cents so far. Once that fix is out it should solve your issue because it has mine ever after. But.. instead of hang your streams may/will just bail/fail/quit instead of stop/hang. We will work on improve this and instead of fallback with playback method changes use a different fallback for LiveTV. LiveTV will have what is known as "Wait and Retune". Then it can wait 5-15 seconds and re-try instead of immediately which may still be so bad of a signal making things just drop/hang immediately. Wait and Retune will not change your play method. You use playback correction to do that.

 

We will look at improve how we handle these LiveTV failures but the initial fix will just cut the stream off and present you back at where you were before playback started. That is the best we can do at the moment without introducing more problems. Once we have the bugs worked out so LiveTV can use "Wait and Retune"© Emby.. lol... the way I envision it. Until then playback correction will also work. I apologize for these issues. Roku is not offering us any help, or any kind of timeframe for releases of their firmware that may resolve this issue. Their advice is to do our best to work-around it. That is what we shall do. ^_~

Edited by speechles
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bizarro252

@ speechles

Thank you, and thank you for taking the time to explain to us the core of the issue here.

It is weird to me that I was seeing this issue when watching a show that was recording, and I was an hour back in the show verses live time and it still did it, many times, this would make me think it wasnt a signal quality blip.

See the post I reference here for more info/logs/etc.  https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/76568-livetv-loading/

 

I have seen in other posts you recommend to turn on 'playback correction' to force transcode.  I will give this a shot and see if it stops it for now.  This setting only affects live tv I assume?  (as in, it wont mess with my tv/movie playback settings and force them to transcode too)?

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This problem surfaces on firmware 9.2.x on Roku STB which for RokuTV users is 9.1.x. RokuTV are always a version behind but carry the same exact firmware issues so likely they just build them that way and 9.1.x on RokuTV == 9.2.x on RokuSTB. Looks that way to me in every way, shape, and form..

 

 

If it isn't a signal quality blip it is when the bitrate spikes. The broadcasters are free to use the ATSC bandwidth as they see fit. Some fit many channels into the band and narrow the frequency/bandwidth of each channel. Some just throw as many bits at you as possible. It is those just throwing bits madly without thinking about those consuming those bits. The bitrate might be 16Mb/sec.. then out of nowhere a spike to 48Mb/sec.. for just a second. Some weird combination of something caused their encoder to just go "off the rails" for that moment.

 

The Roku performs poorly because everything is output at 60 frames-per-second. The Roku constantly adjusts. When the material is already 60 frames per second it leaves no time for adjustment. The Roku can desync easily at 60 frames per second with a high bitrate. Some sports broadcasts are 720P at 60 frames per second just to keep the bits in check from spiking. Some are 1080P and that causes the issue.

 

I blame the network usually for the crappy ATSC broadcasts and to a lesser extent the Roku for slipping so easily when the roads are barely wet. With MPEG2 the roads are littered with "caution when road is wet signs" and it is always a light rain and you are on bald tires. That is unfortunately the case. You cannot ask Roku when are they getting new tires. They refuse to answer they just say try to brace yourself for some out-of-control spins and possible traction loss. We have to apply our own road chains in this case. We just have to make the chains now.

 

 

Also they blend in some commercials at substantially higher bitrates and those can clog your read-ahead-buffer and cause a spike and drop out. They do this purposely to provide a higher resolution for their own network commercials, but when switch back to their broadcast material filler they go back to whatever quality that is. That is also a problem and why sometimes the commercials are so loud and obnoxious and really high def. But the normal episode looks much poorer resolution and sounds softer. Because there is no normalization done to those commercials because that would cost more monies. Plus you walk out of the room during commercials those things want you to still hear them and drown out any conversation that might be able to occur when the episode isn't playing.

 

It is like a commercial comes on. The ratio of you and your friends conversation just ramped up in "what?" and "huh?" as you both now have to speak over that loud commercial to even hear each other properly. Those commercials are why people cut the cord in the first place. Those go away or become much shorter and less sporadic and intense.

Edited by speechles
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bizarro252

:) gotta love your posts :)
 

Do you expect (in the meantime, while we wait for them to save up for new tires) that enabling 'playback correction' will remedy these issues?  I assume that allows the server to 'smooth out' these spikes since its goes through transcoding first?

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:) gotta love your posts :)

 

Do you expect (in the meantime, while we wait for them to save up for new tires) that enabling 'playback correction' will remedy these issues?  I assume that allows the server to 'smooth out' these spikes since its goes through transcoding first?

 

we could direct play liveTV. But that makes seek impossible and who wants TV in linear fashion. That means you cannot rewind and use the pause-buffer as your commercial skipper.

 

So we direct stream liveTV to the Roku but what happens is during this it isn't really involve changing the codec. It just repackages into a new container. So any errors in the stream are going to hit the Roku that way.

 

With playback correction you are telling the Roku you don't like how it is playing things. This tells the app to adjust the playback method to the next fallback. Since you are already direct stream (aka remux) it will fallback to transcode.

 

When we transcode the stream the errors are captured into ffmpeg which can encode these errors as blanks or however it wants. It can fix the stream to something the Roku might/can ingest without choking. In essense a strainer for baby-food as the Roku cannot chew correctly on Mpeg2. This transcode converts the mpeg2->h264 and removes the problem. h264 does not have the problem with high bitrates that mpeg2 does on Roku. You can go insanely high in bitrate with h264 all day long.

 

 

The issue we have is fully transcoding is a very high price to pay. We do not ask everyone to pay that price. For some issues it is our only option to pay that price and fallback. The app does do this normally with normal errors. But these mpeg2 issues are sporadic and the Roku player is seriously not robust enough to know the stream isn't recoverable. It usually times out. But if the Roku has not received any data and the url it eventually streams is null/invalid it will hang the video player. The video player is not smart enough to detect an error with fragmented packets never arriving from error correction.

 

Their mpeg2 decode codec must be horribly written. They delay on read-ahead when they could still play. They have 3 seconds left of buffer to play. Why not just play those last 3 seconds then hang? Because it is poorly written for mpeg2 and I suspect these new mstar cpu Roku use in their devices (same as Roku TV) made this problem. Their old broadcom devices were rock solid. Roku2/3/xd/xs/etc.. These new mstar devices need that same time the broadcom devices had to mature. Hopefully all Roku needs is time. Christmas is coming. Holidays spurn sales and reviews.

 

If they don't rush out new firmwares the holidays will spurn bad reviews for Roku especially since HD Homerun is suffer exact same problem Emby is and so are our friends at P company. Same problem at their P HQ while waiting for Roku to do something.

Edited by speechles
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bizarro252

Fantastic, and as always thanks for the detailed explanation, excited to give this a shot and say buh-bye to random loading screen/freezes!  Will be following along on the FW updates and will give it a try again then.

 

Now to just convince my wife to stick to the beta roku app so I can spend more time in it (she apparently has trust issues with things called beta release lol)

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