Question about Behavior When the External Player Option is Selected

[saj 10]

As I have reported previously, I have a Samsung Galaxy Note 3 with Lollipop (latest version supported) that runs emby perfectly except that it crashes every time I try to play any media. This just bugs me because I can play video and audio with any other app that I have tried with no problem. So, I decided to try external players with emby. And voilà, media will play without crashing with both VLC and MX Player. MX PLayer Pro is the most versatile and works great. So this begs the question of why the internal player has so much trouble, and that would be nice to know but is not my primary reason for this post.

 

It appears that if I have tried previously to play a particular media file with the app, then there is no way to get the app to honor my external player setting. It seems to still try to use the internal player and, of course, crashes every time. If I play previously untouched media, I get the appropriate prompt to choose an external player and can choose one and say whether it is a one time choice or permanent. It also appears that the permanent external player selection is only associated with that particular type of media because playing another media type can still prompt the question (I think that makes perfect sense, since we might want to use different external players for different types of media). So, is there any way I can make emby forget the previous association with the internal player? I tried the usual suspects - clear data, clear cache, complete uninstall/reinstall. Nothing helped.

 

I may be misinterpreting what I am seeing, but a lot of testing seems to support the theory. Any help would be appreciated.

 

[Luke 36997]

Hi, there shouldn't be any association with the internal player. What happens when you restart the app?

[saj 10]

It behaves the same no matter how many times I restart, clear, reinstall, etc. It seems to work consistently with the external player when I play media I know I have never played in the app before and fail consistently otherwise. What made me think there was some retained association is this. I turn off the external player option and restart it. No matter what I select to play it crashes. Now I restart and turn on the external player option. If I try to play something that has been crashing before, it never prompts me for the external player selection. It just immediately crashes. If I try to play something that I have never played there before, it prompts me for the external player and after I select it, it plays properly. For the media that crashes, I never see a prompt for the external player selection, no matter the sequence of events. So, from my perspective, there is never a failure when it properly uses the external player, but it always fails otherwise. I know; it doesn't make a lot of sense to me either. I couldn't imagine why there would be some retained association, but that is how it appears. And it is still odd that the only place I see media playing crashes ever is with the emby internal player. Netflix works great, as do Amazon streaming, xFinity streaming, Hulu - you name it. Not a problem in sight. I should just give up, but I am intrigued as to what could be going on.

[Luke 36997]

I'll keep an eye out for this and try to chase it down. For me though setting up vlc as an external player I am not seeing this happen.

[saj 10]

OK, thanks. Just one additional piece of information. I downloaded one of the crashing movies to my phone, and played it with emby. It used the external player and worked just fine. Of course, that is what I would have expected.

[Luke 36997]

Thanks for the info.

[Luke 36997]

Can you try 3.0.51+ and see how that compares:

https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/74729-emby-for-android-mobile-3051/

Thanks.