Video stops and exits abruptly on Roku

[PlzLessSerious 1]

While watching an episode, the video abruptly stops and exits. "Play next episode" is turned Off. When it was turned on, Emby would just mid episode suddenly skip to the next episode. So far it keeps happening just with one file and at a specific location in the episode (cannot skip past it). The video plays without problems in VLC media player

 

Emby running on Synology NAS (version 4.2.1.0)

Viewing on Roku Ultra (Roku SG 3.0.175)

 

I sent debug logs at 2019.09.05 21:04 (9:04 PM) local time. I am at GMT+3 I think atm. Basically logs were sent some 15 minutes ago, hopefully this post will have a timestamp

Emby user: tarmo

Was playing file: The Orville - S02E07.Deflectors.mkv

Problem at around 12min 48 second part

 

[ebr 14910]

Hi.  Sounds like maybe a problem with that file.  Is an ffmpeg log produced?  If not, if you lower the quality setting in the app to force it to transcode, does it play then?

[PlzLessSerious 1]

Setting a low resolution allowed me to play the file. I did see some artifacts on the screen at the specific time-mark.

I do not know how to check the ffmpeg log - is it still necessary to troubleshoot the issue further?

 

I assume if I do not want these errors to affect my video watching I have to overwrite the auto configuration for resolutions and live with transcoding for pretty much all videos?

 

Thank you for letting me know of the work around btw

[ebr 14910]

I would try just maybe re-muxing that one video or even a re-encode but to a slighly lower bitrate so quality doesn't really suffer.

 

Sounds like a glitch in the stream that the Roku player cannot handle but ffmpeg can.

[speechles 1917]

It sounds like the Roku mistakes that point as the end of the file especially if it isn't throwing up any error messages or attempting any playback recovery. You might be able to fix it by remux with MKVToolNix GUI and drag 'n drop then "start remux". The resulting MKV should have a header the Roku then likes. The Roku is very, very, very, (insert 1000 very)  dependent on the header of the file giving correct/honest information. When it does not the Roku can/does misbehave.

Edited September 5, 2019 by speechles

[PlzLessSerious 1]

Yeah.

 

Strangely the next video had a similar issue right from the start. For that I found a slightly different (but really the same) workaround.

 

My file has embedded subs and external ones. External ones played as default and caused teh video to crash. I selected internal ones and the video played without quitting. On the server side I have chosen to burn unsupported subs into the video, so I guess there the transcoding worked in this case as well. No artifacts on screen this time though. 

 

VLC plays both files without any artifacts.

 

Thanks again for all the hard work you guys put into creating and supporting Emby. I was really surprised to get such fast an on point suppport on the forums as well.

Thanks and have a nice day.

[Gilgamesh_48 943]

FWIW: I have seen this problem on a couple of files and the files played on my Android clients and did show some weird artifacts at the point where the Roku chocked and crashed. I tried the rumux idea but that failed. However an encode using handbrake to an mp4 file produced a file that worked fine.

 

It should also be noted that after I played the file on my Android device past the glitch point I was able to pick up and playback fine on the Roku.

 

At the time I had the problems I was not able to get more detailed information but I would suggest that a file displaying the glitch might be good for the developers to have. If I have this happen again I will supply a file or, maybe, someone else could.

 

The glitches I can understand and even tolerate as it is the source file that is at fault but I think that the app should not crash on the Roku because of the glitch. However it appears that the only way to correct the issue is for the developers to have the file and reproduce the bug. Note: I call it a bug because it crashes the app which I believe should not happen no matter how bad the file being played is screwed up.

[PlzLessSerious 1]

Btw, re-muxing both files fixed them and they play fine now

Edit - the original broken files are gone however unfortunately. In my case it was not possible to skip past the problematic spot and re-muxing worked, so it might be a different issue. Also - in my case the entire app did not crash - rather the user was thrown to some previous screen as if the video had ended.. (and if auto next episode was enabled, just got the next episode)

Edited September 5, 2019 by PlzLessSerious

[Luke 37060]

Thanks for the info.

[murky024 1]

This just started happening to me on my Roku as well. (TCL 6 series TV) after I reset the device post a firmware update. No issue on the Shield TV. I also had this issue randomly on playbacks from a saved position on the Roku, but not from a fresh restart of the movie/show.

[ebr 14910]

This just started happening to me on my Roku as well. (TCL 6 series TV) after I reset the device post a firmware update. No issue on the Shield TV. I also had this issue randomly on playbacks from a saved position on the Roku, but not from a fresh restart of the movie/show.

 

If this is just a certain file, have you tried remuxing it?

[Luke 37060]

If it is just a certain file, then our media conversion feature could help you do that:

https://emby.media/community/index.php?/blog/1/entry-423-emby-server-34-released/