26 replies to this topic

[chjohans]

I've been using Emby since long before it became Emby, and the Emby for Kodi plugin since it was released. Playback has always been rock solid with Emby for Kodi, that is until a few months ago.

 

Since then playback fails way too frequently in Kodi with the message "One or more items failed to play. Check the log for more information about this message.". It also takes a while (typically 20-40 seconds) before this message appears. Usually it will actually start playing the stream exactly when this message is being shown, and of course the stream stops playing as soon as I click OK to get rid of the message. So the stream actually starts to play about 9 times out of 10 this message is shown, when it's not the message will just show without the stream playing.

 

When this happens every subsequent attempt will fail the same way, the fix seems to be to restart Kodi. Extremely annoying since Kodi takes a while to restart because of my massive list of Live TV channels. It happens almost daily so it's most annoying.

 

All this started about 3-4 months ago, about the same time as I upgraded to Kodi Leia, but I can't say for certain that it was exactly the time when I switched to Leia. But before this started playback was always rock solid, and I have this exact issue on all my six Kodi installations, and with two different Emby servers.

 

It just happened again so I'm attaching the kodi log from the client and the server log from the Emby server just a couple of minutes after I had this issue. I tried to restart the stream 4 times, and every time I had the issue I describe above.

 

Please have a look at this most annoying issue. Oh and I have a Emby Premiere lifetime key in case that matters at all.

Attached Files

•  kodi.log   1.31MB   15 downloads
•  embyserver.txt   1.27MB   1 downloads

Edited by chjohans, 04 October 2019 - 10:35 AM.

[Luke]

How does the web app compare?

[chjohans]

I only have playback problems with Emby for Kodi, if your question is if I have similar problems in the Emby web app. The web app, Emby for Roku, Emby for Apple TV and Emby Theatre, none of them have this playback problem. It's *only* happening with Emby for Kodi.

[abescalamis]

I also have the same problem.

[chjohans]

Could this please get some attention? This has been an issue for months, and it happens so often that I prefer not to use Emby for Kodi at all until this is solved. See the attached log files from both Emby and Kodi when this happened four times in a row.

 

This happens more often than not when trying to playback something from Kodi, and when it has started happening it seems like a restart of Kodi is necessary to be able to play something again. And after playing 2-3 titles it starts all over again.

[TeamB]

This is a volunteer based project and not a core official Emby project, volunteers are not always available and some time there will be a delay in responding and answering questions.

I had a quick look at your logs and can not see anything that jumps out at me. Unfortunate it has been some time since I fully understood the inner workings of the Emby for Kodi addon. I author the EmbyCon addon and they both work in the Kodi space but have slightly different approaches.

You could try EmbyCon to see if playback works, if it fails in the same way you can start to look at other factors bot addon related like network or Kodi version etc.

[chjohans]

Thanks. Since I have this issue with all my Kodi installations, and since I've see others posting about the same issue, I will wait for some more insight from the developer before I start looking for other factors. It also happens on a clean Kodi installation with no other addons, and my network is rock solid and for sure not the cause of this. Hopefully someone will have a look at this sooner rather than later as it's been like this for a few months already.

[Noustaa]

Hello, sometimes i get the same error in kodi with emby for kodi addon.

 

100% of the files in my library are .STRM files. 

Is it the case for you as well @chjohans ? or do you have true video files in your library ? 

[chjohans]

No .strm files in my livbrary, mailly .mp4 and .mkv.

[Noustaa]

okay, it was just to know if the cause is related to the file format.

Obviously it is not related. Thanks, lets wait and see if we get any news.

[chjohans]

Sure, thanks for stepping forward with the same issue, the more people experiencing this the more likely it is that it will be fixed. Hopefully sooner rather than later, this has already been going on for months and I more or less stopped using Kodi to playback my Emby library because of this - pretty annoying since I use Kodi for live TV (since Emby is not really any good at that), and now I have to keep switching to another Emby client to playback my Emby libraries.

[e2zippo]

I'm having issues with this as well, running Coreelec with Emby for Kodi.

 

A restart usually solves it.

[horstepipe]

We also experience this sometimes, can’t find a pattern, it’s really strange. Only strm files here. Looks like something goes wrong with the playlist setup.
Look at your „current playlist“ window. Probably it looks different than normal when playback doesn’t work anymore. Try to clear the playlist and check if playback works again.

Looks like the problem doesn‘t trigger if you always start playback via context menu -> playback

But it’s generally hard to find a real pattern here from my testings, so my statements are quite vague :-)

Edited by horstepipe, 11 October 2019 - 04:32 AM.

[fr0z3n]

Yep you guys are not alone, same behaviour on my box, as described below.

I was speaking to Angel about it a couple of weeks ago but haven't heard back in a while. Hope she's doing OK!

https://emby.media/c...inconsistently/

Edited by fr0z3n, 11 October 2019 - 08:24 AM.

[e2zippo]

Yeah, I noticed she's been awol for a while, like you said, hope she's doing Ok!

[chjohans]

I'm having issues with this as well, running Coreelec with Emby for Kodi.

 

A restart usually solves it.

Yep, a restart solves it until it happens again after having played a few titles. And a restart is pretty annoying for me as I have a lot of Live TV channels with big TV guides so it takes "forever" to restart Kodi. Until this is solved I just avoid using Emby for Kodi.

[Luke]

Is this a beta kodi version, or stable?

[Noustaa]

Stable for me 18.4

[fr0z3n]

18.3 nightly and 18.4 stable / android os both experience the problem for me

[chjohans]

I'm using 18.4 stable, but this has been ongoing for many months, about since I upgraded from Kodi 17 to 18.