Playback halts randomly and subtitle issues

[Ellimist 3]

Hi,

These are probably two separate, unrelated issues, but they only happen when I'm trying to playback through my Roku, so it's worth putting them in one topic.
 

• Playback halts randomly when playing transcoded content - Playback stops randomly (only for transcoded content). It seems like it's buffering, but sometimes it never starts playing again or starts playing after a long time and then stops again. I don't see this problem when it's playing transcoded content on a Chromecast, a web-browser or an iPad.
• Subtitles don't show when "Allow subtitle extraction on the fly is checked" - Again, this seems to only happen when I'm trying to playback using Roku. It happens on Google Chromecast too, it looks like. Subtitles show up fine when it's not styled (.srt) as opposed to styled (.ass/.ssa).

I will try to find and attach logs to this so that someone can look into it.

Thank you!
Ellimist

(Edit: It looks like I was able to trigger both issues in the same playback. It generated four files, it seems. Playback stopped a few seconds in, and at 3:35 again, and came back after 20-40 seconds of delay, which is way too long for network buffering, IMO. I might be wrong though. There was no subtitles, either.)

ffmpeg-transcode-6c2be962-7913-4989-8f7d-f9a7017b39dc_1.txt

ffmpeg-transcode-9f410bc3-d3a0-4ca6-8b70-c2d36c3cc8b4_1.txt

ffmpeg-transcode-49ded512-a7ad-4bab-9d06-c9b6948a2e11_1.txt

ffmpeg-transcode-a86fcdfe-ed39-4324-b02f-8576bc9085da_1.txt

Edited January 19, 2020 by Ellimist

[ebr 14903]

Hi.  For your subtitle problem, the beta release (out soon) has an option to burn those in for the styling.

 

Does your playback issue still occur if you turn off transcode throttling on the server?

[Ellimist 3]

Hi ebr,

Thanks for your response! I tried it with throttling turned off, and it still got stuck twice. Not sure if this piece of information will help, but I was keeping my eye on the main window in the server, and when playback stopped in the Roku, both the playback position and the transcode position in the admin panel progressed like normal for 20-30s, and at that point, they reset back to the same position and it started playing on the Roku again. I have attached the logs just in case.

As for the subtitle problem, thanks for the information. I'm slightly confused though, aren't the videos transcoded and the subs burnt in when the "Allow subtitle extraction.." option is disabled? What would this new option do? (If you don't mind me asking)

ffmpeg-transcode-4967c702-b025-4066-bc0e-6752f0d28574_1.txt

ffmpeg-transcode-bbbec800-0e44-423c-93b2-f323e2be4e93_1.txt

ffmpeg-transcode-f69d7008-c93f-4129-ad8a-15ddbb1ff969_1.txt

Edited January 19, 2020 by Ellimist

[Luke 37007]

 

 

I'm slightly confused though, aren't the videos transcoded and the subs burnt in when the "Allow subtitle extraction.." option is disabled?

If they are embedded subtitles, yes.

[Luke 37007]

 

 

Subtitles don't show when "Allow subtitle extraction on the fly is checked" 

Most likely your server is not extracting them quickly enough. It has to decode the entire video to extract the subtitles and depending on the performance of both the server cpu and the storage device holding the media, this can take a while and lead you into thinking that the subtitles aren't working.

[Luke 37007]

Regarding the halting, there's nothing obvious here. As a test, if you turn off hardware transcoding in server transcoding settings, does that make a difference?