Set Up Emby Theater to Pass to External Video Player

[ElLoboSolitario 0]

I've been using Emby Theater for some time as the phone app and streaming to my bedroom TV. I would like to also use the phone app in my main system, but stream it to Firefox on my living room system. I would prefer to use an external player vs the player the browser uses because the player I use does pass through of Dolby Digital and DTS audio to my surround sound receiver. The question is: HOW do I set it up to enable an external player using Emby Theater?

[Luke 39691]

Hi, are you saying you want Firefox to launch an external player?

[Carlo 4549]

I think we need some clarification as Emby Theater is a specific release but not available on the phone. Do you have a computer or a Pi or similar hooked up to your TVs? If not:

What device is hooked up to the bedroom TV?

What device is hooked up to the living room TV?

Edited August 5, 2020 by cayars

[ElLoboSolitario 0]

Exactly. I want Firefox to launch my default player that I use for video on my main system in the living room. Using the Emby phone app, I can stream content to my Chromecast dongle in the bedroom or to Firefox in the living room.

[Carlo 4549]

Chromecast makes sense but how if "Firefox" a web browser connected/used on the living room TV?

[ElLoboSolitario 0]

Because the phone recognizes Firefox as a device on the network.

[Carlo 4549]

Same question I asked earlier:

What device is hooked up to the living room TV?

[ElLoboSolitario 0]

Sorry for misunderstanding the question. It's a Windows machine running Win 7 x64 and Firefox as the browser as per screenshot. I KNOW I can cast to the browser because I was messing around with the settings from my phone once and ended up playing content on the computer in the living room.

[Luke 39691]

On 8/4/2020 at 8:18 AM, ElLoboSolitario said:

Exactly. I want Firefox to launch my default player that I use for video on my main system in the living room. Using the Emby phone app, I can stream content to my Chromecast dongle in the bedroom or to Firefox in the living room.

Web browsers can't launch external programs so you'd have to just play in Firefox. Either that or use emby theater instead of Firefox and use your phone to play to that.

[ElLoboSolitario 0]

OK, I set up Emby Theater client and I need to have it recognized as a device  like the Chromecast dongle. Once I do that how do I set my default video player path into the command line to run electron?

[Luke 39691]

You can't set it in the command line. You need to use the user interface to configure your external player.

[ElLoboSolitario 0]

Figured out how to launch an external video player using Emby Theater and also can control the app using either my phone or the PC remote. Down side is that playing trailers causes the system to freeze up just as it does in the bedroom system. When I played trailers using Media Browser Classic, everything worked fine. On the bedroom system, the trailers streamed fine to the phone, but as soon as I try to stream them to the Chromecast, everything freezes.

[Carlo 4549]

I haven't seen this before.

Are these local or Internet trailers?

Does it happen every time or just once in a while?

Can you give us the rough steps used to reproduce this?

[ElLoboSolitario 0]

This happens with internet trailers every time I try to cast them to my Chromecast device from my phone or stream them to my Emby Theater Client on my living room PC. It basically freezes everything and the system just stalls trying to load. I KNOW it's the internet trailers that are causing this because as soon as I change the settings to dispense with playing trailers, playback is fine. For whatever reason, using Media Browser Classic for WMC I have no issues with playing trailers (but the trade off is that it loads more slowly and can't switch to all productions by a specified actor the way Emby Theater can)

[Luke 39691]

Can you please attach the emby server and ffmpeg log? Thanks.

[ElLoboSolitario 0]

 Not sure what you'reFFMPEG Remux log.txt lo oking  for, but this is what's happening

Emby Server log.txt

[Luke 39691]

So this log is from Chromecast? It looks like the ffmpeg log is from the movie and not the trailer. The problem is only with the trailer, right?

[ElLoboSolitario 0]

Correct. It's the trailers that cause everything to slow to a crawl. If I use Emby Classic for WMC, I don't encounter these issues. I'll try again playing a different movie using Emby Theater on a local Windows machine. As I suspected, even using Theater playing trailers on my Windows PC, they still load extremely slowly compared to using Emby Classic for Windows Media Centre. When I attempt to stream trailers to my Chromecast in the bedroom, the system essentially freezes. It only improves slightly if I stream to only the phone and not the bedroom TV.

ffmpeg-remux-aaf0358f-edf8-4cd1-9410-638e23b06e61_1.txt ffmpeg-remux-fcb7af59-1811-4c61-bdd9-e84422ffa280_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-6a19668e-ffe9-4350-a5e4-30b683592c33_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-e4363034-34bc-4bcd-8da3-7ddfea1406de_1.txt ffmpeg-directstream-176c662b-e0f9-4466-a399-85ab8caa4db2_1.txt ffmpeg-remux-699ffe0e-7919-490b-941f-6fe7599bcaae_1.txt