Emby Server on Samsung S6 Lite tablet not playing files

[jscheeren 16]

I am testing Emby Server 4.5.2.0 on a new S6 Lite Tablet, which has an Android 10 kernel version of 4.14.113.19529942. I have connected to it 2 WD Passport drives via a hub for a total of nearly 7 TB of video files. It scans the libraries fine and the artwork and metadata is all there, but when I try to play a video file, it will display all, but then at the last step it presents a dialog box "Playback Error No Compatible streams are currently available......."

If I take the exact same setup and try to play videos on a Samsung 2017 Tab A running Android 10 kernel  3.18.124-19661885, or a Samsung smartphone S10 running Android 10, it all works fine.

Any ideas as to why?

Cheers and thanks,

Jan

 

[Luke 36999]

Hi there, can you please attach the emby server log? Thanks.

[jscheeren 16]

Luke,

Please find log files from 21Nov20 and 24Nov20

 

embyserver-63741568685.txt embyserver.txt

Edited November 24, 2020 by jscheeren

[Luke 36999]

Are you trying to play from the chrome browser, or our android app?

[jscheeren 16]

Video files not playing from any app locally or remotely - including the Emby Android App, Chrome or Edge locally. But also the server struggles to be seen from other devices/apps via Emby Connect. But if it is (I think based on waiting enough hours), when clicking on it, it just comes back and askes again for userid and then automatically goes to a server that is working.  

[Luke 36999]

There's nothing obvious here. I don't even see any playback attempts in the server logs. Are you sure that is the right log file?

[jscheeren 16]

I will test it again for you and send new log files. I assume that I am picking the correct log file as it is on that device. Any idea how I might not be getting the correct files, are there multiple options?

[Luke 36999]

I would just grab the ones that are modified during the timeframe in which you're testing. thanks.

[jscheeren 16]

Luke,

Please find the logs from this afternoons test. Again, the result from trying to play is the same as before. Today, I added a second movie folder to the library. All files tested were MKV of varying resolutions, but none HEVC. The library does show in Emby Connect now, but when attempting to play remotely, when selecting the S6 Lite host, it again just connects to another server. I included transcode logs this time, but I am assuming it shouldn't have tried to transcode each of these videos.

Cheers,

Jan

ffmpeg-transcode-b9e0e3ab-939f-496a-a9e0-f71eff53d4bf_1.txt embyserver-63741826796.txt ffmpeg-transcode-2be9e1e2-dfa0-4101-bc35-b1885c23f440_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-4d435d73-2859-4b3a-995f-669b407542be_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-6b88d457-4e96-41b4-a19e-500fa07377c4_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-850a40a0-74f3-4317-b7d2-f8e369603630_1.txt

[softworkz 3325]

@jscheeren - the base Android version of your device is QP1A.190711.020 which corresponds to Android 10 R2 (https://source.android.com/setup/start/build-numbers).

Unfortunately Emby Server Android does not work with some of those initial releases.

The only suggestion I have at this time would be to check whether other ROM versions are available for your device. Either Android 9 (Pie) or with a later base release version of Android 10.

[Luke 36999]

Hi, has this helped?

[jscheeren 16]

Thanks for asking Luke.

I had assumed that Emby Server would work on this just purchased Samsung S6 Lite, it as it had Android 10. I will now send it back to Amazon as it can't. I will go back to testing the Samsung S10 and Samsung Tab A. Emby Server seemed to work on these two running Android 10 (See other thread.) The only issue discovered so far was that playing the Emby client on the Tab A, as well as the Emby server, the video was quite jerky, but it still played fine on several clients running at same time including browser, Fire Stick 4k, Android TV and Android.

Cheers,

Jan

[softworkz 3325]

@jscheeren - Have you checked for a newer available ROM? (e.g. sammobiles.com)

 

[jscheeren 16]

Thanks softworkz but I would prefer to just do Over The Air updates. Furthermore, sammobiles.com is blocked by Malwarebytes for PUB and by Adaware,( but is is rated safe by VirusTotal,) so just a pain in the butt to set up exclusions - and I don't even know if a version of Android 10 that they might have would be good for Emby server etc. 

 

[softworkz 3325]

15 minutes ago, jscheeren said:

Thanks softworkz but I would prefer to just do Over The Air updates. Furthermore, sammobiles.com is blocked by Malwarebytes for PUB and by Adaware,( but is is rated safe by VirusTotal,) so just a pain in the butt to set up exclusions - and I don't even know if a version of Android 10 that they might have would be good for Emby server etc. 

I have downloaded one of the latest ROMs for your device (4G) but I wasn't able to easily find out on which Android 10 Rel it is based on without being able to install it.

Sooner or later there will very likely be an (OTA) ROM update based on a later Android 10 release, but right now I'm afraid that I got no better news to tell.

Emby is the only personal media server in the world that is able to do hardware accelerated transcoding on arbitrary Android devices that have appropriate capabilities. This works on something like 80-90% of all recent Android OS builds, but the required effort to cover the missing percentage is just out of limits. There are very few Oreo builds, some of the first Pie builds and some of the first Android 10 builds that are affected. I only hope that this won't repeat with the upcoming Android 11...