Emby Theatre for Windows - files won't play

[Clark.Lidbury 3]

Hi and Happy New Year,

So starting around Dec 26 or so, Emby theatre (installed on the same PC as the server) will no longer play any media.The app launches, logs into my library, but when I try to play a file, it opens the splash screen with the media background and the loading wheels spins forever. I have tried a couple uninstall and reinstalls to no success. I can play back media using a web browser. I can also stream to both my android and apple devices, so I think the problem is simply the theater for windows app. As a side note, emby theater would never play music files in the past, but I ignored it. But now the same problem is occurring with video files also.

Any help would be great, because I prefer using the app as it plays nicely with my FLIRC usb IR receiver and tv remote (the web browser interface doesnt work so well for this).

Thank you!

[Happy2Play 8296]

What version number?

Possibly this

 

Moving to Theater section.

Edited January 1, 2021 by Happy2Play

[Clark.Lidbury 3]

Oops sorry - didn't realize I was posting in the wrong spot - thanks for moving it!

I believe version 3.0.14.0 (by clicking properties on the EXE file)

I'll check the above setting and report back

Would that affect music playback also? Curious why that never worked in theater either

[sooty234 266]

The version you are using will be at the bottom of the settings page.

As to your issue. Nothing will start playing? You hit play and it just doesn't do anything?

[sooty234 266]

And have you tried completely removing all traces then re-installing? Try deleting the install folder and reinstalling. 

[Clark.Lidbury 3]

Yes Version 3.0.14 confirmed at the bottom of the settings page

Changing video renderer from auto to GPU has brought back video playback - awesome!

Any ideas how to get music playback to work - I just get the loading green circle continuosly...

Thanks!

[Happy2Play 8296]

Glad we have one issue resolved.

Can you show your Audio setting in Theater?

[Clark.Lidbury 3]

Thanks for helping! audio settings... ok

Speaker layout: auto

Audio passthrough: nothing checked

Dynamic range compression: none

enable exclusive audio mode: unchecked (I've tried this checked - no change)

upmix channels: unchecked

These are the default settings I believe.

I should add that video audio has no issue at all

[Clark.Lidbury 3]

Oh. And 99% of my music files are FLAC type. If that is of interest. But music will play in browser and on networked devices (ie android/apple) and actually now that I think of it also on a networked PC running Theatre - but not the server PC... Should I try the fix for the windows store app version (seen on another post) to get playback to work on the server PC? That is my only thought...

Edited January 2, 2021 by Clark.Lidbury
clarity

[Clark.Lidbury 3]

To be clear I am running the regular desktop version from the emby website/

Edited January 2, 2021 by Clark.Lidbury

[sooty234 266]

If all other media plays correctly, then that would suggest an access issue to your music. Make sure that your permissions are set correctly and network access is allowed/working.

[sooty234 266]

49 minutes ago, Clark.Lidbury said:

Oh. And 99% of my music files are FLAC type. If that is of interest. But music will play in browser and on networked devices (ie android/apple) and actually now that I think of it also on a networked PC running Theatre - but not the server PC... Should I try the fix for the windows store app version (seen on another post) to get playback to work on the server PC? That is my only thought...

That's not applicable

[williechan 2]

8 hours ago, Happy2Play said:

很高兴我们解决了一个问题。

您可以在剧院中显示音频设置吗？

Hello, I updated to Emby Theater 3.0.14, there is this problem, the previous version does not have this problem, I hope you can check it.

Edited January 2, 2021 by williechan

[williechan 2]

I tried to reinstall and found that there was no problem with the new installation, so I don't know what the problem is, but at least it can be used normally now, so it shouldn't be a problem.

[Luke 37112]

Thanks for the feedback.

[Clark.Lidbury 3]

No problems Luke! Do you have any suggestions how to get music playback to work in Emby theatre on the server PC? It works through browser but not in the emby theatre desktop app. Windows 10. I've tried setting theatre to run as administrator. The only thing I could maybe try is move my music library to another external drive - although this is a bit of a hassle.

 

Thanks! 

[Luke 37112]

2 hours ago, Clark.Lidbury said:

No problems Luke! Do you have any suggestions how to get music playback to work in Emby theatre on the server PC? It works through browser but not in the emby theatre desktop app. Windows 10. I've tried setting theatre to run as administrator. The only thing I could maybe try is move my music library to another external drive - although this is a bit of a hassle.

 

Thanks! 

What happens when you try?

[Clark.Lidbury 3]

When I try to play music I just get the spinning loading circle. Persists until I play another media type or exit the app. Accessing library through web browser the music file plays instantly...

Also, playing music on a networked pc using the desktop theatre app has no problem. Its just on the server PC...

Edited January 2, 2021 by Clark.Lidbury

[sooty234 266]

Follow this link and let's see if mpv will generate a log. If it does, please attach it.

On 12/27/2020 at 9:55 AM, sooty234 said:

To generate an mpv log, you need to make an mpv.conf and add logging to it. Be sure to name the log file you're making in the logging entry. Example: log-file="G:\mpv logs\Portable mpv log.txt"

 

[Clark.Lidbury 3]

Hi sooty234 - I sort of understand what you want me to do but also not really - those links send me to pages I barely comprehend. (sorry!) So does Emby Theater use MPV to playback music? When I search my user/appdata/roaming folder I do see an mpv folder BUT it is completely empty. Should there be something in there? I did a search of my entire c:/ for mpv.conf and no results appeared.

There is of course user/appdata/roaming/emby-theater/system/electronapp/plugins/mpvplayer folder that i found by doing a search for "mpv" in explorer...

so.. I tried my best. I made my own mpv.conf file with a similar entry as suggested but nothing was generated. Which doesn't surprise me because I have no idea what I am doing lol!

[sooty234 266]

Theater uses mpv for everything. The empty mpv folder is where you make the mpv.conf file. Does that make sense?

[Clark.Lidbury 3]

Yes it does. Is there a trick to generating the .conf file? I made a text file, then copied your example into the first line (edited to c:) and then changed the file extension to .conf then I opened emby theatertried to play music and closed emby theatre. Then I went to where I asked the conf file to save a log text file but there was nothing there...

[sooty234 266]

Assuming the mpv.conf is correct and the entries are correct, a log is only generated if playback is attempted. If playback isn't attempted that means the emby server is failing to deliver the address to the player. The player not having access to the file is most likely. As I said earlier, check your permissions and make sure access to the media is possible for the player. For the library config, have you used the optional network folder location? If not, I suggest doing that.

 

[Mobius 18]

Resolved a similar issue with my laptop for video playback. However while I don't use ET to play music; I thought this might help.

Tried out 3.0.14, about an hour ago. No video playback just the 'Circle', which actually froze ET and required me to use 'Task Manager' to 'end task'.

This is on a Win 10 ver 20h2 system

Followed sooty234's advice and created a mpv.conf:

 - Created a log folder called 'logs' in "C:\users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\mpv" in my case, then
 - Added "log-file="C:\users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\mpv\logs\mpvlogs.txt" to the mpv.conf I just created.
 - Tried to play a video to generate a log.
 - Playback failed of course but the log was generated and I found these entries in the log.

[   1.178][e][cplayer] Passthrough format unsupported.
[   1.221][v][cplayer] Falling back to PCM output.

I checked my ET audio settings and this is what I had:

So I unticked them all, restarted ET and everything played as it should.

Never had this issue prior to 3.0.14. Also tried 3.0.13 and saw the same issue which again was resolved by unticking the audio passthrough settings.

Should note that there was no issue on my HTPC with either 3.0.13 or 3.0.14 in which the audio goes through an AV Receiver.

Hope this helps.

Edited January 22, 2021 by Mobius
tidied up the post

[Clark.Lidbury 3]

Thanks @Mobius for the detailed and informative post! I hope it helps someone! But unfortunately I do not have audio pass through checked. At the moment I just don't play music on my server PC (which is also my HTPC). And if I really want to, I know I could play music in browser instead of ET.

Thx anyway!