Polygon 0 Posted October 4, 2017 Share Posted October 4, 2017 (edited) I'm having a very odd buffering issue and I'm at a loss. I've been trying to track down the cause for close to a month now. Tried everything you can find doing a Google search. The issue is that movies will buffer at a certain point, and it happens at the exact same point in the movie every time. Some movies it happens at the beginning. Some it happens near the middle. Some it happens closer to the end. It does it on my Roku 3 on a wired connection and it does it on a different Roku on a wireless connection. The network is all gigabit switches and I can maintain around 100 MB/sec. The server is a Pentium G4600 with 8GB of RAM. Disks are WD Reds. OS is Windows 10 Pro. All scanned and in perfect health. If played on a computer outside of Emby using Media Player Classic there are no issues to computers on the wired network and the wireless. I've reinstalled. I've done a clean install. I've rebuilt the database from scratch. I don't know what else to blame save for the files themselves but I've re-encoded them more than once to try to account for it. I'm having issues with 1080p content. I'm using Handbrake to encode using H.264 MP4. AS of yet it doesn't happen in TV shows which are encoded using the same settings. Any help on where to start would be appreciated. I've attached the log file from the playback. ffmpeg-directstream-0aa7efe6-ae1c-4c36-86b8-41ae27482d03.txt Edited October 4, 2017 by Polygon Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ebr 14910 Posted October 4, 2017 Share Posted October 4, 2017 I don't see anything wrong in that log. It is just doing a container swap and it is quite fast. If you have debug options turned on in the app, try turning them off. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Polygon 0 Posted October 4, 2017 Author Share Posted October 4, 2017 I don't see anything wrong in that log. It is just doing a container swap and it is quite fast. If you have debug options turned on in the app, try turning them off. Yeah, that's what I thought. I checked on both the server and the Rokus and it's off. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Solution Waldonnis 148 Posted October 5, 2017 Solution Share Posted October 5, 2017 Are the files you're seeing this with over 4GB and are your Rokus running 7.7.0 build 4135? If so, it may still be the 4GB bug rearing its ugly head. Not all of us have received the firmware rev that fixed this bug (again), so it continues to be a problem....likely until we get the 8.0 update. Seems that the Roku 4-type models got updates due to other issues that cropped up on them, but the builds for the 2 and 3 (and maybe the sticks too) weren't pushed out and several folks on the Roku forum haven't been getting any replies lately after requesting a downgrade or the version they were testing. If you haven't heard about the bug, files over 4GB that are being played directly crash the internal video player when playback hits 4GB intervals from the end of the file. So, if your file is barely over 4GB, it'll crash early and force a transcode as a fallback measure. If it's 6GB, it'll sack out after 2GB worth of playback, and so forth. If the file is under 4GB, it won't crash at all, so you it won't fall back to transcoding. This bug first showed up last year and months went by before we saw a fix from Roku. History repeats itself, apparently, since Roku owners first noticed this back in August and still no fix for some of us. Guess we're stuck transcoding until 8.0 hits sometime this month. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Polygon 0 Posted October 5, 2017 Author Share Posted October 5, 2017 (edited) Are the files you're seeing this with over 4GB and are your Rokus running 7.7.0 build 4135? If so, it may still be the 4GB bug rearing its ugly head. Not all of us have received the firmware rev that fixed this bug (again), so it continues to be a problem....likely until we get the 8.0 update. Seems that the Roku 4-type models got updates due to other issues that cropped up on them, but the builds for the 2 and 3 (and maybe the sticks too) weren't pushed out and several folks on the Roku forum haven't been getting any replies lately after requesting a downgrade or the version they were testing. If you haven't heard about the bug, files over 4GB that are being played directly crash the internal video player when playback hits 4GB intervals from the end of the file. So, if your file is barely over 4GB, it'll crash early and force a transcode as a fallback measure. If it's 6GB, it'll sack out after 2GB worth of playback, and so forth. If the file is under 4GB, it won't crash at all, so you it won't fall back to transcoding. This bug first showed up last year and months went by before we saw a fix from Roku. History repeats itself, apparently, since Roku owners first noticed this back in August and still no fix for some of us. Guess we're stuck transcoding until 8.0 hits sometime this month. Okay, I didn't know about this bug. It started around the same time I upgraded my server and went from Windows 7 to Windows 10. So, it had me questioning potential issues with Windows 10, the install, and even the hardware on the server. It's even had me questioning the software I use to encode. I had noticed that it wasn't doing it with TV shows or animated movies, and my animated movies are all under 4GB. Obviously, TV shows are as well. So I decided to watch a live action movie on Monday night, one I know has never had this issue, one of my fist Blu Rays I encoded and it played through the entire movie just fine. So, I started looking at what was different about it, and then I saw it, it was under 4GB and it had me wondering if there was some sort of issue that was being exploited past the 4GB mark. I was actually doing a re-encode today of one of the problem movies to be under 4GB to test it. Anyhow, I just checked and my Roku 3's are both 7.7.0 build 4135-4. I guess I should have started at the Roku forums. One thing I did try after having issues with direct playback is I forced it to transcode and I had thought I fixed it, but it turns out that it just buffered at a different time, later in the movie and just got stuck in a buffering loop and eventually gave up. So glad to know what the issue is and I don't have to worry about it anymore. Hopefully Roku does fix it. If not, perhaps this is their way of forcing some people to upgrade to a 4. Anyhow, thanks a ton. Edited October 5, 2017 by Polygon Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Waldonnis 148 Posted October 5, 2017 Share Posted October 5, 2017 No problem! I just wish this bug hadn't creeped in again. It irritates me to no end, since nearly all of my media files are over 4GB and I mainly use two Roku 3s for playback (playing with a FireTV Stick recently because of this). There are some workarounds, but it would be nice if Roku had even tested for the regression before releasing that build and letting it go unfixed for months...again. Bah, I've ranted about this bug in several threads in the past already, so I'll stop now Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Polygon 0 Posted October 6, 2017 Author Share Posted October 6, 2017 Yeah, it's incredibly frustrating. I know how you feel since TV episodes and animated movies are about the only ones I have that are below 4GB. Everything else is roughly 4.5GB and up. Oh well, I'm just happy to know what the issue is at this point. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Happy2Play 8270 Posted October 6, 2017 Share Posted October 6, 2017 Have you tried requesting a firmware update? https://forums.roku.com/viewtopic.php?f=34&t=104589&start=15#p568117 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Waldonnis 148 Posted October 6, 2017 Share Posted October 6, 2017 Have you tried requesting a firmware update? https://forums.roku.com/viewtopic.php?f=34&t=104589&start=15#p568117 Most people making requests recently haven't been getting any reply nor have received the testing version (or a rollback), probably because 8.0's release is so close. Check the last few pages of the 7.7 issues thread. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Polygon 0 Posted October 7, 2017 Author Share Posted October 7, 2017 Have you tried requesting a firmware update? https://forums.roku.com/viewtopic.php?f=34&t=104589&start=15#p568117 Yep, right after Waldonnis's reply. Most people making requests recently haven't been getting any reply nor have received the testing version (or a rollback), probably because 8.0's release is so close. Check the last few pages of the 7.7 issues thread. That's good to know. Hopefully we'll have the update before the end of month. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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