Chromecast spinning wheel

[ironblack 0]

Hello, I have a problem which has been going on for at least 6 months or more, on any latest version of Emby (server on Linux)

When casting to Chromecast, the larger the file is the longer a spinning wheel is displayed on screen above the video (which starts playing) and after the spinning wheel ends spinning the lower banner with image+film title is displayed.

This is very a annoying since this spinning wheel can stay there even for 3-4 minutes with 5GB high-resolution files, and in the meantime it's not possible to control (stop/pause) the playback, neither from the tv remote control nor from the app (which does not show the usual control of what's playing - while the wheel spins, it's as if the video has not been started yet for the Emby Android app)

This behaviour as I said started at least 6 months ago, maybe even 1 year, I don't remember. I am reporting it only now because previously I played relatively small files and the spinning wheel delay was quite acceptable or even noticeable, but as I start playing larger files the wheel spins, spins, spins for a really long time.

The delay, as said, could range from 3-5 seconds with 300MB files to even 3-4 minutes with 5GB files. Previously I distinctly remember that the wheel was almost not there, and any playback did not even take the 3-5 seconds wheel, and certainly not more. I remember that a certain point after an upgrade I noticed that.

Let me know if you need further info.

Thank you,

Marco

[Luke 42078]

Hi, I think we should probably look at a specific example. Please attach the information requested in how to report a media playback issue. thanks !

[ironblack 0]

Hello Luke, it took time to replicate the problem and I think I found why.

Attached is my log file of yesterday evening, please see playback of:

/data/tvseries/Westworld/Season 2/Westworld - S02E03.mkv

at 

2021-08-27 19:21:05.118

The video is quite big, and it has several subtitle tracks. What happened yesterday was that the video started playing but the wheel spun for more than a minute before showing the movie banner and allowing me to do anything (like pausing, stopping, etc.); defaults subtitles were on.

In the logfile, after more than a minute, there is this line:

2021-08-27 19:22:16.324 Info SubtitleEncoder: ffmpeg subtitle extraction completed for file:"/data/tvseries/Westworld/Season 2/Westworld - S02E03.mkv" to /config/cache/temp/da908a60bcae482191395b5b8b18dfd2.vtt

Might be the subtitle extraction that "locks" the playback and does not allow to pause or do anything else?

On a second try, today, the file just plays immediately (same settings as yesterday evening) on the TV via phone app+Chromecast.

Can anything be done for this issue?

Thank you,

Marco

embyserver-63765705600.txt

[Luke 42078]

@ironblack yes, in your server transcoding menu, uncheck the option to allow on the fly subtitle extraction. This will cause those same subtitles to be burned in with server transcoding. Please make sure to read the help text because that also has it's drawbacks.

For the best possible performance, consider using external subtitles. Please let us know if this helps. Thanks.

[ironblack 0]

Hello Luke, thanks for the suggestion. I have tried removing the on-the-fly subtitle extraction, but overall the experience seems degraded (longer times in waiting for initial spinning wheel, despite the video not starting immediately).

I will try to use external subtitles when available.

Thank you,

Marco

[Luke 42078]

Right, depending on your environment it could be a choice between two options that are both slow. That's one reason why external subtitles are best.