Direct play errors

[Carlo 4561]

2 hours ago, mattykellyuk said:

of course. I hope I didn't sound ungrateful. I appreciate your help. I can't seem to find the debug options, whereabouts is it in CF?

No not at all.  Besides, just because something works for me in my environment doesn't mean it will always work for someone else.

[mattykellyuk 18]

Great to find the problem. Woke up this morning and the problem was back as the developer mode turned itself off after 3 hours. Turn it back on and everything's fine. I have looked at the reverse proxy guide and all settings are correct.

Cache seems to be the problem so any other suggestions?

[mattykellyuk 18]

@cayarsso looks like we have found the problem. Cloudfare caching. Any ideas how to fix?

[Luke 42078]

On 12/14/2021 at 11:12 PM, Luke said:

I would also try turning off cloudfare caching and see if that helps.

 

[mattykellyuk 18]

12 minutes ago, Luke said:

 

Thanks. I have now changed the below setting but this is against the guide previously mentioned. This seems have have fixed the problem.

This won't mess up something else will it? @cayars

[Carlo 4561]

Well here is the definition of those settings:

• No Query String: Only delivers files from cache when there is no query string.
• Ignore Query String: Delivers the same resource to everyone independent of the query string.
• Standard: Delivers a different resource each time the query string changes.

What I use is the Standard setting. What this would do is allow use of cached items whenever the URL is the same as a previous call except for content that was not allowed to be cached due to the rules we put in place (ie videos).

When you switch this to No Query String using Emby you have really turned off most of the caching as Emby uses query strings extensively. As an example here is the poster off my system for Days of Thunder.  With a setting of Standard this can be cached and re-used again without it being pulled from my server.  With the No Query String option set this image would get fetched every time from your system.

https://domain.ext/emby/Items/945831/Images/Primary?maxHeight=300&maxWidth=200&tag=d73ac8d91d67ec31d805e3ac3956ef1f&quality=90

What you have found two different ways is that essentially turning off caching solves your problem.  Now we need to figure out why and where the problem needs correcting.  It could be another setting at Cloudflare or it could be an NGINX setting.

If this was my system I think I would try to standup another copy of Emby either on another computer or using the portable version with different ports set to coexist running at the same time as your main server.  I would add a small library of files to use for testing then I would set this up with a unique subdomain in Cloudflare as normal but then have it bypass NGINX on the local side.

Besides the common ports of 80 & 443, Cloudflare has other ports that can be used that they will forward. Here is a list of ports they will forward that you can use.
HTTP ports supported by Cloudflare
80
8080
8880
2052
2082
2086
2095

HTTPS ports supported by Cloudflare
443
2053
2083
2087
2096
8443

They also have one other series of ports specifically setup to redirect but not use caching.  I would avoid these ports for this test but if ultimately you can't solve this problem might be a consideration down the road.

Caching is disabled for the following ports
2052
2053
2082
2083
2086
2087
2095
2096
8880
8443

It's a bit of work to do this test but it should at least determine if things work or not when nginx is inline. This can help to focus what needs looking at.

Let us know what you find out,
Carlo

[mattykellyuk 18]

Thanks for the help. I'm really happy it's sorted. @cayars

To be honest this is so over my head I question whether I should bother enabling remote acces.

So the cache setting I changed will just mean that images and media info will just have to download everytime? I'm happy with that if it enables users not have to wait minutes for something to play. 

Edited December 18, 2021 by mattykellyuk

[Carlo 4561]

If you aren't having any issues with the current settings and have no issues with performance then call it a day for now.

[mattykellyuk 18]

28 minutes ago, cayars said:

If you aren't having any issues with the current settings and have no issues with performance then call it a day for now.

thanks. Appreciate your time with this and in the past. @cayars

[Arvald 2]

On 14/12/2021 at 23:12, Luke said:

I would also try turning off cloudfare caching and see if that helps.

Thanks Luke.  That was my fix for when I had the issue with anything that was direct playing and not transcoded.