Emby ramdomly stops playing

[Moomadness 0]

Hi there,

hoping for some help.  its hard to narrow down how it occurs but ill try to give my findings and my log file for help.

i have a windows 10 emby server a couple of NAS units for storage and a Nvidia shield V 2019 pro for playing the media back. on the odd occasion when playing a movie it will go back to the movie screen like i have pressed the back button while its streaming. however it seems to happen a lot more when i put on something for the kids to keep them quite, example i shell use is playing pawpatrol. i go to the TV show click play shuffled. it plays for a while then stops playing and says "no playable item"

i used to think it was my old Nvidia shield but i recently upgraded to the new one and i still get it so ive come for help. 

I have a ChromeTV for another room and this seems to play fine ?

i have attached my log file from when it stopped playing hoping it will help someone. 

it happened juut now, i have attached the server text file from emby server. 

thank you

log file.txt

embyserver log.txt

Edited December 21, 2021 by Moomadness

[ebr 16169]

Hi.  I cannot pinpoint an issue in those logs.  Both of them end with progress reports from the app that look like an item is playing at the time.

The next time this happens, please immediately follow the instructions to send a log from the app.  Go ahead and turn on the debug options now so that the option will be available when it happens.

Thanks.

[visproduction 315]

I noticed the embyserverlog has this line:

2021-12-21 11:06:08.407 Info App: RemoteClientBitrateLimit: 6000000, RemoteIp: 192.168.2.61, IsInLocalNetwork: True

Is that 6GB, (corrected 6MB) which would seem like a lot?  How exactly does the NVidia Shield handle throughput?  Are ack packets sent back regularly or does it withhold the ack packets confirming receipt of the Video content?  Could that be an issue?

Also why is there playback Progress packets being sent 500 times a second.  Is that a debug thing?  It seems excessive.

The test has encoding turned on.  Did you already run a test with content that does not need encoding?
 

2021-12-21 11:06:08.407 Info App: User policy for Moo. EnablePlaybackRemuxing: True EnableVideoPlaybackTranscoding: True EnableAudioPlaybackTranscoding: True

That's an obvious test to see if encoding is causing part of the issue.  You can also just watch the cache directory if the NVidia shield writes to a file directory and isn't doing it internally with it's own cache.

Hope that helps.

Edited December 23, 2021 by visproduction

[ebr 16169]

19 hours ago, visproduction said:

Is that 6GB, which would seem like a lot?

No, that is 6Mb.

[Moomadness 0]

On 21/12/2021 at 13:08, ebr said:

Hi.  I cannot pinpoint an issue in those logs.  Both of them end with progress reports from the app that look like an item is playing at the time.

The next time this happens, please immediately follow the instructions to send a log from the app.  Go ahead and turn on the debug options now so that the option will be available when it happens.

Thanks.

hi just sent a log file, my local user is moo. I sent the file @ approx 03:35am .via my nvidia shield. 
I didn’t notice the exact time so if I need to resend , no problem I’ll be ready next time.

Thank you.

[Moomadness 0]

12 hours ago, Moomadness said:

hi just sent a log file, my local user is moo. I sent the file @ approx 03:35am .via my nvidia shield. 
I didn’t notice the exact time so if I need to resend , no problem I’ll be ready next time.

Thank you.

Just sent a new one at this moment 

[ebr 16169]

Hi.  Thanks for the logs.  It looks like something in the Android system is interrupting us.  From our logs it looks just like a screen saver came on.  Do you have any third party screen savers or the like on the device?

[Moomadness 0]

Thanks for looking at the log files, I don’t have any third party things like that installed.it’s totally vanilla OS. 
I have extended the os screen saver to 2 hours, it was 5. However I had this same issue on my old shield. My Google tv doesn’t have this issue so it’s very frustrating to know what to do next.

my installed apps are very basic

Prime video, Emby, tivimate and xm3 player. 

Edited December 27, 2021 by Moomadness

[Moomadness 0]

It just stopped playing again, sent log file 11:12am. The screen saver is set 2 hours , movie stopped playing at 47:14 mins.

 

thank you.

[ebr 16169]

Hi.  Same thing.  The Android system is pausing our app so we are stopping playback.

Does it still happen if you uninstall Tvimate?

[Moomadness 0]

Hi, it just reset itself many times in the Home page after you login, any chance you could check my log file for errors again please. Just sent one now 2:34pm

 

I have gone through my TV setting and shield and turned off or set to max time out to help with this stop command but it’s still happening so far, 

 

thank you for your assistance with this on going matter.

[ebr 16169]

3 hours ago, Moomadness said:

it just reset itself many times in the Home page after you login

Hi.  What exactly do you mean by that?

I don't see anything unusual in the log you sent.

[Moomadness 0]

Emby was on the Home Screen where you can see new movies TV etc. while it was on this screen it reset and login in again.  like I had chosen to exit and them go back in, it did this twice.

[ebr 16169]

Something on your system is taking focus away from our app.  Did you try uninstalling tivimate?

[Moomadness 0]

7 hours ago, ebr said:

Something on your system is taking focus away from our app.  Did you try uninstalling tivimate?

I haven’t yet but I’ve had these apps for some time and my pal has the same apps and shield but doesn’t have the issue.
 

While I was looking at the stats for nerds it just stopped again, would you mind looking at the log file again please.  I have been stripping down my shield to its bear bones and I’m running out of things here, I Am starting to look at stripping back emby to its basic form too, remove the Emby Premiere sub, all the plug-ins for cover etc and go from there but again non of this is new I had it all in places for years and it’s not been this bad 

[Moomadness 0]

On 21/12/2021 at 19:31, visproduction said:

I noticed the embyserverlog has this line:

2021-12-21 11:06:08.407 Info App: RemoteClientBitrateLimit: 6000000, RemoteIp: 192.168.2.61, IsInLocalNetwork: True

Is that 6GB, (corrected 6MB) which would seem like a lot?  How exactly does the NVidia Shield handle throughput?  Are ack packets sent back regularly or does it withhold the ack packets confirming receipt of the Video content?  Could that be an issue?

Also why is there playback Progress packets being sent 500 times a second.  Is that a debug thing?  It seems excessive.

The test has encoding turned on.  Did you already run a test with content that does not need encoding?
 

2021-12-21 11:06:08.407 Info App: User policy for Moo. EnablePlaybackRemuxing: True EnableVideoPlaybackTranscoding: True EnableAudioPlaybackTranscoding: True

That's an obvious test to see if encoding is causing part of the issue.  You can also just watch the cache directory if the NVidia shield writes to a file directory and isn't doing it internally with it's own cache.

Hope that helps.

Hey visproduction,

thank you, I spent sometime on this yesterday and you was on to something.

I hadn’t noticed that transcoding was happening, it shouldn’t be, it’s on a gigabyte wired cable and should be streaming direct within my home.

 

I did have the internet streaming biterate limited, but this should only be effecting internet based traffic, not sure why this is happening and will have to look at why I’m now not able to limit the remote traffic. For now at least It seems to have fixed the sudden stops in playing. 
 

thank you.

[ebr 16169]

16 hours ago, Moomadness said:

While I was looking at the stats for nerds it just stopped again, would you mind looking at the log file again please

Hi.  Did you send another one?  Each one I've seen has just shown the Android system pausing our app.  We cannot tell why this is happening but can just see it happening.

The fact that it happened while just sitting at the home screen really indicates something on the device that is requesting foreground focus for some reason.

[ebr 16169]

1 hour ago, Moomadness said:

Hey visproduction,

thank you, I spent sometime on this yesterday and you was on to something.

I hadn’t noticed that transcoding was happening, it shouldn’t be, it’s on a gigabyte wired cable and should be streaming direct within my home.

 

I did have the internet streaming biterate limited, but this should only be effecting internet based traffic, not sure why this is happening and will have to look at why I’m now not able to limit the remote traffic. For now at least It seems to have fixed the sudden stops in playing. 
 

thank you.

That log line indicates that the traffic was detected as on the network and, therefore, the remote bitrate limit will have no bearing on playback.

[visproduction 315]

Well first, I would say ebr knows about the code and I am just guessing.  That screensaving comment is probably a good idea to run down.

From my limited experience, I noticed that transcoding kicks in, depending on the video and audio codec in the content.  The only way I got transcoding to stop was to only have content with H.264 mp4 AVC part 10 (avc1) and audio AAC (mp4a).  Any other codecs started transcoding to playback to TV or on a web page.  People talk about direct play happening with other codecs.  I have not found a way to do that and just don't bother now.  The transcoding happens on a 1 GB network.  So, transcoding seems to start, based on the video or audio codec, not only on the network speed.

So, if you have content in H.264 and audio AAC, that should possibly solve part of the encoding issue.  Your nVidiia shield probably adds extra functionality and encoding options.  If your content has other codecs, then finding a direct play answer would be nice.

Maybe test sending videos to other hardware and see if the issue happens on android, to Windows or iOS with different Web browsers.  Use test videos examples and see if that changes the results.  Search for 'mp4 test videos'.

Hope that helps.

 

[Moomadness 0]

5 hours ago, ebr said:

That log line indicates that the traffic was detected as on the network and, therefore, the remote bitrate limit will have no bearing on playback.

I get that, I am no way anything more than a end user, so I am not questioning your knowledge. All I can say is the following and maybe you can advise why or what is going wrong for my home next work.

When I did have the “internet streaming biterate limited” it was set to 6. Playing a smaller file approx 8gb in 1080p it would play direct. however playing a 25gb 4k file it would be transcoding  it would show you in my stats for nerds as transcoding rather than direct. I turned off the throttling in internet streaming biterate and the same 4k file would then play direct,  but this should only be effecting internet based traffic? I tested this same example on a few 4k movies with the throttle in place and off and it replicated each time. If I clicked i it would say why it was transcoding - biterate to high. 

The ip for the shield is within the same range and I have not set anything in the network section in lan settings, it’s blank so it should (and likely does) see it as a local device. But I am not sure why this is happening. 
 

im starting to consider  if  I need to flatten my windows emby server and start from scratch. Emby has been installed since the pc was a windows 7 machine and when window 10 come out I upgraded to 10 (it’s been set up that long) but any advise/thoughts would be gratefully received.

 

cheers 

 

 

Edited December 31, 2021 by Moomadness

[ebr 16169]

Hi.  We'd have to look at a specific example to be sure but in the example noted above, the internet bitrate limit would not be a factor.  That doesn't mean, however, that transcoding definitely would not occur due to bitrate.  There are limits on the local network as well due to device constraints.

[Luke 42077]

For a specific example, please provide the information requested in how to report a media playback issue. thanks.

[Moomadness 0]

3 hours ago, Luke said:

For a specific example, please provide the information requested in how to report a media playback issue. thanks.

Ok, do you want me to create a new topic and close this one or carry on with this thread ?