Choppy playback

[pentago 3]

I'm running latest Emby server on a Ubuntu server.

For some reason, some media when played result in choppy playback even though there's no transcoding and direct play works as in screenshot:

Also, on my smart tv box (Xiaomi Mi Box S) whre I stream this, the stats for nerds show this:

From what I see on server, resource usage is totally minimal.

How can I know why is video stopping and starting every couple of seconds?

Server logs added.

 

hardware_detection-63800604165.txt embyserver.txt

[Luke 42078]

Hi.  Can you try sideloading our standard android app on the same device and see how that compares?

https://emby.media/emby-for-android.html

Thanks.

 

[pentago 3]

Hmm, yes, I just adb push the APK to the box and installed it.

The playback seems to be okay, haven't notice any interruptions yet.

How is this standard Android app different from the one for the Android TV in terms of internals?

Can I help you somehow fixing the TV app? I tend to like its interface a bit better (perhaps it's just a habit).

[Luke 42078]

10 hours ago, pentago said:

Hmm, yes, I just adb push the APK to the box and installed it.

The playback seems to be okay, haven't notice any interruptions yet.

How is this standard Android app different from the one for the Android TV in terms of internals?

Can I help you somehow fixing the TV app? I tend to like its interface a bit better (perhaps it's just a habit).

Hi, why do you like it's interface better exactly? This app fully supports TV devices.

[pentago 3]

Not sure, it simply feels more native to the TV screen format, just ap ersonal preference, nothing critical really.

I would like to be able to install single app from Play Store instead of sideloading it also.

Regardless, I'll try playing some other media I noticed performed bad and report back if anything. 

Thanks for help really, you're a lifesaver!

[Luke 42078]

We are working on getting it into the store for TV devices. Thanks for the feedback.

[pentago 3]

Hmm, I still haven't resolved this it seems.

I setup Tdarrto transode library between all provided audio codecs (aac,dts,mp3,flac,eac3,ac3) and some of my devices still have the choppy playback, even my iPhone 13 and Mi Box S Android smart TV box. Video is regular 1080p H264 which worked always everywhere - I don't suspect video is the issuue somehow..

I only do not notice any issues on one of my Hisense Android TVs..

Is there a way to find out why a video gets transcoded? 

Note: I do have Emby Premiere subscription, just to rule out hardware acceleration as a question.

Here are logs if they can help identifying the problem:

• embyserver.log
• hardware-detection.log
• extract-multi-image.log

Edited October 14, 2022 by pentago

[pentago 3]

@Luke any ideas?

[Luke 42078]

Hi, yes there is a way to find out why it is transcoding. Have you explored the stats feature in the video player?

[pentago 3]

I did but it never says transcoding, that's what was weird in the first place.

It always says "direct play" but playback is choppy regardless.

I was hoping that somethign in logs can shed some light on the issue..

[Luke 42078]

It could be that the bitrate is too high for the network connection. You could try lowering the in app quality setting and see if that helps.

[pentago 3]

From what I see, my streaming device has the 24Mbps connection to my wifi router which should be sufficient for at least 1080p streaming.

From what I see in Emby stats, bitrate is 3.90Mbps and once I lower it below 5Mbps the transcoding starts.

It seems therećs enough of network bandwidth for strreaming, yet playback still has a lot of issues.

I even rearanged wifi channels to avoid interference but it didn't help.

[pentago 3]

@Lukeis there anyghing I could do to see why described playback issues occurred somewhere in logs.

I got impression that regardless of level of logging  Emby has no clue that playback is interrupting and doesn't work continously.

[Luke 42078]

@pentago if you lower the quality setting, does that allow it to play?

[pentago 3]

@Lukeno, it either works pretty much the same or strts transcoding if I lower quality below some threshold.

I'd also rule out Wifi as a bottleneck because Youtube videos play just fine on same device.

Any ideas?

[Luke 42078]

hi @pentago are you still running into this?

[pentago 3]

Hey @Luke unfortunately yes

One thing though, if I run server on VPS without hardwre GPU present, would that cause issue like this?