Issue playing M3U8 stream on Roku

[AmericanMike 17]

Hey guys,

I have been streaming IPTV using an M3U8 file for several months through Emby on my various Rokus in my home.  Recently I have been having a problem on occasion where the stream starts to load, gets to about 26% to 33% then resets.  When I look on the dashboard it shows me watching the channel for a few seconds then closes.  I have tried restarting Emby Server and my Roku several times with no improvement.  I also tried playing this my iOS app on my phone with the same results

I can, however, play this same channel through the Emby web interface on my computer with no issues so I assume the stream is operating correctly.  

I am attaching the server log and to FFMPEG where I tried the Roku and Phone.  After this log capture I did try another random channel on the Roku and it worked so that is baffling.

thanks,

Mike

ffmpeg-transcode-e9a7f233-029e-4831-a4f6-18eb5f9f9588_1.txt embyserver.txt ffmpeg-transcode-0e52f331-6e33-4a3b-8923-5aee1d80635a_1.txt

[Luke 42077]

Hi, are you able to play using the Emby web app?

[AmericanMike 17]

yes, second paragraph.......I used the web app.

[speechles 2055]

TranscodeReasons=ContainerBitrateExceedsLimit,DirectPlayError

What is the download speed of your internet connection? The Roku does not believe you have enough bandwidth to stream it at the same original quality.

024-05-22 07:21:52.780 Info App: Bitrate exceeds DirectPlay limit: media bitrate: 6622020, max bitrate: 3000000

You have video quality set to 3mbit. Original streaming bitrate is 6.6mbit. It is above the limit.

You want to press the * button on your Roku remote while on the home screen of the Emby Roku app. That should take you directly to main settings. Then go to playback and adjust the video quality to match the download speed of your internet connection. After doing this adjustment and playing if the container bitrate of the IPTV stream is lower than you have set your setting it should work. It is failing  when it has to have the video stream touched. Something about the TS stream ffmpeg doesn't like.

Edited May 22, 2024 by speechles

[AmericanMike 17]

thanks for this @speechlesmy internet speed is 197Mbps down and 23Mbps up.  I tried adjusting the speed but really no difference.  As I have confirmed before there are other channels on the same M3U8.  Also channel works fine on the web app so was trying to understand what the issue with Roku is.  I'll look at my wifi speeds between Emby Server and the Roku device.

[AmericanMike 17]

Well my Roku Ultra is showing a speed of 101Mbps so not sure what’s happening.  I am watching sports channels right now with no issue.  The local channel I try to watch fails on the Roku and my iOS device but not the web app. 

[ebr 16169]

13 hours ago, AmericanMike said:

and my iOS device but not the web app

Is the iOS device transcoding or remuxing while the web app is direct playing?

[AmericanMike 17]

3 hours ago, ebr said:

Is the iOS device transcoding or remuxing while the web app is direct playing?

That is correct.  iOS is transcoding and the web app is direct.  Also, I did try downgrading the playback step by step all the way down to 720 3Mbps without any positive result.

[ebr 16169]

Okay, that explains it.  The issue is related to when ffmpeg is involved.

[AmericanMike 17]

is that something I can adjust?  

[ebr 16169]

3 minutes ago, AmericanMike said:

is that something I can adjust?  

No. It needs to be addressed in the server.

Thanks.

[AmericanMike 17]

Hi!!  is there any ETA on a fix for this?  I do notice sometime the stream will open as Direct Play and work for about 5 minutes then start buffering and hang at 33%.  If I close EMBY on my Roku and start again the TV stream works again and may or may not glitch for some time.

[Luke 42077]

On 6/25/2024 at 9:26 AM, AmericanMike said:

Hi!!  is there any ETA on a fix for this?  I do notice sometime the stream will open as Direct Play and work for about 5 minutes then start buffering and hang at 33%.  If I close EMBY on my Roku and start again the TV stream works again and may or may not glitch for some time.

Hi, we are looking into this. Thanks.

[AmericanMike 17]

Hi,

Thanks.  Not sure if this is related or just a fluke but I disabled hardware acceleration on my system, restarted Emby server and haven't been able to replicate the problem again.  Its been 4 days now trouble free where before it wouldn't work at all.

[utiac 7]

I'd like to follow up on this topic. We are primarily using the Roku app to connect to an Emby server on our local LAN. Increasingly over the last few weeks, the Roku devices will many times not stream live TV. It doesn't happen all the time, but when it does, the connections simply time out. This is not the case when the streams are played using the Android client or a web browser (connecting to Emby server), or even directly via VLC or Kodi and its PVR addon IPTVSimple.

I've concluded that something in the Roku app (or possibly something introduced in recent server updates) must responsible for the failed streams. I'm attaching a log from this morning which shows a successful stream from Emby to the Android client and three failed streams from three different Roku devices - a TCL Roku TV, a Roku Express 4K, and an older Roku3 4200X. I'd appreciate any insight you might have as this has become quite frustrating for us. Since it worked for @AmericanMike above, I tried disabling hardware acceleration, but this did not change things.

embyserver.txt

Edited July 5, 2024 by utiac
spelling

[ebr 16169]

Hi.  The difference is the Roku is transcoding while the Android is not.  Can we please see the ffmpeg log?

[utiac 7]

Three logs attached.

ffmpeg-transcode-36d17f70-5710-429d-a6c9-e9a7a14bfa65_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-dd7136a9-2954-4081-a9e8-c218b414a1ae_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-de2c898f-a356-4813-942c-c18a97b21c24_1.txt

[utiac 7]

Perhaps I could force the emby startup script use i965_drv_video.so since it seems to be failing on iHD_drv_video.so. I use that effectively for Kodi which I run on the same machine.

export LIBVA_DRIVER_NAME=i965

Not sure the syntax the Emby script would expect.

The Debian reference on this is here:   https://packages.debian.org/sid/i965-va-driver

Edited July 5, 2024 by utiac

[utiac 7]

Is there anything to add at this point? Our Roku devices including our large TV appear to be "dead in the water" as far as streaming any content from Emby. Thanks.

Edited July 9, 2024 by utiac
clarification

[Luke 42077]

Hi, how have you configured the quality setting in the Emby Roku app?

[AmericanMike 17]

Hi Luke,

@Speechles asked me about that at the beginning of this thread. I was automatic but the experimented scaling it through all options without a difference. 

[utiac 7]

8 hours ago, Luke said:

Hi, how have you configured the quality setting in the Emby Roku app?

Our 2 standalone players were set to auto - one is ethernet connected to our ISPs router where we have 1.5Gbps down 900 Mbps up, the other is within 15 feet of a secondary wifi access point that is ethernet connected to our ISPs router. Our Roku TV was set to 2160P 4k(UHD) 40Mbps and it is ethernet connected. To be accurate our local LAN probably does not have more than 100Mbps throughput. In the interest of seeing if there is a difference I have changed all three to 1080P FHD 40Mbps, but can see no difference. We did not make any changes that initiated the inability of our Roku devices to stream - whatever settings were there for video quality have been there for a long time. If I had to guess I might suggest the issues arose after the update to emby-server-deb-4.8.8. Perhaps I could try a rollback if it is safe to overwrite a newer release with an older one.

[utiac 7]

5 minutes ago, utiac said:

Our 2 standalone players were set to auto - one is ethernet connected to our ISPs router where we have 1.5Gbps down 900 Mbps up, the other is within 15 feet of a secondary wifi access point that is ethernet connected to our ISPs router. Our Roku TV was set to 2160P 4k(UHD) 40Mbps and it is ethernet connected. To be accurate our local LAN probably does not have more than 100Mbps throughput. In the interest of seeing if there is a difference I have changed all three to 1080P FHD 40Mbps, but can see no difference. We did not make any changes that initiated the inability of our Roku devices to stream - whatever settings were there for video quality have been there for a long time. If I had to guess I might suggest the issues arose after the update to emby-server-deb-4.8.8. Perhaps I could try a rollback if it is safe to overwrite a newer release with an older one.

 

[utiac 7]

I'm looking at /opt/emby-server/bin/emby-vainfo where it calls:

exec $APP_DIR/bin/vainfo "$@"

after defining :

APP_DIR=/opt/emby-server

Is this a typo/relevant? There is no file $APP_DIR/bin/vainfo

 

[utiac 7]

So that was it. Changing that line in /opt/emby-server/bin/emby-vainfo from"

exec $APP_DIR/bin/vainfo "$@"

to:

exec $APP_DIR/bin/emby-vainfo "$@"

has solved the problem at least for my version: emby-server-deb_4.8.8.0_amd64.deb

Streams play fine now.