Playback Error for some podcast RSS feeds

[rockinyp 6]

I installed the Podcast plugin and added some RSS feeds to it. The show episodes are all showing up successfully in the feeds on the front-end of Emby. However, some of the feeds give an error when trying to play episodes:

Quote

Playback Error
No compatible streams are currently available. Please try again later or contact your system administrator for details.

I'm not sure why playback works fine for some RSS feeds and not for others.

When I look at the ffmpeg-transcode log, I see this error next to the mp3 URLs that don't play:

Quote

Server returned 403 Forbidden (access denied)

In some cases, The mp3 URL itself works fine. When I copy/paste it into the address bar of my browser, the audio file starts playback immediately. Not sure why access would be denied for Emby to play the file.

For a different podcast, the episode does NOT playback in the browser when I load the mp3 file directly. Instead, I get:

Quote

Bot Protection Firewall
Blocked because of Malicious Activities

Any ideas why some of the podcast servers seem to be blocking the Emby podcast plugin from playing the episodes? Or maybe it's something with my IP that looks suspicious?

[Luke 42077]

 

Hi there, let's look at an example. Please attach the information requested in how to report a media playback issue. Thanks!

 

[rockinyp 6]

2 minutes ago, Luke said:

 

Hi there, let's look at an example. Please attach the information requested in how to report a media playback issue. Thanks!

 

Thanks for the prompt response! This might be the first company forum I've seen in the past decade that actually supports users.

Attached are a bunch of logs for you. I'm not sure how to make them private since they contain my server URLs.

These are logs from attempting playback in the Brave browser, but I get the same results when attempting playback in the iOS app. In fact, that's where I first discovered the issue, only it never showed an error message. Just a spinning circle that never stopped.

embyserver.txt ffmpeg-transcode-1cbf4ecc-a495-4873-9ac1-5869608c769a_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-25f97af7-39dd-447b-a4a0-34bc58e6ea36_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-69a75caa-3c7d-4440-8b4a-3b94eaef1bdc_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-cadff100-63bf-4dc3-8376-03debf9d2f3c_1.txt

[Luke 42077]

22 hours ago, rockinyp said:

Thanks for the prompt response! This might be the first company forum I've seen in the past decade that actually supports users.

Attached are a bunch of logs for you. I'm not sure how to make them private since they contain my server URLs.

These are logs from attempting playback in the Brave browser, but I get the same results when attempting playback in the iOS app. In fact, that's where I first discovered the issue, only it never showed an error message. Just a spinning circle that never stopped.

embyserver.txt 5.83 MB · 0 downloads ffmpeg-transcode-1cbf4ecc-a495-4873-9ac1-5869608c769a_1.txt 4.65 kB · 0 downloads ffmpeg-transcode-25f97af7-39dd-447b-a4a0-34bc58e6ea36_1.txt 4.66 kB · 0 downloads ffmpeg-transcode-69a75caa-3c7d-4440-8b4a-3b94eaef1bdc_1.txt 4.63 kB · 0 downloads ffmpeg-transcode-cadff100-63bf-4dc3-8376-03debf9d2f3c_1.txt 4.66 kB · 0 downloads

HI, the server hosting the video is returning this error:

18:12:32.736 Execution Date: 2024-06-05 18:12:32
18:12:32.840 [https @ 0x183abc0] HTTP error 403 Forbidden
18:12:32.841 https://www.buzzsprout.com/1901182/12342491-suffering-and-the-hope-of-heaven-with-randy-alcorn.mp3: Server returned 403 Forbidden (access denied)

Maybe they don't like others hooking into their content?

[rockinyp 6]

11 minutes ago, Luke said:

HI, the server hosting the video is returning this error:

18:12:32.736 Execution Date: 2024-06-05 18:12:32
18:12:32.840 [https @ 0x183abc0] HTTP error 403 Forbidden
18:12:32.841 https://www.buzzsprout.com/1901182/12342491-suffering-and-the-hope-of-heaven-with-randy-alcorn.mp3: Server returned 403 Forbidden (access denied)

Maybe they don't like others hooking into their content?

Right, that's what I was thinking. But that doesn't make sense to me because it's an RSS feed. The content is supposed to be accessible. Why would BuzzSprout block it? It's not just BuzzSpout either. It's other reputable podcasting hosts, like PodBean. Self-hosted RSS feeds seem to be blocked, too. RSS fees from Libsyn seem to work ok, though. And they all work in other podcasting apps, like Apple Podcasts. That's what makes me think there's something about the plugin that the RSS host servers don't like. Any idea what that could be? Or is there's a workaround of some kind?

[rockinyp 6]

@LukeOk, I did some digging and found out that some podcast hosts, like BuzzSprout, rejects media requests and returns a 403 Forbidden error when get receive GET requests that do not provide a User-Agent header. See here and here.

Do you know if the podcast plugin properly provides a User-Agent header? Could that be the issue here?

[Luke 42077]

@rockinypare you still seeing this with Emby Server 4.8? If so, can you please send me an example podcast rss feed that I can test with? Thanks !

[rockinyp 6]

@LukeYes, I still have the same issue with 4.8. I'll upgrade to 4.10 once it becomes available in the Package Center on my Synology.

It's still the same feeds I provided above: RSS feeds hosted at BuzzSprout, PodBean, and several self-hosted RSS feeds.

This one, for example: https://feeds.buzzsprout.com/1901182.rss

The episodes appear in Emby, but they don't play. I get this error:

[Luke 42077]

OK I think I should be able to get this resolved on the 4.9 beta channel. Thanks.