Freezing on some video WAN

[podrae 3]

Need some pointers on what to check for this issue.

My system seems to work fine internally, Externally its hit or miss. Some videos are pausing then resuming after 5 seconds or so constantly but others are fine, I experienced this myself over the weekend.

I was watching Band of Brothers S1E2 at 1080p on an Android TV in a different town. From my phone I could see that it was transcoding to HLS 5mbps and had completed before it froze. I lowered the bitrate from the TV all the way down to 1mbps and it did not help. Both locations are on Gigabit connections, real time upload from my Emby server was getting about 200mbps so I don't think issue is with the speed. Tested from phone app and got the same result.

I have Emby behind a Sophos firewall and Nginx. Server version is 4.8.8.0

I cannot see anything relevant in the attached log but search for 2024-08-17 19:01:37.461 timestamp for the start of affected video.

Is there anything else that could be causing this if its not the network speed or transcoding?

embyserver-63859536002.txt

[Luke 42079]

Hi there, please attach the corresponding ffmpeg log as well. Thanks.

[podrae 3]

Hi Luke, Sorry looks like that log has dropped off my system yesterday. I am going to try playing episode on my phone at work to recreate and will attach logs if it does it again.

[rbjtech 5284]

Does it freeze in the same place ?  Could be the source file if it does.  If not, any other patterns ? Same time on each video, if you rewind does it continue etc ?  Having the u/l bandwidth doesn't necessarily mean that it dedicated as its always contended but agree 5mbit should really not be an issue on a 200mbit u/l 

[podrae 3]

Hi Guys

When I saw it myself the video worked ok for about 30 minutes then it started to do it, I tried on phone on the same network and got it as well. Watched the same episode fine when I got home.

I also wasn't able to reproduce watching via phone at my work today with the same episode. My sisters partner Jeremy(name in logs) has reported this issue for "race to survive" I had him reproduce it tonight on their network (also fibre) via an LG TV and attached both logs this time.

embyserver.txt ffmpeg-transcode-b3f8cedc-2842-4657-8fe8-a7886ae6470c_1.txt

[Luke 42079]

13 hours ago, podrae said:

Hi Guys

When I saw it myself the video worked ok for about 30 minutes then it started to do it, I tried on phone on the same network and got it as well. Watched the same episode fine when I got home.

I also wasn't able to reproduce watching via phone at my work today with the same episode. My sisters partner Jeremy(name in logs) has reported this issue for "race to survive" I had him reproduce it tonight on their network (also fibre) via an LG TV and attached both logs this time.

embyserver.txt 4.7 MB · 0 downloads ffmpeg-transcode-b3f8cedc-2842-4657-8fe8-a7886ae6470c_1.txt 258.86 kB · 3 downloads

Hi, please try lowering the in app quality setting and see if that helps. That will usually help clear up this type of issue. Thanks.

[podrae 3]

Ill get Jeremy to try that and see how it goes, it did not help me previously though. I lowered all the way down to 1mbps and it still had pauses.

[rbjtech 5284]

Some isp's are simply over contended and a significant pause will break the stream.  As above, if its reproduceable then its the source, if not then its your isp.  Also worth trying a vpn to a closer destination if its long distance.  I'm streaming from my emby server 6,500 miles away with zero issues but that's via vpn.