Unusual playback freeze

[Gilgamesh_48 1240]

Normally when I play something and it reaches the end credits I either FF through to the end or I exit directly. This works fine as long as I take some action but, sometimes, I just let it play through all the end credits and that is where I occasionally have an issue.

What happens is that the item will play all the way through and then just freeze. There is no image on the screen, it is just blank, and Emby just sits there without exiting playback until i press "back" or otherwise manually exit playback. I have left Emby frozen on my Rokus for hours and the only "automatic" exit that happens is because Roku times out and exits all the way back to the Roku home screen.

I cannot reliably reproduce it and there is no way to tell what exactly happens. 
It happens often enough that I am no longer surprised when it happens. Other than that my Roku works perfectly for playback and the videos involved seem to have nothing in common but I cannot tell for sure. They are TV shows and Movies and home videos and the same video will not fail to exit every time it is played but, once I have found a failing video it is a bit more likely to fail in the future. (I know this from home videos that fail as I rarely replay TV shows or movies.)

I do not know what to send as I do not know if the problem is the Roku (it happens on at least 2 different Roku Ultras.) or the server but it also happens on my primary server (release) and my beta server. 

My reason for posting this is to make the developers aware of the issue and to ask if there is anything I can do to stop it from happening or to provide more info. There is no server error that is reported and no Roku playback error either. I can send logs after I see the problem but, since I usually do not let a video play to the end, I just thought there might be a remedy or at least some good way to avoid the issue altogether.

BTW: All the playback keys work just like expected and I can even rewind from where it freezes and the playback is normal until the end. If a video freezes and i rewind and play it back from a slightly earlier point it still freezes at the end. However if i exit the playback and restart the vid from the beginning there is about a 70% chance it will not freeze at the end.

I have done about all the troubleshooting I can do and nothing jumps out at me. The server has no errors in its log around the time it happens. The log just shows the item as playing even when it is frozen.

This is a MINOR bug but I thought that the developers should be made aware of it just in case it is a clue to a larger problem. 

BTW: Except for the home vids everything that freezes is somewhat old. That is its release date is before 2000. So far i have found no exceptions to that but my sample size is pretty small so the year may be meaningless to the bug or just a coincidence. 

Lastly I have not seen this on any other client but i use them rarely and the lack of me seeing the bug could just be that I have not played the correct video at the correct time.

Thanks.

[ebr 16169]

Hi.  The item is either remuxing or transcoding, correct?

If possible, can you test with the beta of the server?

[pwhodges 2012]

There are regular reports of similar behaviour, sometimes mentioning freezing with 1 or 2 seconds to go.  I've reported it in the past, and have observed it recently (but not reported it then).

I have a vague recollection that on at least one occasion a problem was found related to the audio or subtitle streams being longer than the video stream, so I wonder if another review of how the exact end of a stream is determined might be due.

Paul

[Gilgamesh_48 1240]

10 hours ago, ebr said:

Hi.  The item is either remuxing or transcoding, correct?

If possible, can you test with the beta of the server?

I know the vids involved are NOT transcoding as I have every video in a form that direct plays. However it is possible that they are remuxing as that seems to happen on several of my vids. I do run the beta and use my beta server at night, mostly. I have seen the behavior with the beta a few times but it is rarer on the beta. it seems that it is more likely on TV shows and cartoons than on movies. The difference in occurrence between TV and movies could be actually false as movies are longer than TV shows and therefore reaching the end of a movie happens less often that reaching the end of a TV show so the sample size is smaller for movies.

5 hours ago, pwhodges said:

There are regular reports of similar behaviour, sometimes mentioning freezing with 1 or 2 seconds to go.  I've reported it in the past, and have observed it recently (but not reported it then).

I have a vague recollection that on at least one occasion a problem was found related to the audio or subtitle streams being longer than the video stream, so I wonder if another review of how the exact end of a stream is determined might be due.

Paul

I do not use subtitles much at all, I like the "feel" of language better than reading the screen. Of course, since I do not understand every language, there are some movies and TV shows that I do have subs enabled for but there are not many. 

I do not, usually, have the ability to know for sure if a vid is remuxing or not and the occurrence of the issue is rare enough that I rarely am both in a position to see the failure and to research it. But I will try and do more the next time.

I wonder if the problem could be related to the problem that gets rarely reported of a played item remaining in the currently playing queue? I do not know enough about that problem to say for sure and I do not remember it every happening on my system but it involves, somehow, an improper detecting of the end of videos. 

This thread is really for making the developers aware, or more aware, of the issue so, if it ever gets fixed (It is VERY hard to "fix" something that only breaks rarely)

One more thing my beta server and release servers are completely separate except they do share content but I watch TV, mostly, on one (release) and mainly movies and cartoons on the other. I see the problem more on the release server than the beta but i use the release more than the beta so that is expected.

[ebr 16169]

6 hours ago, pwhodges said:

There are regular reports of similar behaviour, sometimes mentioning freezing with 1 or 2 seconds to go.  I've reported it in the past, and have observed it recently (but not reported it then).

I have a vague recollection that on at least one occasion a problem was found related to the audio or subtitle streams being longer than the video stream, so I wonder if another review of how the exact end of a stream is determined might be due.

Paul

A change has been made in the beta server to try and address this but we haven't gotten anyone with the problem to test it out yet.

[Gilgamesh_48 1240]

1 hour ago, ebr said:

A change has been made in the beta server to try and address this but we haven't gotten anyone with the problem to test it out yet.

I will switch to the beta for my main viewing and, maybe, I can verify if it still happens with the beta, or not However it was so intermittent that I may not see if the problem is really fixed but one can always hope.  

[pwhodges 2012]

5 hours ago, ebr said:

A change has been made in the beta server to try and address this but we haven't gotten anyone with the problem to test it out yet.

Good to know.  I had it recently, but probably on the last but one beta server, not current.

Paul

[Gilgamesh_48 1240]

On 8/24/2024 at 12:05 PM, ebr said:

A change has been made in the beta server to try and address this but we haven't gotten anyone with the problem to test it out yet.

i have now run, using the beta, for a full day and I let each show run to the end. So far I have not seen the freeze even once. But it has only been a day and I cannot be sure that any show I have watched would have exhibited the problem on the earlier release. 

I would like to be able to say that this is fixed but, clearly from the nature of the problem, I cannot say that. The only thing I will be able to report is that I have not seen the problem, until I do.

Would you folks, please, not allow problems like this to appear again. Please keep the problems to ones where i can say, "This is 100% reproducible." I do not like problems that clearly exist but that cannot be relied upon.

I want reliable bugs, not these little intermittent bugs that no one can actually prove they exist or prove that they are fixed after the fix gets reported. 

[Gilgamesh_48 1240]

I have now been using the beta server for almost a week and I have not seen the freeze even once. (being older and quite mobility limited I use Emby heavily most days) I believe this can be moved into the "fixed" category. When I was using the release I could count on at least one freeze daily and usually it was more like three or four, particularly when viewing older TV shows recorded many years ago. (The nature of what was causing Emby to freeze could be related, as was mentioned earlier, to part of the stream ending before the other part.) 
Whatever was the cause the change made in the beta to address the problem seems to have fixed the freeze. Thanks to the developers.  

BTW: the beta seems very stable at this point and I will continue to run it at the stage it is at only updating after a given build shows stability.
Right now I am about as pleased with Emby and the Roku app as i have ever been. It could be that the issues i have struggled with in the past are much improved or i have simply gotten used to them. Either way it matters little as i am quite happy with Emby right now.

Thanks all.