Multiple clients watching same channel

[bruor 43]

Can someone explain how Emby behaves if I have 2 clients watching the same channel?  Does that result in 2 separate ffmpeg processes that request the channel's media playlist and .ts files from the server?  Does transcoding impact this use case at all? I'm writing a proxy to handle reauth and HLS stream property changes and knowing this will help save me a little time

[Carlo 4560]

Hi,

Typically, it's going to share the same tuner for all clients watching that channel.

Carlo

[bruor 43]

Ok, so emby sort of has one thread that fetches the source, and another one per client that fetches from that tuner and transcodes as needed etc?

Just trying to get my head wrapped around the structure.  

[Carlo 4560]

Yes, essentially that's what it does. 

I've had more than a dozen people watching live TV using only 1 or 2 tuners on Sunday, watching NFL games.

Carlo

[bruor 43]

Is there a way to see the tuner ffmpeg log?  It doesn't seem to be present in the emby_server log file or any of the client logs for the playback session.   I can see entries in the log for when it grabs the .ts files from my proxy,  but it is not logging when it requests the media playlist, maybe I need to increase logging verbosity to see that? 

It seems like my proxy was able to detect a provider side feed cut redirect the tuner by sending it a 302 when it requested the hls media playlist (which would trigger ffmpeg to reconnect and continue from a new HLS stream).  It connected and continued fetching new segments (I can see it in my proxy log) but client playback in the browser froze even though the session still showed active on the server.  The client logs show that it was still requesting segments even though the video was frozen.    Launching a fresh tab on the same channel resulted in playback from the tuner that seemed to be running in the background. 

Seeing the log data from Emby would be extremely helpful in helping me determine if it is seeing the redirect and following it as anticipated, especially when the provider changes quality on the channel. 

 

Edited October 9, 2024 by bruor

[justinrh 260]

Client logs?  Where do you find those?

If FFmpeg is used, there should be such a named log next to the emby server log.

[Carlo 4560]

Hi,

You can find the Iogs in the server dashboard's log menu.

Carlo 

[bruor 43]

Bad choice of words I suppose

In the remux/stream logs that show up, it shows requests from the client apps so I referred to them as such.  It also shows requests from the client apps to the server for the playlist and .ts files that it is serving to the client. 

Looks like I would need to enable debug logging for ffmpeg if I want to see output of the redirect happening in the logs, it's suppressed by default.