A video is constantly stuck; another has issue with subtitles

[lyapounov 1]

Thx @Carlo

I am giving it a try. As of now, they were off. I deleted the plugin and did not reboot. I'll have to wait a few hours, even till tomorrow to see if things have changed.

Will keep you posted

[lyapounov 1]

@visproduction

I have done what you propose on my Mac, with a even simpler process: I start from my mkv with graphic subtitle, I use Subler to perform OCR on the subtitles and generate srt file, then I use MKVToolnix to remux the mkv with the generated srt, not including the original sub.

This works, with however two drawbacks: first it is very time consuming (I can't imagine doing this on the hundred of Monty Pyton Flying Circus which I ripped from my DVD) and second: the OCR is far from perfect; it sometimes generate some issues, like I and 1 being confused, etc.

I would rather have the emby team correcting their bug.

In the mean time, sorry to say, but the simplest way I found to make it work is ironically to use Plex.

[visproduction 315]

3 hours ago, lyapounov said:

@visproduction

I have done what you propose on my Mac, with a even simpler process: I start from my mkv with graphic subtitle, ...

You could extract the graphic subs using mkvtools or similar.  There are online converters: https://atelier.u-sub.net/srt2vtt/ for example.
This should fix the OCR problem and give you correctly timed text based subs that work.  These steps take perhaps 2 minutes each on a 2 hour media.

[lyapounov 1]

Why would I go online when I have a tool which does it locally on my Mac ? Also, my ISP is Starlink, which provides me with 12Mbs upload. A Monty Python single episode is 1.5GB; so just uploading it online would be would take at least 1000 seconds plus overhead, so around 20 minutes. And I have some movies which are 9GB ...

And why would the online OCR be better than the local one ?

I never had any issue with Timestamp.

I have tried online of course; but no way, too cumbersome. This is why I switched to local. But even so, the total process; including downloding from my synology, extracting the sub with subler, remuxing with MKVtoolnix is at least 5 minutes per episode. Monty Python only is a little more than 60 episods, the total is 5 hours... And I have many more stuff coming from DVDs...

OCR is not the issue; I can manage with few errors. That is the time consuming which is a big issue.

I would rather see the emby developers use the money I gave them to debug their software and make it work.

[visproduction 315]

Ly,

You are aware of the connection challenges encapsulating TCP inside of Starlink download packets?
A quick summary of the issues are listed here in an August 2024 proposed method to fix the problem:  https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3663408.3665803
 

Quote

Legacy transport protocols such as TCP and QUIC suffer from high packet loss and low link utilization in Starlink. From the measurement data, we figure out the ground-satellite link (GSL) handover is mainly to blame. The periodic handovers result in link interruptions and bursty losses with a fixed interval of 15s, which impair TCP’s performance.

If the 15 second interval is still correct, you could easily be experiencing many out of order packets and any ACK responses might get lost, resulting in the host server resending perviously sent TCP packets.  This would result in more buffering. The 12Mbps upload is only part of the specs that affect video streaming.  I believe the TCP processing in the Mac OS will not adjust RWIN sizes quickly, if at all, to compensate for out of order TCP packet reception due to Satelite broadcast.  It may well be that your Mac OS handling of TCP packet traffic is part of the problem and apparently can not be changed.  It might be nice to force a larger RWIN size to help.  Does your host setup mention any TCP/IP customized RWIN settings either in any software they provide or adjusting the Mac OS directly, if that is even possible?  You can tweak up the RWIN size on Window and Linux, but it's not that easy. 

Mac RWIN is apparently set to an algorithm and cannot be changed.  It is probably set to work best for direct Ethernet and Wifi only.   As far as I see, there is no automatic RWIN change for satellite or similar issues with very distance connections.  I think with Mac OS, you may be stuck and it just doesn't work perfectly well yet with Starlink when it comes to video streaming.

More RWIN and TCP settings info:
 https://community.plus.net/t5/Library/Guide-To-RWIN-amp-MTU/ba-p/1322233
 https://duckduckgo.com/?q=rwin+tcp+settings+mac+os+algorithm&ia=web

A nice description of how RWIN settings can affect TCP packet flow in the first response.
 https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10289604/tcp-receive-window

Edited December 15, 2024 by visproduction

[lyapounov 1]

@Carlo

I did what you suggested, i.e. deleting the plugin.

First video OK. Then I watched a second one, and the issue is back: frozen if I put subtitles on.

 

[Carlo 4560]

On 12/15/2024 at 12:53 PM, lyapounov said:

@Carlo

I did what you suggested, i.e. deleting the plugin.

First video OK. Then I watched a second one, and the issue is back: frozen if I put subtitles on.

 

Thanks,

If the Diagnostic Plugin save the status so you didn't have to re-set it on every restart, would you be ok?

[lyapounov 1]

On 12/16/2024 at 9:47 PM, Carlo said:

Thanks,

If the Diagnostic Plugin save the status so you didn't have to re-set it on every restart, would you be ok?

@Carloof course, it seems important that those parameter's value are persistent.

It would be even better if they were off by default at initialization !

Thx

Serge

[Carlo 4560]

@Luke @softworkz

I know the original intention of these settings were for diagnostic use but while "diagnosing" issue, the ability to turn one or both of these settings off solves a problem for some customers. The problem however is that the settings aren't saved, so any admin needing to use them to fix a problem on their system has to reset the values each time the server is started.

Could we make these items save properly like any other options set in the interface?
If needed, add a new button to reset diagnostic options to defaults, which should have the same effect as not saving the options, if actually using the plugin for diagnostics.

I'd prefer to see some of the options dealing with subs, moved into the normal UI as they really are needed on some systems but until that could get done, being able to save the values in the diagnostic plugin would help solve issues for many admins.

Thanks,
Carlo

[lyapounov 1]

@Carlo

 

thank you for this !!!

I would like to emphasis just one element, because I realized I am not the only one to have this issue: graphics subtitles are often coming from ripping DVDs, this was my issue.

Ripping one's own DVD is perfectly legal, therefore it is good that people are not penalized for doing this

Thx guys, and I wish you a happy year end !

[softworkz 5066]

1 hour ago, Carlo said:

@Luke @softworkz

I know the original intention of these settings were for diagnostic use but while "diagnosing" issue, the ability to turn one or both of these settings off solves a problem for some customers. The problem however is that the settings aren't saved, so any admin needing to use them to fix a problem on their system has to reset the values each time the server is started.

Could we make these items save properly like any other options set in the interface?
If needed, add a new button to reset diagnostic options to defaults, which should have the same effect as not saving the options, if actually using the plugin for diagnostics.

I'd prefer to see some of the options dealing with subs, moved into the normal UI as they really are needed on some systems but until that could get done, being able to save the values in the diagnostic plugin would help solve issues for many admins.

Thanks,
Carlo

These settings are less for diagnosing actually.  They are enabling yet-unreleased features and they can't be enabled unless the missing bits are applied to the server.

 

[Carlo 4560]

11 hours ago, softworkz said:

These settings are less for diagnosing actually.  They are enabling yet-unreleased features and they can't be enabled unless the missing bits are applied to the server.

Are we talking about the same settings like in the picture below?

On 12/8/2024 at 12:03 AM, Carlo said:

It's enabled by default and some admins need to disable it. The problem is, they have to do this every time Emby is restarted.

 

[softworkz 5066]

6 minutes ago, Carlo said:

Are we talking about the same settings like in the picture below?

On 12/8/2024 at 6:03 AM, Carlo said:

Expand  

It's enabled by default and some admins need to disable it. The problem is, they have to do this every time Emby is restarted.

Yes, we are talking about "Disable HW Overlay" and "Disable Subtitle Filtering".

Both are unreleased features, that's why they are always disabled (with the disablement-checkbox checked).

The inverse logic is there, because it is designed for the time AFTER these features are released, so that you can disable them in order to compare with how it was before.

[Carlo 4560]

I'm not what's going to be added before it's complete, but I do know this option "as is"  helps resolve some subtitle issues admins are facing and it works well except the admin has to constantly reset the option on every Emby restart.

On a slightly different subject of option naming.  Personal opinion, but I dislike having to enable a "disable" option.

Regardless of the option default setting, it's confusing to enable an option that affectively disables something. It's sort of like a double negative.
I think this is especially true for people when talking/writing about an option when it's not their native language.

☑ Disable Hardware Subtitle Overlays
☐ Use Hardware Subtitle Overlays

The second line is very easy to read quickly without having to think about what it means or how the option is set.

[softworkz 5066]

1 hour ago, Carlo said:

I do know this option "as is"  helps resolve some subtitle issues admins are facing and it works well

Of course it's better, but it has to go through beta testing. The hw overlay is essentially just a part of the subtitle filtering feature - but it is part of that and the whole feature complex  needs to go through beta testing like everything else. 

All this has been ready for going into beta two years ago already. The first two episodes of the "Emby Show" are all about these features and were produced to accompany the introduction into beta.

And then it didn't happen.

Edited December 21, 2024 by softworkz