"Playback Error" error

[Gobaan 7]

in the win11 app: disconnected external media. Tried to play it. Got "Playback Error" as expected, but got a ton of notifications. Had to kill the app. Should fail more gracefully

[Luke 42077]

Hi there, what version number of the app do you have?

[Gobaan 7]

2.222.2.0

[Luke 42077]

What do you mean by disconnected external media? You mean a disconnected download?

[Gobaan 7]

An external local drive was disconnected

[Luke 42077]

HI, are you still having an issue with this?

[Gobaan 7]

yes, version 2.222.2.0 still creates myriad playback error dialog messages when attempting to access a file path that has been physically removed (external drive). The expected behavior is a single error message 

[Luke 42077]

What do you mean by myriad?

[Gobaan 7]

well, i never wanted to count them because I assumed tens or more based on the rapid animations. I had been trying to run a playlist, which has a much worse effect than a single file. For a single file, a few tests yielded a count varying from 6 to 8. One can see the error dialogs appearing one after another in rapid succession. They are animated with a "zoom in" effect, so each new dialog grows in front of the last. The code is clearly in a "retry loop". The loop seems to be bounded in some way, but the wall clock time on the loop seems inconsistent. When it stops after a few seconds, the "Playback Error" dialog is displayed and the "got it" button can be pressed in order to count how many layers exist. When running a playlist, there is an additional loop (the playlist itself) which takes much longer to exit.

The expected behavior would be that the loop runs without creating the dialog, but by raising an internal code exception or setting a flag and then catching the exception or checking the flag after the loop exits, thereby creating a single message. The playlist scenario would require a bit more to control the nested structure properly

[speechles 2055]

Is this while playing the item? It sounds like what you are describe is the playback correction. It will keep trying to playback the file with a different playback method until it has exhausted them all. Then it will assume the file is unplayable and give up.

Edited May 1, 2025 by speechles

[Luke 42077]

4 hours ago, Gobaan said:

well, i never wanted to count them because I assumed tens or more based on the rapid animations. I had been trying to run a playlist, which has a much worse effect than a single file. For a single file, a few tests yielded a count varying from 6 to 8. One can see the error dialogs appearing one after another in rapid succession. They are animated with a "zoom in" effect, so each new dialog grows in front of the last. The code is clearly in a "retry loop". The loop seems to be bounded in some way, but the wall clock time on the loop seems inconsistent. When it stops after a few seconds, the "Playback Error" dialog is displayed and the "got it" button can be pressed in order to count how many layers exist. When running a playlist, there is an additional loop (the playlist itself) which takes much longer to exit.

The expected behavior would be that the loop runs without creating the dialog, but by raising an internal code exception or setting a flag and then catching the exception or checking the flag after the loop exits, thereby creating a single message. The playlist scenario would require a bit more to control the nested structure properly

Hi there, please attach the Emby server log from when the problem occurred:

How to Report a Problem

Thanks!

 

[Guest]

3 hours ago, speechles said:

Is this while playing the item? It sounds like what you are describe is the playback correction. It will keep trying to playback the file with a different playback method until it has exhausted them all. Then it will assume the file is unplayable and give up.

There's no playback correction. This app doesn't need that. It seems pretty clear to me. He tries to play a file there is no access to, and playback fails. There should be a single error notification and not multiple 

[speechles 2055]

14 hours ago, generiq said:

There's no playback correction. This app doesn't need that. It seems pretty clear to me. He tries to play a file there is no access to, and playback fails. There should be a single error notification and not multiple

 

18 hours ago, Gobaan said:

The code is clearly in a "retry loop". The loop seems to be bounded in some way, but the wall clock time on the loop seems inconsistent. When it stops after a few seconds, the "Playback Error" dialog is displayed and the "got it" button can be pressed in order to count how many layers exist.

 

Indeed. A retry loop sounds alot like playback recovery/correction. Except you are correct it should silently error on those and not create dialogs. Only when it determines this is fatal and cannot play it back should it generate the dialog for the user.

[Guest]

On 5/1/2025 at 11:13 AM, speechles said:

 

 

Indeed. A retry loop sounds alot like playback recovery/correction. Except you are correct it should silently error on those and not create dialogs. Only when it determines this is fatal and cannot play it back should it generate the dialog for the user.

The retry is probably trying to find an alternate path to the file. That should be handled better. If the drive is absent the server should have a way to to verify that and quit trying.