Another Mysterious Playback Issue

[musicmafia 38]

This may not be an Emby issue, but I would appreciate any help in troubleshooting.

This 1080 TV file plays fine on VLC and also plays fine on Emby on my PC browser. 

On TV (using both Emby and Emby Android TV apps), in certain sections of the files, I get flashing and dim semi-transparent horizontal lines. Again, problem exists in both apps. 

I am not having a similar flashing/lines issue with any other files. Most content plays fine via the TV apps. 

I have a strong connection via ethernet and plenty of strength and speed to play 1080 and 4K files. 

I'm stumped. Here's the stats from TV.

Thanks!

Edited July 29, 2025 by musicmafia

[musicmafia 38]

Playback is fine on PC via browser. here is the stats from browser same file:

[Luke 42077]

Hi, what exactly is flashing?

[musicmafia 38]

3 minutes ago, Luke said:

Hi, what exactly is flashing?

It's hard to describe. Not the whole screen. It's just flashing in the sections where these thick horizontal bands (not vertical as I first wrote) appear. The bands (which are dim and semi-transparent) and the flashing happen at the same time and only in certain sections of these files. 

I would think if it was a TV issue, it would do this with other content but it does not. 

I would also think if it was a TV issue, it would be random, but if I play back the content, the flashing and lines will appear in the same sections of the content. 

I assumed it was a file issue, but it plays perfectly on PC/browser. It's a mystery to me!

[ebr 16169]

16 hours ago, musicmafia said:

I assumed it was a file issue, but it plays perfectly on PC/browser.

Hi.  That doesn't rule out a file issue - which I believe it probably is.  Have you tried re-ripping those files?

[brothom 177]

It does sound like your file is having some issues. TV's aren't that great at fixing media-data on the fly, at least not as good as your browser or VLC players are.

It might be interested to change the quality of your file via the player (if you have transcoding enable). If you select a different quality, the media stream is handled via ffmpeg and this might also "solve" your issue or maybe even worsen is.

Either way, if this is a ripped file you could rip it again and if not, you might want to just try a different source for this file or maybe even re-encoding/muxing it using ffmpeg.

[musicmafia 38]

5 hours ago, brothom said:

It might be interested to change the quality of your file via the player (if you have transcoding enable). If you select a different quality, the media stream is handled via ffmpeg and this might also "solve" your issue or maybe even worsen is.

Thanks. I'm not familiar with this process. Can you tell me how to do this? I presume this will not change the source file, only the stream/playback?

[brothom 177]

Before we dive into transcoding and such, I have another quick question though. Do the flashes occur at the same time in your video? If they just randomly flash and aren't tied to this playtime of your video, something else is probably going on.

If the flashes always occurr at the same time you can try the following:

Well, normally in the Emby app itself when you have these settings enabled for you user:

You should be able to change the quality here:

 

If these options aren't available, you can try to create a new version of the file anyway.
Transcoding (converting a part of the file) or just converting the whole file should technically give the same result anyway.

Considering it's a 1080p HEVC file we can just do something like this using ffmpeg:

ffmpeg -i input.mkv -c:v libx265 -b:v 5M -preset medium -c:a copy output.mkv

Be sure your `output.mkv` path is different from your input, otherwise they'll override one another.
This re-encodes the file and creates a copy with settings similar to the original file. If you don't have ffmpeg yet you can download it here: https://ffmpeg.org/.