Linux Playback

[Derek Webb 5]

Not sure which heading to put this under and not sure if my problem is a hardware issue, linux issue, or Emby issue.  I have an Emby server running on a Synology NAS, which we use on computers and TV's mostly local network with no problems.  On rare occasions visiting family and things remote access has been okay.  My son is at University now and decided to pull out an OLD (2011) laptop and OLD (Samsung, but one of the first 1080ps) TV and set it up so they can stream shows at their apartment.  He installed Debian Mint for an OS, we managed to get YouTube, and Netflix to work with minor tweaks.  Emby Theater had to be installed manually as Snapd didn't work, but we were able to log into my server, browse all the content.  But when we tried playing a movie, that we watched last night at home so we know it isn't the video file, all we got was a spinning circle.  Now my NAS will have to scale it down to 1080p, rather than the 4K source, but that shouldn't be an issue.  Is it possible we are missing something on his computer so playback stalls?  His Internet is slower than mine, but since all the work is done on my end it should be plenty fast enough to handle the stream, or at least buffer and pause.  But we left it for a couple minutes and it never progressed past a spinning circle.  Any ideas?

[Q-Droid 989]

Does your NAS have enough grunt to transcode 4k to 1080p?

Try using the web interface on the laptop instead of Emby Theater. 

Attach log files from the time of those attempts.

 

[Derek Webb 5]

You may be on to something.  Not a super powerful NAS, but I figured it shouldn't take much to downscale.  Testing isn't easy, since the only issues are when I am remote and I haven't been to his place to run tests.  But just to see if the transcoding was an issue I tried playing the same video through my browser on my computer on the home network and set the playback down to 1080p 60 Mbps.  Flipped over to the NAS tab on the browser and CPU was up to 83%, and RAM is hanging out around 70%.  High, but not maxed.  Back to Emby tab and it errors out saying Playback Error No Compatible Streams are currently available.  Please try again later or contact your system Administrator for details. 

Okay, I know the only "stream" I have available on the HD is 4K, but I thought Emby would transcode to the 1080p one I wanted.  NAS are expensive, so I won't be upgrading that anytime soon.  Furthermore, I'm not sure it even got to transcoding when I was doing it remotely.  I'm not an expert on what's in the log files, but after a couple attempts on my computer today there are 15 ffmpeg_transcode log files and one embyserver log file from my efforts.  Two days ago when I was experiencing the spinning circle at my son's place, I just got one embyserver log file, nothing else. 

Playback Error

No compatible streams are currently available. Please try again later or contact your system administrator for details.

Playback Error

No compatible streams are currently available. Please try again later or contact your system administrator for details.

[Luke 42077]

@Derek Webb

 

Hi there, let's look at an example. Please attach the information requested in how to report a media playback issue. Thanks!

 

[Derek Webb 5]

Okay, I'll attach all the logs I have from my two sessions.  Like I said, file played fine on the TV.  Next day we set up a linux emby theatre at my son's place and while browsing content was fine, playback just gave me a spinning circle.  From that only and embyserver.txt file was generated, and it is attached.  To test if it was the downscaling overwhelming my NAS that was doing it I tried playing the same video again on my home computer, switched the quality down to 1080p 60Mbps, and got the Playback Error above.  As I tried a couple times and may have clicked a couple different resolutions while trying it I have generated 15 ffmegtranscode.txt files and one embyserver.txt file from that.  Attaching them all as well.  Obviously it would be more helpful if I could go out to my son's and attempt it through the browser or on his good laptop without the downscaling, but that may have to wait a few days until I can get over there again.  Let me know if you can think of anything with these logs, otherwise I'll attach more if and when I get a chance to do more tests.

ffmpeg-transcode-67d19a97-c5a3-4b80-a506-9729711f6e41_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-e624c928-af2a-4080-a011-723da729570b_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-9a7bf5d0-1ed2-4e0e-b961-8c87296d62ab_1.txt embyserver.txt ffmpeg-transcode-faa6a28f-b208-412d-b30f-2c98a9c37509_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-6a563631-c09e-42d9-98ba-48be04ed4a50_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-8d16f2d5-51f0-4b8b-89a2-bd0c13db1c96_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-a933083f-2fd2-4975-8232-9acf288a9b8c_1.txt embyserver-63891417600.txt ffmpeg-transcode-4a5dfd5f-d1c2-44ac-9882-6f8c0bd92b95_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-5b9bdda9-3304-43da-a7b9-3cbfd555ed05_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-6c66b3ff-65f0-41a9-a8e4-ecedbda7cbca_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-7ee730dd-ae18-4fa2-8e01-d2ee3a0e48e9_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-a3d00f55-ba3e-4d84-85eb-f80df32153e3_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-a33ddf2b-67e6-4e79-9f3c-c86b74559447_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-0fab41ef-e999-40ca-8d19-0f3fed90be66_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-8d4871dc-d44f-447e-8b05-4be4b8459aed_1.txt

[Luke 42077]

HI, so are you saying it's fine from the browser but not the Theater app?

[Q-Droid 989]

I don't think this is going to work for you. You are trying to transcode a 4k HEVC video to 1080p 6mbps in software on an ARM CPU. 

You're best bet would be to convert these videos on a PC using something like Handbrake with the output in a format that you could stream directly to the remote clients. Then copy them back to the library in the same or different folder. You can have multiple versions of the same. The idea is to convert the video, audio and container to a format that is compatible with the most devices and to a bitrate below your and their limits. Any video transcoding is going to be difficult on your NAS.

Or upgrade to a PC or NAS that can handle the workload.

 

 

Edited August 23, 2025 by Q-Droid

[Derek Webb 5]

Quite probably correct that the NAS is under powered to be transcoding.  But I did do several more tests today when I had a chance to go to my son's place again, which raised more questions.

On the underpowered computer attached to the old TV, we knew a 4K would not transcode down to 1080p.  I tried a 1080 film, and in played from the browser, but not Emby Theater in Linux.  I was even able to transcode the 1080p film down to a 720 stream when some parts got choppy.  Then, I tried his school laptop, which I thought had a 4K screen.  Emby from the browser plays fine even with a 4K movie.  I downloaded Emby Theater from the Microsoft Store, and if I tried a 4K it said playback error (I tried about 4 different videos).  But a 1080p played fine.  Double checking his laptop, apparently it has a 3K screen.  

In short, I have decided that the NAS is not capable of doing serious transcoding, although I may get lucky with a lower quality source, but why does Emby Theater require even more than the browser?  I thought things should be more compatible and require less processing if anything in Emby Theater, but it seems to be the opposite.

17 Log files were created in the process of trying various streams on the two systems, so I'll attach them, if that helps.  I've given up on thinking he'll be able to stream most of my library to his TV as it is mostly 4K media and I don't want to duplicate it or change the server setup right now.  But I do want to understand why Emby works some ways but not others.

ffmpeg-transcode-8eeae991-7ce0-429c-b76b-f162406ea284_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-16a2ef33-b824-4101-8841-71ea7343b490_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-af3dfea3-3556-4985-9673-e5838a2fd257_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-c4c0c547-2710-4878-86d8-234c8886087b_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-6e7c02e3-418f-447d-a23d-88d4b753750c_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-9675a144-1cff-403b-8397-68737619b0bd_1.txt ffmpeg-remux-71b416dd-ec0f-468a-91ed-6a296a3f0671_1.txt ffmpeg-remux-252c14cf-19db-498f-8c15-6b7683eeaa7d_1.txt ffmpeg-remux-d60de868-64bc-44c1-a3f3-3b913aaae34b_1.txt ffmpeg-remux-dd4711b5-9559-4b7b-9701-09a545301084_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-54bd24e9-3bd6-4528-86e8-73ca64dfa2c1_1.txt ffmpeg-remux-68faa2f6-8932-4d8f-9a1e-84e2ddcaf775_1.txt ffmpeg-remux-859abb51-9243-4f7e-9018-62bba9a2eb90_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-386b1505-cf96-4fe2-83bb-6c1530deaa06_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-656ec0d4-6465-487a-96fd-c87bf0d64cab_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-ef6ada44-8e7f-4962-9ffe-016b65419361_1.txt embyserver.txt

[Q-Droid 989]

I don't know anything about Emby Theater. Some browsers can direct stream HEVC at 4k and downscaling happens on the client but maybe Emby Theater is "smarter" and tries to match the output to the client device capabilities which ends up transcoding or not playing at all. The devs or someone else might be able to answer this.

 

[TMCsw 247]

On 8/23/2025 at 1:25 AM, Derek Webb said:

playback just gave me a spinning circle

Emby Theater is currently broken for most (Linux) users. A new (closed) beta (I’m one of the testers) for a new emby for Linux has been stalled for months, so expect it in a typical emby style ‘soon’.

You could use another computer (just about any computer with an Intel iGPU (UHD 6x0 or better)) to transcode files from your NAS; no need to upgrade the NAS.

Or you may want to install Windows (can’t believe I just said that) on the old laptop (if it has at least 4 GB of ram), search for:

“How to install Windows 11 on an older computer”

Note: Most, if not all, methods to install without a Microsoft account no longer work.

Then install emby from the Windows Store.

Good luck!

Edited August 26, 2025 by TMCsw

[Lessaj 467]

55 minutes ago, TMCsw said:

Emby Theater is currently broken for most (Linux) users

? News to me, working just fine here. I run arch btw.

Might need to adjust the Video settings to something other than Auto though, I think I remember some laggy playback unless I set it to gpu-next.

[Luke 42077]

On 8/25/2025 at 11:11 PM, Derek Webb said:

Quite probably correct that the NAS is under powered to be transcoding.  But I did do several more tests today when I had a chance to go to my son's place again, which raised more questions.

On the underpowered computer attached to the old TV, we knew a 4K would not transcode down to 1080p.  I tried a 1080 film, and in played from the browser, but not Emby Theater in Linux.  I was even able to transcode the 1080p film down to a 720 stream when some parts got choppy.  Then, I tried his school laptop, which I thought had a 4K screen.  Emby from the browser plays fine even with a 4K movie.  I downloaded Emby Theater from the Microsoft Store, and if I tried a 4K it said playback error (I tried about 4 different videos).  But a 1080p played fine.  Double checking his laptop, apparently it has a 3K screen.  

In short, I have decided that the NAS is not capable of doing serious transcoding, although I may get lucky with a lower quality source, but why does Emby Theater require even more than the browser?  I thought things should be more compatible and require less processing if anything in Emby Theater, but it seems to be the opposite.

17 Log files were created in the process of trying various streams on the two systems, so I'll attach them, if that helps.  I've given up on thinking he'll be able to stream most of my library to his TV as it is mostly 4K media and I don't want to duplicate it or change the server setup right now.  But I do want to understand why Emby works some ways but not others.

ffmpeg-transcode-8eeae991-7ce0-429c-b76b-f162406ea284_1.txt 21.8 kB · 0 downloads ffmpeg-transcode-16a2ef33-b824-4101-8841-71ea7343b490_1.txt 20.78 kB · 0 downloads ffmpeg-transcode-af3dfea3-3556-4985-9673-e5838a2fd257_1.txt 46.97 kB · 1 download ffmpeg-transcode-c4c0c547-2710-4878-86d8-234c8886087b_1.txt 39.87 kB · 0 downloads ffmpeg-transcode-6e7c02e3-418f-447d-a23d-88d4b753750c_1.txt 32.8 kB · 0 downloads ffmpeg-transcode-9675a144-1cff-403b-8397-68737619b0bd_1.txt 39.34 kB · 0 downloads ffmpeg-remux-71b416dd-ec0f-468a-91ed-6a296a3f0671_1.txt 18.06 kB · 0 downloads ffmpeg-remux-252c14cf-19db-498f-8c15-6b7683eeaa7d_1.txt 14.19 kB · 0 downloads ffmpeg-remux-d60de868-64bc-44c1-a3f3-3b913aaae34b_1.txt 18.03 kB · 0 downloads ffmpeg-remux-dd4711b5-9559-4b7b-9701-09a545301084_1.txt 13.75 kB · 0 downloads ffmpeg-transcode-54bd24e9-3bd6-4528-86e8-73ca64dfa2c1_1.txt 50.11 kB · 0 downloads ffmpeg-remux-68faa2f6-8932-4d8f-9a1e-84e2ddcaf775_1.txt 18.63 kB · 0 downloads ffmpeg-remux-859abb51-9243-4f7e-9018-62bba9a2eb90_1.txt 23.58 kB · 0 downloads ffmpeg-transcode-386b1505-cf96-4fe2-83bb-6c1530deaa06_1.txt 26.61 kB · 0 downloads ffmpeg-transcode-656ec0d4-6465-487a-96fd-c87bf0d64cab_1.txt 26.79 kB · 0 downloads ffmpeg-transcode-ef6ada44-8e7f-4962-9ffe-016b65419361_1.txt 26.22 kB · 0 downloads embyserver.txt 2.51 MB · 0 downloads

How did you configure the quality setting in Emby for Windows?

[Derek Webb 5]

As I'm used to just running on the home network, everything usually just works flawlessly with default auto settings.  When I was trying to adjust for different resolutions and bit rates, I would just click the gear and select quality after I pressed play and wanted change it.  Would it help if I adjusted things in the app, or changed the defaults?  I'm sure you can set all that, but I've never had to mess with it before.

[Luke 42077]

On 8/27/2025 at 7:29 PM, Derek Webb said:

As I'm used to just running on the home network, everything usually just works flawlessly with default auto settings.  When I was trying to adjust for different resolutions and bit rates, I would just click the gear and select quality after I pressed play and wanted change it.  Would it help if I adjusted things in the app, or changed the defaults?  I'm sure you can set all that, but I've never had to mess with it before.

It doesn't look like your server can transcode these quickly enough to be playable. When you're on a remote connection you could try raising the in-app quality setting. This may help it direct play instead of transcoding. Then it becomes a question of whether the remote connection is fast enough to handle the larger data size.

[Derek Webb 5]

Good idea, I never thought of that.  99% of the issues are under powered server, underpowered recipient, under sized monitor.  If I can direct play, then it'll just be a bandwidth issue.  More than enough server-side to handle it.  Guess I'll have to visit again to test if his end can handle it.

[Luke 42077]

Please let us know how things go. Thanks !

[Derek Webb 5]

Sorry for the delay.  While it helped, the machine my son was using was simply too underpowered to work.  Did seem to help the underpowered server issue.  .  To resolve the underpowered server issue I added a micro-PC to my network.  It has a clean install of windows 11, and Emby server on it.  It is plugged into the switch next to my NAS and I can remote connect to it from my PC if I want to do anything otherwise it is just sitting there as a dedicated Emby server playing media off the NAS.  Overall the setup is more responsive and faster than having it directly on the NAS, so I am happy with it. 

But I have moved on to a new problem.  Can somebody tell me a good resource to understand what is in the log files and how to use them.  I have not tested it on other machines yet to see if it is consistent in all scenarios, but I have found that if I am playing anything on Emby Theatre on my PC, it will play for about an hour to an hour and a half then the entire Emby Server PC will lock up and be unresponsive until I go over to the machine and hard reset to reboot it.  I have tried this three times playing different media and it consistently fails.  The last test I did I opened a remote connection to the Emby server PC and left Task Manager running while I watched, thinking perhaps it is overloading memory or processor power.  But it remained at 3% CPU 18% Memory and 0.1% GPU.  Nothing remotely close to problematic.  As it is a clean install with no other software to conflict with it I am thinking it is a hardware problem, or configuration issue with Emby Sever.  I just need to know what is causing the lock up which I am hoping the log files will tell me.  

[Luke 42077]

On 11/8/2025 at 3:36 AM, Derek Webb said:

Sorry for the delay.  While it helped, the machine my son was using was simply too underpowered to work.  Did seem to help the underpowered server issue.  .  To resolve the underpowered server issue I added a micro-PC to my network.  It has a clean install of windows 11, and Emby server on it.  It is plugged into the switch next to my NAS and I can remote connect to it from my PC if I want to do anything otherwise it is just sitting there as a dedicated Emby server playing media off the NAS.  Overall the setup is more responsive and faster than having it directly on the NAS, so I am happy with it. 

But I have moved on to a new problem.  Can somebody tell me a good resource to understand what is in the log files and how to use them.  I have not tested it on other machines yet to see if it is consistent in all scenarios, but I have found that if I am playing anything on Emby Theatre on my PC, it will play for about an hour to an hour and a half then the entire Emby Server PC will lock up and be unresponsive until I go over to the machine and hard reset to reboot it.  I have tried this three times playing different media and it consistently fails.  The last test I did I opened a remote connection to the Emby server PC and left Task Manager running while I watched, thinking perhaps it is overloading memory or processor power.  But it remained at 3% CPU 18% Memory and 0.1% GPU.  Nothing remotely close to problematic.  As it is a clean install with no other software to conflict with it I am thinking it is a hardware problem, or configuration issue with Emby Sever.  I just need to know what is causing the lock up which I am hoping the log files will tell me.  

@Derek Webb

 

Hi there, let's look at an example. Please attach the information requested in how to report a media playback issue. Thanks!

 

[Derek Webb 5]

Thanks Luke,

Here's what I did:

I just recreated the problem.  Logged on with Emby Theatre from my computer and Played a few episodes of Big Bang Theory.  They've been watched before when it was on a different server, so it is not the media.  The new Emby server computer has been up and running for a couple weeks and only crashes when I am watching something on Emby, so it is not the fresh Windows install.  It took about four episodes before it crashed, so a little longer than in the past, but the entire server still froze up in the middle of playing.  I rebooted the server PC and here are all of the log files from today.

I'm pretty good with computers, hardware and OS, but I have never really needed to do much with media.  I took a quick look at the log files and they are very long, with a lot of information in them.  I could spend hours going through and deciphering what each part is about and possibly still not know where it failed.  Since I don't know what the log files are supposed to contain and what I should be looking for.  Obviously, if you see what the problem is, tell me so I can fix it, but I'd also like to be able to do it myself if I have issues like this in the future, so any resources you can point me to would be appreciated as well.

hardware_detection-63898653895.txt hardware_detection-63898667048.txt embyserver.txt embyserver-63898667030.txt

[TMCsw 247]

Looks like a network/NAS problem with W: & Z:

System.ComponentModel.Win32Exception: System.ComponentModel.Win32Exception (64): The specified network name is no longer available.

Also, you should either fix or remove portmapper..

[Derek Webb 5]

Hmmm.  Gives me something to explore.  I didn't even know Port Mapper was on there.  I configured the router manually, so got rid of that.  Very strange that W: and Z: dropped, even stranger that it caused an issue since the file I was watching was on X:.  But I will see if I can figure that one out.

 

Thanks.

[Luke 42077]

Windows will disconnect mapped drives when they idle. For this reason we recommend setting up the libraries using the original network location instead.

[Derek Webb 5]

Thought of that.  I disabled the auto disconnect on Windows.  Need to set aside a couple hours to test it to see if that was the problem now.  You're right, static IP may work better though since this is just a server PC.  I just got into the habit of Mapping the drives because its easier to copy stuff to and from the NAS from my other PCs if I have them mapped.    

[Luke 42077]

OK please keep us posted. Thanks.

[Derek Webb 5]

I'm going to tentatively say problem solved.  Still not sure why a disconnect on a network drive that I'm not using will cause Emby to completely crash the entire Windows OS (that might be one to look into for a future Emby update), and I haven't done an extended movie marathon to test it.  But I did play a couple hour movie with no issues and everything appears to be working, at least more consistently than it was.  I went with the disabling autodisconnect route:

net config server /autodisconnect:-1

but if I do come across issues again I'll redo my libraries using the static IP instead of the mapped drive, but it should behave the same with the disconnect turned off.  

Thanks for your insights.