Live TV hangs

[thunderclap 52]

I have an issue where Emby stutters and will finally hang during live broadcasts. This both through OTA and IPTV. I wanted to give you two examples, so I captured a side-by-side comparison between Emby (left) an alternative app called Channels (right).

Clip01.mp4: This clip shows Emby using the Auto option for display settings in the web browser and it is at 1080p @ 60MB/s. Channels automatically transcodes at 1080p @ 10MB/s. You'll notice Channels hangs for a quarter of a second at 9 secs, 30 secs, and 53 sec. Emby plays fine until about 1:30 and doesn't recover whereas Channels doesn't stop at all.

Clip02.mp4: I set Emby's display to 1080p @ 10MB/s so it matches Channels. You'll see Emby hangs at 14 sec whereas Channels has no issues.

I'm also attaching the transcode logs for both clips. I've done this test in a web browser, Apple TV, Chromecast, and Roku. Roku struggles the most but it does impact the other two as well. I suspect there's a signal drop briefly and Emby chokes whereas Channels is able to recover, but that's just a guess.

Any ideas how to resolve this?

Clip01 log.txt Clip02 log.txt embyserver.txt

[Luke 42077]

Hi, as a test, if you disable hardware transcoding in server transcoding settings, how does that compare?

[thunderclap 52]

4 hours ago, Luke said:

Hi, as a test, if you disable hardware transcoding in server transcoding settings, how does that compare?

I assume you mean Enable Hardware Acceleration. I turned it off and the problem persists.

Edited September 7, 2025 by thunderclap
Updated information

[Luke 42077]

2 hours ago, thunderclap said:

I assume you mean Enable Hardware Acceleration. I turned it off and the problem persists.

Hi, can we please see a log example from that? Thanks !

[thunderclap 52]

1 hour ago, Luke said:

Hi, can we please see a log example from that? Thanks !

I believe this is the correct file.

ffmpeg-transcode-bac4899c-7d04-4867-a040-0aaf69c911a7_1.txt

[thunderclap 52]

I'm not sure if this helps at all but this morning I installed the Linuxserver version of Emby and ran it side-by-side with your official version. The official one hung about a 1:30 into a broadcast whereas the Linuxserver version didn't. This is on an Unraid server (latest) with a 14600K CPU and 32GB RAM. I'm attaching both logs for you in case it will help.

Emby-Linuxserver Docker Log.txt Emby-Official Docker Log.txt

[thunderclap 52]

I think I figured out the issue after comparing the fresh install vs original install. Then when the problem appeared again after copying the config files from the official install to the fresh install I started modifying different settings. It appears Emby doesn't like it when I have the transcode temporary path set to a separate SSD that I have set up for transcoding and DVR. This only appears to impact Live TV/IPTV and not general media. I've now been watching a channel for 10 min. and not a single pause. So probably not Emby but a drive issue or something else.

[Luke 42077]

OK please keep us posted on that. Thanks !

[thunderclap 52]

On 9/8/2025 at 3:01 PM, Luke said:

OK please keep us posted on that. Thanks !

I and two others watched live tv yesterday and with the exception of a few signal glitches it never got stuck or paused, so I guess we can write this one off too on user error. I'm still not sure why Emby choked on the SSD. Maybe it was because the file system type was zfs? I don't know, but moving the transcode folder to an nvme m.2 drive fixed the issue (now set as system file type xfs). Appreciate the support.