Constant Freezing On Devices Accross The Board!

[The Mad Titan 6]

Hello devs. I know all of you do an incredibly busy job over there at Emby HQ, but I have to say after this latest update... Emby has went straight into the toilet. After emby server update 4.9.1 all my emby clients has critical performance issues...

1. Constant buffering or video stopping even with low bit rate video on remote clients, but plays flawless in local areas.

2. Tested internet had techs come out and troubleshooted just about every part of a modem you can. There were no issues that acan be found in the network (not even throttling).

3. Video that use to play direct now has to transcode. I have more than the upload bandwith, becuase my server uses a fiber modem and I use a NAS (network as Srvice) profile so i can set it to as little as 25mbit to 10,000 mbit both ways (no joke)

4. Tested home internet an TS that as well, even went as for as replacing Equipment. All other applications perform flawlessly (Home int 2100 mbit/down - 300 Mbit/up)

5. Tested drives, ethernet, computer.... You get the idea.

6. even tried Emby for Android and Emby for TV and get the same performance, accross my samsung TV, Roku and my android phone wont play at all.

 

Here I am attaching my most recent service logs and see if you can see something here and advise....

Thank you for looking into.

embyserver (3).txt embyserver (2).txt ffmpeg-transcode-ebd7ac86-2fb8-43c4-ba8c-8e86493c5a6a_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-41ab6661-8455-4af2-a4ac-a58e66f954b1_1.txt embyserver (1).txt

[The Mad Titan 6]

here more logs

embyserver (4).txt

[Luke 42077]

Hi, what transcodes that you think used to direct play?

[The Mad Titan 6]

The majority of my movies are H.264 / AAC at around 3mbit/sec bit rates. TV series from 5 to 8 mbits/sec rates. not a specific one, but it will pause, freeze and have jerky playback sometimes after the freeze. It's not one specific video its virtually anything I play. As I said earlier this happend after the 4.9.1.80 update.

Something is severely screwy with that update and I see other issues accross this forum and others as well. Cant roll back without wiping my server and only then it will go back to 4.9.

The Emby team relly need to look into this, because on the dashboard it says playing, but something is happinng in the transport from server to client on remote connections & it is not my networks. As in the earlier post. If you are on your local network everything is sunshine. It does to seem to transcode for stable play although these items are direct stream so somewhere the system is trying to correct, but it seems to effect direct play items and thats where the playback issues occur.

[The Mad Titan 6]

here is and example... really? Quality setting? this person has an 1200 mbit connection

[The Mad Titan 6]

This one is direct play and it constantly stops  and freezes... 

[The Mad Titan 6]

Any video rate over 3mbit will stall and hang. Anything under 3mbit is smooth sailing. I telling you something in this update has some how messed up how emby reads and runs data rates, because it not feeding the stream like it should.

Maybe it will show up here.

ffmpeg-transcode-6c6de6c5-a304-4b4e-a9c6-8b5d8eee4b2b_1.txt embyserver (5).txt

[The Mad Titan 6]

heres one more..

embyserver (6).txt

[The Mad Titan 6]

one more.. hopefully you can see whats going on

embyserver (8).txt

[Luke 42077]

HI, since this is a remote connection, you could be getting hit with ISP throttling. This could be happening on either side of the connection, from either ISP.

Have you looked into this to see if it's the case?  This is becoming increasingly common nowadays, especially if you are running on plain http and haven't setup https on your server.

[The Mad Titan 6]

No sir varified alll before it got here and many others are reporting this accross the board, since 4.9.. look at my begining post. covered it all

I looked in these forums and people are having alot of issues with 4.9, but what I am going to do to focus it in i going to arase my server completely and put in the previous. lets see what we get.

 

 

Edited October 10, 2025 by The Mad Titan

[The Mad Titan 6]

but i will set up https

 

[Luke 42077]

5 minutes ago, The Mad Titan said:

No sir varified alll before it got here and many others are reporting this accross the board, since 4.9.. look at my begining post. covered it all

I looked in these forums and people are having alot of issues with 4.9, but what I am going to do to focus it in i going to arase my server completely and put in the previous. lets see what we get.

 

 

How did you verify exactly? Whatever test you do has to be on the same port that Emby Server is using, which in your case is 8096. Most users when they say they tested for this, they didn't do that part.  That does make it a little trickier to test.  The best way is to use the web app to download something from your server and see how fast the download goes.

And then of course, there's also the client ISP.

[The Mad Titan 6]

I would say throtling , but all other apps on my android works flawlessly for the most part. i am only having this issue with Emby streaming. So if it was global I would agree, but it is only happening when use of Emby

[Luke 42077]

13 minutes ago, The Mad Titan said:

I would say throtling , but all other apps on my android works flawlessly for the most part. i am only having this issue with Emby streaming. So if it was global I would agree, but it is only happening when use of Emby

Are those apps running through port 8096 ?

[The Mad Titan 6]

okay i can run a port test on 8096

 

 

[brothom 177]

The only way I notice / reproduced this issue was when (on my weak server) one user was transcoding a 4K video to 1080p and/or audio from 5.1 -> 2.0 which would take processing power actually getting in the way of other users that were using Direct Play.

Perhaps there's something going on with users that transcode, "stealing" server capacity of Direct Play users?

If ALL users are using Direct Play and regardless of weither one user is watching or multiple users are watching and it ALWAYS stutters, then there must be something up with your connection.
Just doing a speedtest isn't enough in complex streaming cases as anything from a switch/router/modem to the ISP itself might be interfering.

Also remember, mbit per second (mbps) and megabyte per second (MB/s) are two different things and the latter is a factor 8 of the first.
Just because your ISP offers a 100mbit upload that also means that you'll have about 12,5 MB/s capability.

[The Mad Titan 6]

I agree with you.. I tried and IPTV link just this morning and Emby always transcodes at 2mbit on the iptv and my personal video cllllection. there is throttling going on somewhere so lets hunt down my isp.. I think they flagged that port, because all other applaications run smoothly..

Thank You

Edited October 10, 2025 by The Mad Titan

[Luke 42077]

Quote

Emby always transcodes at 2mbit on the iptv and my personal video cllllection

The fact that it transcodes (or not), has nothing to do with whether you're being throttled or not. It depends on supported media as well as the app quality setting.

And then the fact that it transcodes at 2 mbps (or any other value) has more to do with the app quality setting than anything else.

Anyway, Please let us know what you find. Thanks.

[The Mad Titan 6]

Okay after looking over all suggestions. I went for the traffic shaping theory. So what I did was I completely bypassed my ISP's gateway and hooked the server up directly to the modem, where there securities and control are not. Th results so far the transcoding has stopped and now these people can direct play again. I will try higher bit rate videos to confirm more. So far  by passing the gateway looks promising. Will let you know the final results.

[The Mad Titan 6]

Even afeter by passing the gateway and going straight to internet (even changing ports and aquiring new ip address), still the same thing. Now here is the weirdness, even after checking all and emby settings. Everything automatically transcode to 2mbit bit rates. It says quality settings (Auto), but when a changed to 20 or 30 mbit it will direct play but with major freezing on my devicce and clients across the board. It's just freaking weird that it is bottlenecked into this 2mbit only transcode to play anything.

[The Mad Titan 6]

another example...

ffmpeg-transcode-132dc76b-1e48-4545-ad1a-b2bf1412efe0_1.txt embyserver (9).txt

[The Mad Titan 6]

Okay here i another example.. Anything under 3mbit direct plays, but for some reason or another anything over the server wants to transcode, even if bandwith and compatibility is there. I am so sorry to burden the techs. I am just not under standing.

[Neminem 1518]

Auto is ( FUBAR ).

This setting is client side, raise it to fit your needs (Client side )

Edited October 11, 2025 by Neminem

[Luke 42077]

Quote

still the same thing.

Hi, still what exactly?