Buffering / Video not playing / freezing

[LAPS0082 13]

Dear all,

I have a very strange problem with a friend who is using my Emby server. I don't know where to look at anymore.

 

He sometimes has problems (extreme stuttering including complete freezing) when he accesses my Emby server. It is very random but I guess 60% of the time he tries he gets this errors.

He uses Apple TV with Tailscale to connect to my server directly. His Apple TV has a wired connection so no Wifi problem here. His line speed is 1GB and my upload speed is 50mbit/s.

Neither his nor my connection was the bottleneck during the tests.

He has problem with direct play and he has problems when we force transcoding.

 

I attached the logs. He tried it yesterday between 17.00h and 19.30h

 

ffmpeg-directstream-c5169c1f-e7b8-4aca-aa55-0867c8ceb521_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-78c2f138-e30b-420e-a93b-635b3b0845ee_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-3466b993-277d-4206-8b42-3f17bf466b57_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-8771e4db-d07b-4f4c-8921-53b8839f8f3c_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-b7d24f06-22af-4885-af2d-d33a909291dc_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-d0c04a77-bfb9-42a8-9247-a14bcfd124c5_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-d24b861f-8f2d-422d-9fbd-6592f2380f9c_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-ef9aab72-e9d0-4756-ac97-531487928c5a_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-f7a612fb-73f8-478e-bc5e-0070756ce3ad_1.txt ffmpeg-directstream-6a67e162-9064-4d85-aba7-f0c495f61560_1.txt ffmpeg-directstream-60b8948b-947a-4eca-a889-ca0beb6dd3ac_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-2bd7be50-297c-4b8e-bc38-fe16b5a0f4ba_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-9da0aaa2-c9bc-4a1b-9eff-fc9056980fd1_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-92a5bfeb-6e08-4c7a-8ab8-75e7f17f61cc_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-0285df4d-4539-4f92-9a7c-522ed847cb10_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-3978017e-ed88-45b6-8e55-e21858d51297_1.txt ffmpeg-directstream-9934d9c1-9f2c-4b22-9331-fcc46efd1b93_1.txt ffmpeg-directstream-b6565ed3-e064-47d1-97e6-a1591be76d09_1.txt ffmpeg-directstream-0b5bc616-88e3-4f7c-b2d3-4c6bd7822fce_1.txt embyserver.txt

[Luke 42077]

Hi, can you have him try lowering the quality setting and see if that helps? This will generally help with this kind of issue.

Quote

His line speed is 1GB and my upload speed is 50mbit/s.

Yes but there could be ISP throttling on either side of the connection. Have you looked into that?

[Lessaj 467]

This is definitely a network speed issue, especially since you're using tailscale. It's taking a lot longer than 3 seconds to be able to deliver the chunks to the client (which is the length of each chunk). In the case of the first example I looked at each chunk is in the neighborhood of 1.5-2MB but is taking up to 9 seconds to deliver. For brevity I removed some of the headers that are normally shown in the log just to show the time taken, chunk name and the content length.

Quote

2025-11-20 17:04:11.123 Info DynamicHlsService-0HNH77NH7ULPQ:00000001: http/1.1 Response 200 to host2. Time: 5631ms. GET http://host1:8096/emby/videos/199785/hls1/main/325.ts?PlaySessionId=29c8207c7baf4d658fd0984d85db0b6d. Content-Length=2209188
2025-11-20 17:04:15.515 Info DynamicHlsService-0HNH77NH7ULPS:00000001: http/1.1 Response 200 to host2. Time: 9434ms. GET http://host1:8096/emby/videos/199785/hls1/main/326.ts?PlaySessionId=29c8207c7baf4d658fd0984d85db0b6d. Headers: Content-Length=1594428
2025-11-20 17:04:19.765 Info DynamicHlsService-0HNH77NH7ULPQ:00000002: http/1.1 Response 200 to host2. Time: 8291ms. GET http://host1:8096/emby/videos/199785/hls1/main/327.ts?PlaySessionId=29c8207c7baf4d658fd0984d85db0b6d. Content-Length=1653648
2025-11-20 17:04:23.681 Info DynamicHlsService-0HNH77NH7ULPS:00000002: http/1.1 Response 200 to host2. Time: 7992ms. GET http://host1:8096/emby/videos/199785/hls1/main/328.ts?PlaySessionId=29c8207c7baf4d658fd0984d85db0b6d. Content-Length=2089056
2025-11-20 17:04:26.681 Info DynamicHlsService-0HNH77NH7ULPQ:00000003: http/1.1 Response 200 to host2. Time: 5929ms. GET http://host1:8096/emby/videos/199785/hls1/main/329.ts?PlaySessionId=29c8207c7baf4d658fd0984d85db0b6d. Content-Length=1840520
2025-11-20 17:04:32.147 Info DynamicHlsService-0HNH77NH7ULPS:00000003: http/1.1 Response 200 to host2. Time: 8026ms. GET http://host1:8096/emby/videos/199785/hls1/main/330.ts?PlaySessionId=29c8207c7baf4d658fd0984d85db0b6d Content-Length=1504376

-segment_time 00:00:03.000

[LAPS0082 13]

Thank you @Lessajand @Luke I see that 9 seconds is way too long,

Do you think Tailscale is the bottleneck here? I have another option to use my server with cloudflare tunnel. But that is the same behaviour.

Is there anything I can do if the ISP is throtteling? I thought using a VPN like tailscale would be a good solution

[Lessaj 467]

I suspect it could, yes. If you're able to as a test have them connect directly to your external IP that would at least narrow it down a little more. What about other remote users, do they not see this? You're saying it's also slow through a CF tunnel? Only for them or for others as well?

[LAPS0082 13]

I dont have many other remote Users.

I set up the Cloudflare variant first. It works for me perfectly while on mobile.

The tailscale mode was set up just for my friend as a Test.

I will try the direct connection. But I don't want to open my router permanently

[Luke 42077]

HI, please keep us posted on that. Thanks.

[LAPS0082 13]

Dear all,

I want to give you a quick update on this.

I was able to test a direct connection with my friend. This was a very quick and dirty test. I simply opened my router and my friend connected to my public ip. No Tailscale no Cloudflare involved.

So far the buffering issue was not present anymore and the streams were running fine.

But we did another test as I don't want to open my router permanently. I rented a small VPS and installed a wireguard connection between the VPS and my Emby server. Furthermore I installed caddy on the VPS and reverse proxied my public emby URL through the wireguard connection to my Emby server.

 

Works like a charm by now but we will keep testing.