some videos won't play remote, AC3 audio?

[justinrh 259]

I connected remotely using Windows 11 Edge (in a private window) and randomly picked a couple of movies (Skyfall and Spectre) and neither would play, just get the eternal spinner with a black background.  I picked a couple of others and they immediately played.  The only diff I can see is that the first two had AC3 audio tracks as default.  Selecting AAC tracks on the two videos allowed them to play.

But when connecting on the LAN as the same user (also in Edge but Windows 10), every movie played regardless of the audio track.

Why the diff?  Why does AC3 cause videos not to play remotely?

embyserver.txtffmpeg-transcode-57c964a6-371c-4a5a-be17-3556a152cc92_1.txt

Edited December 27, 2025 by justinrh

[Luke 42077]

HI, I don't see anything obvious here. It sounds to me like data just not getting there quickly enough.

[justinrh 259]

Say what?  Can you give a technical explanation of the diff?

Edited December 26, 2025 by justinrh

[Luke 42077]

It could be that the network performance is not getting the data there quickly enough, thus leading to the loading spinner that you describe. This would suggest that you need to lower the quality setting.

But the ffmpeg log looks like it's from live tv and not a video file, right?

 

[justinrh 259]

Bandwidth can't be the problem.  I played videos.  What makes you think Skyfall was from live TV?

[Luke 42077]

7 minutes ago, justinrh said:

What makes you think Skyfall was from live TV?

I didn't. You posted an ffmpeg log from live tv so I started looking at it assuming that it was relevant.

[Luke 42077]

7 minutes ago, justinrh said:

Bandwidth can't be the problem.  I played videos.

But not all files are identical, right?

[justinrh 259]

Oh, Luke, you are correct.  Maybe you missed something or I didn't communicate well (I clarified the original post).  AC3 track fails, AAC track works.  That's probably not a bandwidth issue, especially since the weak link is 300Mbps.

(If the FFmpeg log file does not apply, please remove it; I just grabbed all the files.)

Edited December 27, 2025 by justinrh

[justinrh 259]

Tomorrow I'll try a local connection with the same machine I tested with remote, to see if there is some diff with the systems.

[Luke 42077]

3 hours ago, justinrh said:

AC3 track fails, AAC track works. 

Browser video players can't choose between internal audio tracks, so as soon as you try to change tracks, that triggers a transcode. The fact that one is working and one is not probably has nothing to do with ac3 vs aac and has more to do with the browser having trouble direct playing the file, but then being able to play the server transcoding output when you change tracks.

[justinrh 259]

I'm not sure I follow, but I don't think it is complicated.  I put the remote machine on the home network and tested.  Same result: with AC3 selected, the video does not play (no transcoding is happening on the server).  Even as I'm typing this all I have is a spinner and yet Emby says the video has stopped playing.  Seems like an issue to me.  Issue with Windows 11?

embyserver.txt

At least we know it has nothing to do with a remote connection.  (Please update the thread title for me.)

Edited December 27, 2025 by justinrh

[Luke 42077]

OK looks like an issue with the browser video player. Are you able to use playback correction to resolve it?

[justinrh 259]

36 minutes ago, Luke said:

Are you able to use playback correction to resolve it?

Yes, that allowed it to play.

[Luke 42077]

Great. Does this resolve your issue?

[justinrh 259]

Not really.  It is a work-around, but the user would not know to do that.  It would be better if Emby could detect the problem and correct itself or at least indicate to the user the issue.  Else users would think that Emby is just broken ...

[Luke 42077]

We do have automatic detection and fallback when the browser video player raises an error.

 This is probably one of those edge case situations where it is not doing that but just stalling.