Detect Intros Timing Out - Causing NAS Access Issues

[corey 317]

I'm running into this issue where intro detection seems to be timing out. Please see the attached log for errors. First error starts on line 793. It had been working recently but I have added a lot of media recently as well. 

What I've noticed is that shortly after this task kicks off I'm no longer able to access my NAS over the network. I'm wondering if there are so many episodes that need to be scanned for fingerprints that they may be exhausting connections to my NAS. If I could attempt an intro scan one series, season or episode at a time I could test this but I don't believe that feature exists.

In the meantime I've disabled intro detection so it doesn't cause outages elsewhere on my network.

embyserver.txt

[Luke 42077]

Quote

What I've noticed is that shortly after this task kicks off I'm no longer able to access my NAS over the network. I'm wondering if there are so many episodes that need to be scanned for fingerprints that they may be exhausting connections to my NAS.

Hi, that does sound plausible but the server doesn't do multiple intro detections in parallel. I wonder if ffmpeg is accessing the file multiple times in parallel though.

[corey 317]

Is there any other information I can provide to get this resolved? It was working at one point and nothing has changed significantly in my setup. 

Looking back at some logs from a few days ago it seems like it may be an issue specifically with the file mentioned in the error log I attached.

Edited January 26 by corey

[brothom 177]

2 hours ago, corey said:

Is there any other information I can provide to get this resolved? It was working at one point and nothing has changed significantly in my setup. 

Looking back at some logs from a few days ago it seems like it may be an issue specifically with the file mentioned in the error log I attached.

Can you run the task and see what your NAS's stats are indicating? How much drive %, RAM %, CPU %, etc.

[corey 317]

I could if I could login to it when the task is running. 

[Luke 42077]

Is it possible that the feature is just too much for the nas to handle?

[corey 317]

I’m skeptical of that. Emby isn’t hosted on the NAS only the media is. Most of my library  appears to have been scanned successfully. I feel more and more like that there is a problem with a specific episode of a show (seen in the log) but since I can’t disable it for that episode, season, or series, I now have to turn the entire feature off. 

[Neminem 1516]

23 minutes ago, corey said:

I feel more and more like that there is a problem with a specific episode of a show (seen in the log) but since I can’t disable it for that episode, season, or series, I now have to turn the entire feature off. 

You could remove the offending episode, but make a copy to somewhere else first.

Then scan library and try again.

If it then works then you need to look at that episode file, to see what is wrong with it.

[corey 317]

Ya, that may be my next step. It’s a bit of a pain because it has impacts outside Emby but I don’t really have any other tools to troubleshoot this. 

[brothom 177]

On 26/01/2026 at 14:26, corey said:

I could if I could login to it when the task is running. 

 

4 hours ago, corey said:

I’m skeptical of that. Emby isn’t hosted on the NAS only the media is. Most of my library  appears to have been scanned successfully. I feel more and more like that there is a problem with a specific episode of a show (seen in the log) but since I can’t disable it for that episode, season, or series, I now have to turn the entire feature off. 

I was under the impression Emby was also running on your NAS, but it's not?

So if Detect Intros is running, both the server you're using to run Emby ánd your NAS become unreachable?

[corey 317]

Emby is not running on the NAS. It’s running via Docker on a separate Linux Ubuntu server. 

The NAS becomes unreachable when the task kicks off for what appears to be this specific episode of a show. I can’t access it over CIFS, I can’t access the Synology UI, and I noticed that Tunarr (which is running on the same server as Emby) channels weren’t working presumably because it couldn’t access files via the NAS through Emby. 
 

It’s an interesting little issue that may be an ffmpeg issue? I tried to run the same ffmpeg command that Emby uses to generate fingerprints on my Mac but I don’t seem to have a build with that capability enabled. 

[Neminem 1516]

So it can be ether emby or tunarr or other apps that are running !

Putting stress on you NAS.

What else has connection to you NAS at the same time?

What does smart info tell you about your HDD's ?

What network connection do you have?

What is the IO on your NAS drives?

What is the memory usage, when it becomes unstable?

Did you run a memory test on your NAS?

What is the CPU usage before it happens? 

Can you ping the NAS?

Can you SSH or telnet to the NAS?

Edited January 27 by Neminem

[corey 317]

So I have an update. Ultimately I don't think this is an Emby issue but I figured I'd share the result of my research for others and maybe folks can provide some guidance here.

I ran an experiment:

1. Turned on Detect Intros
2. Added a bunch of new media

The result: Detection worked without a hitch. 

When looking at disk utilization from the NAS I observed the following: All drives except Drive 1 report 30-40% utilization. Drive 1 was at 85-95% utilization. 

When I ran the scan scheduled task again, it is hanging on the same episode as before. When looking at disk IOPS, Throughput, and Utilization from the NAS I observed the following:

1. All drives except Drive 1 report zero utilization. Drive 1 is maxed at 100% utilization. 
2. All drives report zero throughput and zero IOPS. 

So there definitely seems to be something off with how this file is stored and accessed on the NAS. When attempting to move the file off my NAS I saw max utilization for that drive again. I deleted the file and put a fresh version on. Ran a scan and it worked without an issue.

I did run SMART tests on all drives and they reported healthy. I do think I need to look at replacing this drive specifically. This all but confirms it: