Shows and movies pausing/stalling and back-skipping

[Thanatos0042 3]

My roommate watches movies and tv shows in emby through a browser on her pc.

Lately, emby is doing this long pause, randomly and then sometimes when it starts up again, it's skipped backwards. This apparently throws the sound and subtitles off.

my nephew is having this same problem, but on his tv (he is remote though, not in the house on the local network).

It seems like it just started doing this an I've rebooted, run windows diags, check performance counters, etc. and all is well.

Can someone help me figure out how to troubleshoot this? determine if this is an emby issue or a windows/server issue? I'm not even sure where to begin for something like this.

and it's wortth noting, when I watch emby on my tv, I've never, ever had the problem.

thanks

[Luke 42077]

 

Hi there, let's look at an example. Please attach the information requested in how to report a media playback issue. Thanks!

 

[brothom 177]

4 hours ago, Thanatos0042 said:

My roommate watches movies and tv shows in emby through a browser on her pc.

Lately, emby is doing this long pause, randomly and then sometimes when it starts up again, it's skipped backwards. This apparently throws the sound and subtitles off.

my nephew is having this same problem, but on his tv (he is remote though, not in the house on the local network).

It seems like it just started doing this an I've rebooted, run windows diags, check performance counters, etc. and all is well.

Can someone help me figure out how to troubleshoot this? determine if this is an emby issue or a windows/server issue? I'm not even sure where to begin for something like this.

and it's wortth noting, when I watch emby on my tv, I've never, ever had the problem.

thanks

We'll need more info than this. Specifically logs as @Lukerequested.

Going purely by behaviour I think this is going on: your roommate is streaming on an old(er) device, causing your Emby Server to transcode to a format that old(er) device supports.

Your server however isn't all that great though and is probably having a bunch of issues converting the media from one format to another, causing delays, pauses and eventually skips.

When your roommate is streaming, check the dashboard to see if "Direct Play" or something else is showing for his session. For example: 

The left one is transcoding. The right one is being played directly (no extra server capacity needed).

[Thanatos0042 3]

ffmpeg-remux-e8920dbd-5618-42c0-a822-87fb0b1abe5e_1.txtffmpeg-remux-d5126fe4-291a-413f-a71a-b4eff167dc2c_1.txtffmpeg-remux-a44b7b7c-fbab-4295-9dd3-f18cd8eca28a_1.txtembyserver.txtffmpeg-remux-e8920dbd-5618-42c0-a822-87fb0b1abe5e_1.txtffmpeg-remux-d5126fe4-291a-413f-a71a-b4eff167dc2c_1.txt

Here is a copy of (I think) all the logs from when it was happening this morning.

Emby Server is ver 4.9.3.0

Brower on roommate's pc is Opera ver 126.0.57.50.59 (up to date)  emby web 4.9.3.0- when my roommate is watching something, it is transcoding.
We tried Frefox and it is also transcoding, processor jumps up , but bounces between 9-19%  and memory around 23%

nephew's tv is a Android TV - Hisense and we uninstalled and reinstalled the app

Mine is a LG, runs emby for lg 1.0.50  - I note when I've streamed a few shows it's like the pic on the right, not encoding.

Sever stats:
Processor Ryzen 5, 2600, 6 core
32 Gigs Ram
Windows server 2019 standard ver 1809
Streaming 2 shows for 2 different people have it around 10% processor and 18%memory. (along with a TSR's and other apps in memory)
LACP dual nic setup/managed LACP setup for switch.

 

Also, My roommate's machine

Processaor Ryzen 7, 9800X3D - 8 core
Ram 64 Gig
Windows 11
Nvidia 3060 RTX - 12 gig ram

Edited January 30 by Thanatos0042

[Lessaj 467]

Looks like they paused it and after 1 minute the session went idle which kills the transcode process. This happens for transcodes in the web app. Then when it starts again it may not start at the exact same positon, so you end up with a desync.

I'd suggest telling them to use Emby for Windows instead of their web browser for playback.

[Thanatos0042 3]

well the report from her was that she never paused it. But that it does randomly pause on it's own. 2 oithers mentioned it to me as I start to question and bring it up. I don't think it's very probable that these people are suddenly pausing the shows and having problems within the last month.

Desync does sound like what's going on here. I'll have her test it tomorrow with the windows app tomorrow.

This all started about a month ago I am told. Again, I've never once had a problem, I'm just getting people telling me and I haven't been able to reproduce it myself yet. I guess it's gotten worse which is why it's only being told to me now.'

2 people who are having problems are having it on the TV's, so the windows app is not going to work for them., I'm having them uninstall and reinstall the tv apps.

Edited January 31 by Thanatos0042

[RanmaCanada 494]

I would advise you get an Intel Arc or a cheap Nvidia Quadro like a P620 as the Ryzen 5 2600 is "weak" (by today's standards) and you are doing software transcoding which does have lag when starting and stopping, where as hardware encoding does not have as pronounced lag. I am only presuming this as you have not stated what video card you have in your server. I have noticed that when watching anime, if the system has to transcode due to your device not being able to playback the content directly, it can screw up subtitles if you fast forward or pause if your tab looks like below, ie "normal". Ideally they should be burning in the subtitiles on playback if their device has to transcode. There should be an option in their player, or you can force it in the transcoding tab. Just turn off Allow Subtitle extraction on the fly and Allow Subtitle font extraction on the fly. This will be a heavier load on your server as burning in subtitles is a single threaded process, last I checked.