Emby crashing on almost every movie on Shield TV Pro

[adnaan77 2]

Hello Everyone,

I wanted to write this topic because it's a series issue that I have been facing for a while now and I haven't discovered the cause of the issue yet. but I have found a way around it. 

First of all I want to mention why I have switched and subscribed to emby in the first place. I have always used Plex and it was bugging me all the time with their server issues and playback issues and almost every two weeks I had to reinstall the server because it just shuts down by itself. The movies I play on my TV and Soundbar are all 4K with TrueHD 7.1 surround sound. so you can imagine how huge these files were and the power they required to be played. 

Then I discovered emby.  and man I was so happy that I found an app and server that play these movies super fast with no lag and no stutter and no server issues. at that time emby server was on 4.8.3.0. it played everything I throw at it. no server issues whatsoever. I subscribed immediately and transferred my whole library to emby. ditched plex completely. 

I stayed on version 4.8.3.0. for almost a year without updating my server and it was working amazingly. last year about the end of the year time I decided to update my server,  since I saw a huge change log I said to myself it would be even better with these updates. little did I know that updating my server would be the end for emby for me. 

after that update to 4.9.3 and above and even the beta updates 4.10. My emby couldn't play any movies at 4K TrueHD 7.1. It crashes within the first 3 minutes of playing the movie. I couldn't figure out why or whats happening. I thought maybe the movies are corrupted and I redownload them. 

whenever I play a movie it just crashes and I have to relaunch the server. like it can't handle that format anymore. I tried to search here for a solution but nothing helped me. And I almost gave up on emby in search for something better or go back to plex because it didn't have that crash issue for me. 

As a final solution I wanted to try, I remembered why I switched to emby in the first place.. fast, no lag and no crashes at all, and that made me think of the version of emby server the moment I discovered it. I remembered that when I fell in love with emby it was on version 4.8.3.0. So as a final solution to try and fix the issue I said why not to try the old version of the server. 

And here is the surprise, No more lagging, no more crashing at all. it played my movies smoothly and with no worry that it would crash at any moment. 

So emby team, this is my message to you. Whatever you did after version 4.8.3.0. please revisit that and see whats changed. because this version never crashes for me. 

Finally, I hope this helps whoever is having these issues just like me.  and sorry for the long essay I just wanted to express my feelings while explaining this issue. 

[ebr 16410]

Hi.  You are running the server on the Shield?

Can you define "crash"?  What, exactly, happens?

Please provide a server log from one of these events.

Log Files

[Luke 42409]

Hi there, please attach the Emby server log from when the problem occurred:

How to Report a Problem

Thanks!

 

[adnaan77 2]

16 hours ago, ebr said:

Hi.  You are running the server on the Shield?

Can you define "crash"?  What, exactly, happens?

Please provide a server log from one of these events.

Log Files

Hi there,

Yes I'm running my server on the shield it self. And by "crash" I mean: I play the movie and 2 minutes later the movie would just shut off and brings me back to the emby home screen and then no other movies will play because the Server is shutdown by this crash. 

and regarding the log file, where can I get it from ? and will I find it now that I have downgraded my server to older version?

Thanks

[ebr 16410]

8 hours ago, adnaan77 said:

regarding the log file, where can I get it from ?

Did you read the link I provided?

8 hours ago, adnaan77 said:

will I find it now that I have downgraded my server to older version?

One may still be there but you may need to reproduce the problem to be sure.

[luca1970it 37]

On 4/12/2026 at 7:35 AM, adnaan77 said:

Hello Everyone,

I wanted to write this topic because it's a series issue that I have been facing for a while now and I haven't discovered the cause of the issue yet. but I have found a way around it. 

First of all I want to mention why I have switched and subscribed to emby in the first place. I have always used Plex and it was bugging me all the time with their server issues and playback issues and almost every two weeks I had to reinstall the server because it just shuts down by itself. The movies I play on my TV and Soundbar are all 4K with TrueHD 7.1 surround sound. so you can imagine how huge these files were and the power they required to be played. 

Then I discovered emby.  and man I was so happy that I found an app and server that play these movies super fast with no lag and no stutter and no server issues. at that time emby server was on 4.8.3.0. it played everything I throw at it. no server issues whatsoever. I subscribed immediately and transferred my whole library to emby. ditched plex completely. 

I stayed on version 4.8.3.0. for almost a year without updating my server and it was working amazingly. last year about the end of the year time I decided to update my server,  since I saw a huge change log I said to myself it would be even better with these updates. little did I know that updating my server would be the end for emby for me. 

after that update to 4.9.3 and above and even the beta updates 4.10. My emby couldn't play any movies at 4K TrueHD 7.1. It crashes within the first 3 minutes of playing the movie. I couldn't figure out why or whats happening. I thought maybe the movies are corrupted and I redownload them. 

whenever I play a movie it just crashes and I have to relaunch the server. like it can't handle that format anymore. I tried to search here for a solution but nothing helped me. And I almost gave up on emby in search for something better or go back to plex because it didn't have that crash issue for me. 

As a final solution I wanted to try, I remembered why I switched to emby in the first place.. fast, no lag and no crashes at all, and that made me think of the version of emby server the moment I discovered it. I remembered that when I fell in love with emby it was on version 4.8.3.0. So as a final solution to try and fix the issue I said why not to try the old version of the server. 

And here is the surprise, No more lagging, no more crashing at all. it played my movies smoothly and with no worry that it would crash at any moment. 

So emby team, this is my message to you. Whatever you did after version 4.8.3.0. please revisit that and see whats changed. because this version never crashes for me. 

Finally, I hope this helps whoever is having these issues just like me.  and sorry for the long essay I just wanted to express my feelings while explaining this issue. 

Hi! If you’re having playback issues on your Shield TV Pro with TrueHD material, it’s actually quite simple. Based on my experience, if your TrueHD-encoded MKV freezes after a few minutes, it’s usually an audio encoding issue.

Go into your TV and Shield settings and check the audio output format. You’re likely running into passthrough issues. I’m telling you this because the same thing happens to me with my LG TV: if I use the built-in app, it freezes after a short while, but if I set it to PCM, everything works fine.

Are you sure you haven’t changed anything in your audio/video chain over the last year? What’s happening to you is probably a bitstream output problem. Let me know!

[Luke 42409]

@adnaan77has this helped?

[As777 27]

I am having a similar issue with large MKV files that the playback freezes after just a few seconds. Sometimes, I can exit and start only to have the video freeze again after a few seconds: Other times I have to shut off Emby.

Another issue I have atm is Dobly Vision is sometimes not working either and I am getting the wrong colours. Running the Shield Pro, latest Emby server beta and Emby client. Same video files run flawlessy on Kodi on the same box.

[As777 27]

Ok, new problem is that the connection rate for my home is unable to go higher than 1080p 60mpbs. It should be set 4K 200mbps, which my network handles easily. It appears it's trying, and failing, to transcode the stream which is why these large videos won't play. It should transcode though, my Intel NUC i3 has hardware decoding/encoding and it has transcoded just fine in the past.

[ebr 16410]

23 hours ago, As777 said:

Ok, new problem is that the connection rate for my home is unable to go higher than 1080p 60mpbs. It should be set 4K 200mbps, which my network handles easily. It appears it's trying, and failing, to transcode the stream which is why these large videos won't play. It should transcode though, my Intel NUC i3 has hardware decoding/encoding and it has transcoded just fine in the past.

So you are not using an Android device as a server?