TV episodes flagged as "watched" as soon as started.... no resume point if stopped early

[OMGzilla 2]

Howdy all. I've been trying out Emby on and off for a couple years, and this is one problem that persists and has kept me from switching from Plex. For any given TV episode, the moment I start playback, it gets flagged as watched. So if I exit out partway through and return later, the subsequent episode is what's presented to me as next to watch. I've dug around on the forums and have seen references to a setting to set a "resume duration", but I cannot locate it anywhere. Any advice? I'm up-to-date with Emby Server, 4.9.5.0 on macOS 15.7.7 (Intel).

[Neminem 1774]

Did you alter this section of you TV Show library.

[OMGzilla 2]

19 minutes ago, Neminem said:

Did you alter this section of you TV Show library.

Well that took me a hot minute to find, but that helped nudge me in the right direction. I had changed these some time back as part of my troubleshooting with no effect. Those are currently set to 5 / 99 / 30

[OMGzilla 2]

So.... anyone have any ideas? I changed the settings back to default, no dice. I created a new server from scratch on an alternate login, no dice. Is this simply a bug with the macOS Emby server?

[Neminem 1774]

Well I guess devs will need logs.

Read this carefully and do all steps.

 

[Luke 42709]

9 hours ago, OMGzilla said:

So.... anyone have any ideas? I changed the settings back to default, no dice. I created a new server from scratch on an alternate login, no dice. Is this simply a bug with the macOS Emby server?

 

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

 

[OMGzilla 2]

1 hour ago, Luke said:

 

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

 

Hey, sorry I overlooked this earlier. Here's a log file freshly made.

embyserver.txt

[Luke 42709]

Does the detail screen for this video show a known runtime?

[OMGzilla 2]

17 minutes ago, Luke said:

Does the detail screen for this video show a known runtime?

Mmmm... I'm not sure what detail screen you refer to. When playing the video, it shows amount of time played and time remaining. If I go to the server and inspect the videos, perhaps here is what you mean? As a comparison, if I look at a movie, I see the total runtime and the time it will end if starting at that moment. I see no such detail when looking at any TV episode. I just double checked and I do get a resume option for movies.

[Luke 42709]

I mean when you click on the episode to view the full information about it. What does it say there?

[OMGzilla 2]

9 hours ago, Luke said:

I mean when you click on the episode to view the full information about it. What does it say there?

Right. So basically as above if I understand correctly. Here's a screen cap from a TV episode as an example.

 

[Luke 42709]

Is this a video file on your server?

[OMGzilla 2]

32 minutes ago, Luke said:

Is this a video file on your server?

Yes, everything I have is self-hosted. All files are on an external drive connected to my iMac by USB-C. I did try making a new folder on the internal drive and tested with a TV series I hadn't yet added otherwise to rule out that as the culprit, but no change. Movies are also all on this same drive but are unaffected.

[OMGzilla 2]

I have an update that may or may not shed light on the matter. I have a secondary problem where videos with AC3 tracks are silent on playback. I was going to address this later, but it occurred to me that the overwhelming majority of my TV show media have AC3 audio tracks, whereas my movies either have TrueHD Atmos or FLAC tracks. Going from my example earlier of The Addams Family, I transcoded the audio for the firs two episodes to FLAC, and lo and behold... well the audio plays finally, but I do get details of the runtime now. The problem of not getting resume points is NOT resolved as of yet... it still immediately flags the episode as watched as soon as I start it, but it also shows the audio track is AC3, which at this point it is not. I'll try to force the issue to get it to recognize the changes fully, but I'll start with this update for now.

 

[OMGzilla 2]

Update to the above... so I had a dog, and his name was BINGO! I thought the episode I posted above had the audio transcoded to FLAC, but what I forgot was that the tool I used only does it for lossless tracks and ignores AC3. Doi! But what it DID do was rename the file slightly and THAT made a difference here! My TV shows are normally named like this:

The Addams Family | S1 E1 - The Addams Family Goes to School

The Addams Family | S1 E2 - Morticia and the Psychiatrist

And so on. The tool I used to try transcoding the audio replaced that | character with I instead in the output file. This is what actually effected change. Not only am I now getting audio like I should be with the AC3 track, but it's not getting flagged immediately as watched as soon as I start playing. I should mention I normally do get the audio when using Infuse, but it was silent with Emby. I had been assuming this was an Emby player issue with some audio formats, which I thought was really odd that it couldn't decode AC3 of all things. But nope... just the file naming scheme threw a monkey wrench in all of this.

I just did a little more testing. I thought I wasn't getting resume points yet, but I simply hadn't played to the 30% mark for that to kick in. Some tweaking of the settings should get me to where I need to be. Problem SOLVED! Thanks for sticking in there with me.

 

[Luke 42709]

HI, you may want to check your library options. You normally don't have to play to 30% to get a resume point unless you configured the library that way.

[OMGzilla 2]

10 hours ago, Luke said:

HI, you may want to check your library options. You normally don't have to play to 30% to get a resume point unless you configured the library that way.

It was probably a typo when I was changing back to the example settings posted earlier. I previously had it set to 5% and had intended to change back to 3%. I thought 30% seemed unreasonably high when I was looking over this again. In any event, I've already tweaked these to where they need to be. Anywho, thanx for sticking with me as this got sorted. This will be a very easy fix to batch rename all my files accordingly so I can get settled into using Emby properly. Good riddance Plex!