Playback Error - no compatible streamsare currently available

[twofacetoo 0]

Hey all, running into an issue here that's completely crippled Emby on my side.

I stored all my Emby content (movies and shows) on a 2tb external hard drive, to avoid them cluttering up my computer. The drive was listed as the F: drive on my computer, so all the files were accessed via F. I recently came into possession of a relative's old laptop (Win10 from 2021) and decided to make it devoted to running Emby 24/7. So I moved the external drive and plugged it into the laptop (now the E drive), then moved the programdata folder over from my appdata folder on the original computer, and moved it to the laptop as well, to the same location.

Now I can access Emby on the laptop browser (Firefox, same as my desktop PC) and can see my content listed, all the movies and shows, but they're all giving the same playback error when I try to watch them. I've tested it on various movies and shows, none of them are working, all giving the same error every time, and if memory serves this actually started before I even made the move.
I've checked the files are being accessed from the correct place, I updated the library to access both the E and F drives, then just the E drive on the laptop to simplify things, and it still isn't working. I'm running into the playback error message on my desktop PC and my TV, when both used to work perfectly fine, as well as the laptop itself. I use a VPN on my desktop PC, I didn't intend to use it on my laptop, but I downloaded it again anyway just to see if it worked, but even with it enabled, the issue is still here. Let me know what logs are required and I'll attach them in a reply, I just want to get this fixed because as it stands, the entire system is down for me now.

TLDR: I've encountered the above error on my TV and two separate computers, it cropped up prior to moving the files, but seems to still be appearing even now

[Neminem 1763]

After you moved the drive did you run a full scan?

 

[twofacetoo 0]

2 minutes ago, Neminem said:

After you moved the drive did you run a full scan?

 

For the library files? Yes, I did.

[Neminem 1763]

Ok dev's will need logs

[twofacetoo 0]

Just now, Neminem said:

Ok dev's will need logs

Any idea which ones so I can add them here? Or would it just be the most recent ones? I've generally had few issues with Emby, this one came out of the blue.

[Neminem 1763]

Try with the most recent after you recreated the issue. 

[twofacetoo 0]

I just opened it all up again, tried to play my copy of 'The Untouchables', same error, these four logs were generated at the same minute when I tried.

embyserver.txt ffmpeg-directstream-57373f73-4036-4647-a032-afcc155ef90c_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-31c32575-3a3b-436c-bda2-79fef85af98e_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-83fea902-b67e-4825-aa68-2e702489b4b9_1.txt

[Neminem 1763]

11:32:33.150 F:\Movies\Untouchables\The Untouchables (1987).mp4: No such file or directory

Emby can't find you F drive.

I would change the drive letter back to F:

 

[twofacetoo 0]

12 minutes ago, Neminem said:

11:32:33.150 F:\Movies\Untouchables\The Untouchables (1987).mp4: No such file or directory

Emby can't find you F drive.

I would change the drive letter back to F:

 

I've set the drive itself to F, and I'm also setting the libraries back to F, but is there really no way of changing that internally? Because I was looking to get another drive anyway, so E and F would both have 2tb of storage available for more content. So if I end up having to move something over to E (say, 'movies'), is this going to be at all doable?

It's taking a minute to scan all the content on the laptop, so I'll update when I have a result

Edited 2 hours ago by twofacetoo

[Neminem 1763]

Sure there is you just need to add the extra drive / folder to Emby library.

But right now Emby is seeing all your files at F driver when you try to play movies.

Which tells me that Emby has not finished removing from F drive and adding them to E drive or that you have not added E: to your libraries.

And I did not see any attempt to finde E:

2026-06-28 06:27:24.025 Info LibraryMonitor: Skipping realtime monitor for F:\Movies because the path is currently not available

2026-06-28 06:27:24.026 Info LibraryMonitor: Skipping realtime monitor for F:\TV Shows because the path is currently not available

[twofacetoo 0]

23 minutes ago, Neminem said:

Sure there is you just need to add the extra drive / folder to Emby library.

But right now Emby is seeing all your files at F driver when you try to play movies.

Which tells me that Emby has not finished removing from F drive and adding them to E drive or that you have not added E: to your libraries.

And I did not see any attempt to finde E:

2026-06-28 06:27:24.025 Info LibraryMonitor: Skipping realtime monitor for F:\Movies because the path is currently not available

2026-06-28 06:27:24.026 Info LibraryMonitor: Skipping realtime monitor for F:\TV Shows because the path is currently not available

Okay, the laptop is still scanning, but I just checked on my desktop PC where it was all setup before, and IT only shows the F drives in the library settings, after I changed it to E on my laptop. So for whatever reason, it looks like it's still going by what it says on my desktop PC to find the files. Once the laptop is done updating, I'll see if I can hook the drive back into my PC in 'E', set it up to use F and E just like the laptop, then move the drive back to the laptop and see if it works

I have no idea HOW this is happening but it seems to be happening. I definitely set the library to E on my laptop, I KNOW that, and I'm in the process of adding F back in, the laptop shows '2 folders', but the desktop only shows 'F'

[Neminem 1763]

Hmm is it possible you forgot click ok?

And not just click outside the popup window.

When adding E drive.

[twofacetoo 0]

Just finished the scan, this is what I see in the settings on the laptop, the '2 folders' are for the E and F drives. I'm just about to add the E drive to the desktop settings before going any further

[Neminem 1763]

Is this a HD that you move between the to servers?

If it is I would shutdown Emby Server before removing the HD.

Emby might see files missing and start removing metadata.

And then need to fetch metadata again, when it sees the drive again.

Just so that you are aware of that.

Edited 1 hour ago by Neminem

[twofacetoo 0]

13 minutes ago, Neminem said:

Is this a HD that you move between the to servers?

If it is I would shutdown before removing the HD.

Emby might see files missing and start removing metadata.

And then need to fetch metadata again, when it sees the drive again.

Just so that you are aware of that.

Okay, I moved the drive back over to the desktop PC, added E and F as well, still getting the same playback error message while trying to play content on my TV with the drive hooked into my PC (via E), this is the log that generated when I tried to play 'The Untouchables' and an episode of 'Family Guy' (just what I had immediate access to). The movie seemed to load but just showed a black screen (video not playing, no progress bar, no pause, etc), then the episode gave the same error message as before.

embyserver.txt

Edited 1 hour ago by twofacetoo

[Neminem 1763]

Stop adding drive letters that not there.

If it shows up as E only add that to you library.

2026-06-28 06:27:24.026 Info LibraryMonitor: Skipping realtime monitor for F:\TV Shows because the path is currently not available

Right now its adding all you media via E and is not done yet.

2026-06-28 13:04:39.213 Info MediaProbeManager: ProcessRun 'ffprobe' Execute: C:\Users\colin\AppData\Roaming\Emby-Server\system\ffprobe.exe -i file:"E:\TV Shows\Friends\Season 3\S03E09 The One with the Football.mkv" -threads 0 -v info -print_format json -show_streams -show_chapters -show_format -show_data

This will be an endless cycle for you if you keep doing these things.

[twofacetoo 0]

2 minutes ago, Neminem said:

Stop adding drive letters that not there.

If it shows up as E only add that to you library.

2026-06-28 06:27:24.026 Info LibraryMonitor: Skipping realtime monitor for F:\TV Shows because the path is currently not available

Right now its adding all you media via E and is not done yet.

2026-06-28 13:04:39.213 Info MediaProbeManager: ProcessRun 'ffprobe' Execute: C:\Users\colin\AppData\Roaming\Emby-Server\system\ffprobe.exe -i file:"E:\TV Shows\Friends\Season 3\S03E09 The One with the Football.mkv" -threads 0 -v info -print_format json -show_streams -show_chapters -show_format -show_data

This will be an endless cycle for you if you keep doing these things.

What do you mean, 'not there'? The laptop has an E and F drive, I plugged the drive into both at different times, same with my desktop PC. I added the drive letters via the library menu and added both E and F drives, so no matter which one it was plugged into, it should have still been able to read the data. Right this second it's showing as plugged into F on the laptop, and it finished scanning the files from F when I added it, like I already showed in the previous image

I originally had the drive set on my desktop PC to ONLY the F drive to avoid having to constantly re-scan for files if anything happened, however by default the laptop registered it as E. I managed to get it to F on the laptop by plugging in a USB stick first, which registered it as E, then added the drive as F, to avoid messing around with Disk Management again

The hard drive is accessible via E or F, on both machines. This isn't a case of 'it's added to a drive that doesn't exist', I added it to a drive that DOES exist. Even when I first plugged it in, it was set to E, so I added E to the library. YOU then advised that I should set it back to F, which is what I did, and now you're telling me to NOT set it to F, because F doesn't exist according to you, after you told me to set it to that?

1 hour ago, Neminem said:

11:32:33.150 F:\Movies\Untouchables\The Untouchables (1987).mp4: No such file or directory

Emby can't find you F drive.

I would change the drive letter back to F:

 

I've tried it in the F drive with only F set on the library settings for both folders, didn't work
I've tried it in the E drive with only E set on the library settings for both folders, didn't work
I tried it on both E and F with both 'E and F' paths in the library settings, didn't work

Both E and F are available drives on both machines, which the external hard drive can be plugged into, I added both to the library, it scanned all the files (which took some time but it DEFINITELY finished before I did anything else), yet still gives the same playback error no matter what I try to watch, but E and F ARE available drives on both of my machines.

[Neminem 1763]

Exactly how are you drive mappings? ( Screenshots )

How many drives have you connected? 

How is your library mapped inside Emby? ( library specific ) 

 

[twofacetoo 0]

Just now, Neminem said:

Exactly how are you drive mappings? ( Screenshots )

How many drives have you connected? 

How is your library mapped inside Emby? ( library specific ) 

 

Attached are screenshots showing the Drive Management program open on the laptop, with the Media Server hard drive highlighted, plugged into F (where all the content is stored). The USB in E is, as mentioned before, there to ensure that the drive was registered as F when it was plugged in

Attached also is pages from the laptop's Emby library settings, showing both Movies and TV have E and F listed as available. As said before, I did try it with ONLY F and ONLY E at different times, but the error persisted

On the laptop, the only actual drive is the Media Server one. It came with the C drive setup with the two other sections (Disk 0 and System Reserved) already built in, this was pre-owned by a relative after all so I had no involvement with it before yesterday basically. The only additional portions were the USB in E and the Media Server drive in F.