Resuming videos

[Fnordje 3]

I have various issues with Emby related to resuming videos.

Let me first describe my situation. I work as a clerk, and my job allows me to have downtime during which I have the liberty to (sometimes) watch videos. For this purpose I recently switched to Emby from Plex on my workstation at home with a 40/4 mbit connection. I even added WOL just in case. All port forwarding works. My clients are an old, heavy 15" laptop running OSX (Firefox and Chrome available) and a 8" tablet running Android with Emby client from Google Play. My shifts differ. On long days I'd like to take the laptop, on short ones the tablet. Emby works, except one feature is causing me headaches: resuming videos.

1) I need to instantly pause when a client arrives so I can greet them, focus my attention on them without missing my video, and last but not least hear what they're saying. On the laptop, I just press spacebar once. On the tablet, I need to press first the touch screen (while I cannot easily reach the tablet) and aim well at pause. What are my options to make the tablet function better in this regard? I considered a Bluetooth keyboard, but AFAIK those time out after 10 minutes. Sometimes I get 4 customers an hour, sometimes I get 6 customers an hour but 4 in a row leading to a lot of 'work downtime'. During this, if I'd watch via Emby the keyboard would be left untouched and spacebar wouldn't reliably work. Until this issue is solved I am bound to taking my laptop with me.

2) Resuming videos causes subtitles to get out of sync with A/V. Basically, what happens is the subtitle starts to lag about 1 second. Skipping through the video sometimes makes it synced again hence sometimes fixes it, but this rarely does work and sometimes it makes it even worse. If its at the start I might as well just restart the video because if I start from scratch it is always in sync.

3) When I have a longer pause (this seems to occur quicker on the tablet with pauses as low as 1 minute) my client gets disconnected from the server and resume no longer works. I need to login to Emby again, search for the video, and fire it up again. Then I need to set the correct upload speed to 3 mbit/720p (4 mbit is too high, and the default is 40 mbit). Because it keeps flipping back to the default setting; 40 mbit/1080p. Which is great for watching over WLAN at home, but at work its too high. Then, on the Android version, I need to also select the subtitle. On the laptop I also need to set the video from 40 mbit to 3 mbit, but this is less annoying than on the tablet.

4) In issue #3 I described I need to "search for the video" in Emby. This is because resuming video returns me the first time I paused the video. So if I pause at 3 min, 30 min, and 300 min, the video always tries to resume at the 3 minute mark even though I'm far ahead. This means I need to skip through the video and remember all the time where I was left. I don't want to remember that kind of stuff. Besides, skipping through the video causes issue #2 all the time (not always, but almost always).

5) Due to issues #2, #3, and #4 I decided to subscribe to Emby to use the sync feature. I used the open source MPlayer some 15 years ago and it had similar issues with playing and resuming files remotely on a NAS. So I expected these issues in Emby to go away if the files were saved locally. I tried the feature on my tablet and it took long to sync (3x 2,4 GB). So I tried my phone as well, with reencoding it. Overnight it worked on both my tablet and my phone, but the phone got out of space to the point where I might not be able to receive SMS anymore (!!!) so I put them "pending for deletion". Yet nothing is happening. I really need to get rid of this error and be able to receive SMS! I assume the files weren't put on SD? Where are my files? I haven't tried on my tablet yet.

PS: oh, and can my girlfriend get a free copy of Emby on her iOS tablet because I have a sub?

Edited January 11, 2016 by Fnordje

[Pais 125]

I've tried all the sync options and have settled on Folder Sync to be the simplest solution for me. I keep an external drive connected to my server where all the Folder Sync content is dumped. When I travel I simply grab the external drive enabling me to consume that media from whatever laptop I have may handy. I don't have any mobile Android devices so I'm not sure if you can get the Folder Sync content onto an Android device.

[Luke 42083]

These are being looked into, thanks.