Playback issues, varied by client

[tara.b 2]

I'm trying to sort out what's going on with some of my DVD rips (I haven't noticed this with my BluRay rips, but admittedly haven't checked all of them yet).  All movies are being encoded to mp4 in Handbrake with the same output settings (H.264/Intel QSV, ACC/Dolby Pro Logic II + AC3/passthru), but when I attempt to play them on my local network some movies behave differently depending on the client, either:

a.) direct playing as expected (I'm using path substitutions)

b.) transcoding with no audio or

c.) not playing at all.

 

In the web client and on the iOS app, they are playing as expected.  On the emby app on my FireTV stick, they are transcoding with no audio.  On my Panasonic smartTV, when I connect to the emby server directly thru DLNA, they do not play at all with the error message "cannot read file".

 

This is not happening with all DVD rips, just some, even though the encoding has been done the same for all.  One of the things I've noticed in the web client is that the Media Info section is missing information for the movies that are not playing; it simply contains the Container and Path fields.  The movies that play on all clients show the Video and Audio codec information, etc. as well.

 

Is there something I'm missing in the encoding process? Or is there some sort of metadata that emby isn't picking up on these movies?  Anything else I should look at to get to the bottom of this?

 

Thanks,

Tara

Edited July 15, 2016 by tara.b

[Luke 42085]

Hi there, welcome. Can you please select one example that you'd like to start with, then see how to report a media playback issue? Thanks!

[Luke 42085]

Edit: Before doing this, try refreshing one of those affected titles from the detail screen in the web client. You do do this by clicking the 3-dot menu, then refresh. That should get the media info populated.

[tara.b 2]

Thanks, Luke!  That seems to have solved it!

[tara.b 2]

Follow-up... Is there a batch service or scheduled task that will do this refresh on all files?  These movies have been in my database for days, and all schedule tasks have been run recently but the metadata is still missing on some files.  I think it's going to be cumbersome to figure out which ones are missing metadata.  I just found a Bluray rip (so its apparently not specific DVD rips) that has files for two different resolutions... the 480p had the metdata the 720p did not, even though they were added to the database within minutes of each other.

[bfir3 117]

Follow-up... Is there a batch service or scheduled task that will do this refresh on all files?  These movies have been in my database for days, and all schedule tasks have been run recently but the metadata is still missing on some files.  I think it's going to be cumbersome to figure out which ones are missing metadata.  I just found a Bluray rip (so its apparently not specific DVD rips) that has files for two different resolutions... the 480p had the metdata the 720p did not, even though they were added to the database within minutes of each other.

 

I believe if you go into the Metadata Manager and refresh the top level folder that contains all the movies, it will refresh all children items. You won't have a visual indicator for the progress of the refresh, but it should work. (someone can correct me if I'm wrong.)

[tara.b 2]

Thanks, @@bfir3!  I did a refresh at the top level.  As you said, there was no visual indicator, but I checked this morning after kicking off the refresh last night, and it seems to have updated all the files.