Troubleshooting Emby/Network/Not sure...

[tobias-tobin 9]

Hello,

For over a month now Emby has been unusable outside my LAN.  It just will not play.  It is as-if my upstream data is on modem.  In the house, on my LAN, depending on how I try to watch, it may not work there either.  If I use Emby on my xbox-one connected to gigabit LAN wired, it will not play a movie or show.  It just sits spinning.  On the xbox, if I open Media Player and browse to a movie on my Drobo, it plays fine.

 

I've done all kinds of troubleshooting, mostly network related, NAS, and server but I have not found anything.

 

I am at a loss.  I am attaching some logs from this morning.  I am at work you will see the network address starting as 149.166.  I tried three times to stream Patriots Day.  It never played.  A backdrop slowly loads and then it just spins.  I have family that use Emby on various devices and no one can watch anything, and have not for a month or more.

 

I am attaching logs.  I also ran procmon will I was doing these tests and the transcoding-temp directories did not seem to be getting created (procmon kept saying Name Not Found) and the .m3u8 files are not there.  

 

I could write a small book on all of the troubleshooting I have done.  I am at a loss.  I am not sure that Emby is the issue.  I don't know if something else is going on or  what.  The fact that I can play a movie on the xbox by browsing to it on the drobo and it plays fine, but if I use Emby it will not play concerns me.  I cannot use my phone either, on the home wifi or cellular.  I will attach the logs from me trying to watch Patriots Day, from work, using Chrome.  I tried to play it 3 different times.

 

I am sorry if this is a frustrating request for help.  Maybe you can guide me to exactly what you need me to do to get the data you need.

server-63628697600.txt

ffmpeg-transcode-c670118b-7bef-4cb0-a2dd-7822b4338d0d.txt

ffmpeg-transcode-7a16a069-325d-42d9-898e-d13a3e79cffa.txt

[ebr 16187]

Hi.  Try turning off QSV.

[tobias-tobin 9]

Hi ebr,

Thank you for the suggestion.  I turned it off.  I conducted the same test, but a different video.  I drum training video by Benny Greb.  It loaded and played here at work, but stop and started (pause, play) every few seconds.  I will attach the logs.

 

Thank you,

tobias.

 

Let me know if everything looks ok.  I have a theory that Comcast is throttling my upstream bandwidth.  I've been monitoring it with Neubot and my up is never more than 3.2Mbps.  Last December they implemented bandwidth usage quotas and I have exceeded mine every month since.  It was until after the quota that I started noticing my up was slow.  So then I started measuring it and if I do 'real' tests, I'm usually about 2.8Mbps, if I use something like speedtest.net my up might hit 12Mbps.  But judging from things like how slow uploading to dropbox is, I'd say I have little up.  The weird thing is I've had to pay for the extra bandwidth I've used so I don't see why punish me.  Regardless, a local business ran fiber in my neighborhood so I am switching to them.  No limits and 1Gbps down and 250Mbps up.  My point being, could the playback be related to my network?

 

If you have anything else for me to do or test, or any other kind of logging please let me know.  It appears to work now, it just cannot play smooth.  Sorry about the big log file.  

server-63628697600.txt

ffmpeg-transcode-b49883bd-74c4-42d9-9b32-571be4739adc.txt

Edited April 25, 2017 by tobias-tobin

[tobias-tobin 9]

I went back and tried playing the video again.  I looked at the bitrate settings in the player in Chrome.  It was set to Auto - 1080P 60Mbps.  I changed that to 720P - 2Mbps and I watch for a minute or two and didn't see any stop start.  Was it really trying to play at that high of a bitrate?  And if so, how come auto didn't adjust?  If I wasn't at work I could test longer.

[zigzagtshirt 55]

Hi ebr,

Thank you for the suggestion.  I turned it off.  I conducted the same test, but a different video.  I drum training video by Benny Greb.  It loaded and played here at work, but stop and started (pause, play) every few seconds.  I will attach the logs.

 

Thank you,

tobias.

 

Let me know if everything looks ok.  I have a theory that Comcast is throttling my upstream bandwidth.  I've been monitoring it with Neubot and my up is never more than 3.2Mbps.  Last December they implemented bandwidth usage quotas and I have exceeded mine every month since.  It was until after the quota that I started noticing my up was slow.  So then I started measuring it and if I do 'real' tests, I'm usually about 2.8Mbps, if I use something like speedtest.net my up might hit 12Mbps.  But judging from things like how slow uploading to dropbox is, I'd say I have little up.  The weird thing is I've had to pay for the extra bandwidth I've used so I don't see why punish me.  Regardless, a local business ran fiber in my neighborhood so I am switching to them.  No limits and 1Gbps down and 250Mbps up.  My point being, could the playback be related to my network?

 

If you have anything else for me to do or test, or any other kind of logging please let me know.  It appears to work now, it just cannot play smooth.  Sorry about the big log file.  

 

My parents have issues sometimes streaming content from my server to their home.  I did some extensive testing and my leading theory is their internet service (cable internet) won't sustain the high bitrate streaming indefinitely throughout the streaming session.  This may or may not be intentional on the part of the ISP.  It might be the nature of cable internet vs. fiber (I have fiber and I rarely see bandwidth dips).  The ISP might prioritize other traffic through their network over the traffic from the Emby server (Amazon, Netflix, etc.).  

 

My remedy for this is having them set the max bitrate in their apps low enough for it to not be a problem.  Although it works, it's a shame because the bitrate could be so much higher resulting in quality that far surpasses the Netflixs and Amazons of the web.  Regardless of the source of the problem, I've at least narrowed it down to network issues on their end, even though they pay for "100 mbps" download.

[ebr 16187]

What you describe definitely sounds like network throughput.

 

The "Auto" setting is just going to do a quick test to determine what the available bitrate is.  This could be coming back higher like your SpeedTest because your ISP will allow higher bandwidth in bursts but, as time goes on, they may be throttling you down - or it could just be any number of other factors that are affecting the true realized and sustained throughput.

[zigzagtshirt 55]

@@ebr

 

If you have multiple versions of a movie on the Emby server (each with different bitrates), would there be anyway to build a feature into Emby to switch between them on the fly during playback based on current (and always changing) network conditions?  I think this is what Netflix does.

 

Just pondering ideas.  Emby is a dream at home.  But remote usage over the internet can often be a pain the butt.

Edited April 25, 2017 by zigzagtshirt

[tobias-tobin 9]

I appreciate the responses.  I agree about the prioritization of traffic at the ISP level.  Hopefully switching to fiber will help.  

 

For a good while I've been serving outside my home with pretty good success.  It was not until recently the problem began.

 

I suppose for now I just wait until I get switched and see what happens.  Thanks for the info on Auto.

 

tobias.

[Luke 42081]

I could have sworn you opened a similar topic about this months ago and we concluded some kind of throttling was most likely happening at the ISP level.