Paid for lifetime, now Emby is unusable.

[rainmakerraw 0]

Hi, 

 

I discovered Emby very recently, having used Plex without issues for a long time. I set up Emby on my machine, loved it and quickly paid for Lifetime Premier so I could use the iOS/Android apps etc. Unfortunately I've quickly run into several serious issues which are preventing me from using Emby properly. I have read the sticky about reporting a problem, and will do my best to follow the requirements. I don't know if they're related so I'll just list them here as clearly and concisely as possible and hope for some help in resolving them.

 

Although normally a *nix guy, I am currently running Emby v3.2.30.0 on a Windows 10 Professional x64 machine (AMD FX8350, Asus M5A99X Evo r2.0, 16GB 1600MHz DDR3, Samsung Evo 850 SSD / Toshiba 2TB 7,200rpm, Zotac Nvidia 1050Ti mini 4GB). Everything (Windows, GeForce drivers, etc) is fully up to date. On the network side I have a dedicated pfSense machine with Intel gigabit NICs serving gigabit (Intel) wired clients and AC wireless clients (Unifi AP Pro, typically 1.3Gbps connections). The WAN is 380 Mbps down / 20 Mbps up cable.

 

As one can't play back files on the iOS/Android apps without paying, and seeing what an active and open source community this is, I happily paid for Lifetime Premier and got to work setting up everything. I'd been running Plex for months without issue, except my machine couldn't cope with occasional VC1 BluRay rips. Emby offers NVENC support - albeit experimental - and this seemed to work fine locally on the machine Emby is running (even that huge BluRay rip my CPU can't cope with on Plex hummed along perfectly in Emby using NVENC through my browser); so I paid up and expected no further bother. Emby very recently updated to a new version and the problems began:

 

1. The Restart button on the dashboard (or in the systray icon's context menu) stops Emby from responding in the browser (or to app requests) but it never actually closes the app or re-opens a new instance. The icon stays in the systray but Emby itself seems dead. I have to crash it with End Task in the task manager and restart it manually. This didn't happen before Emby updated to the latest version. 

 

2. Having connected to our ChromeCast Ultra (connected to a Sony Bravia KDL-50W829B) using Chrome on the same machine upon which Emby runs, I tried to play a h264 movie file. I have enabled NVENC as I said earlier. The file started to play for one second on the TV, but then stopped. This repeated on a loop. Checking the logs it was clear something was crashing on the Nvidia side. I have attached a copy of the transcode log. I didn't grab the server log and don't know which of the many listed it is now, but I can try to find by checking the timestamps it if you really need it.

 

3. Later in the day I tried to play a different (H265/HEVC) file to the Chromecast. It played fine for video, but it kept going silent and then the audio would restart, but out of sync. I verified the files were OK by playing them locally on the Windows machine and then through Plex, and it was fine. So I ended up disabling hardware acceleration in Emby entirely - defeating the object of my using Emby and paying for Lifetime Premier - and restarting the server... Which didn't work (see issue no. 1) so I had to force close it and restart it manually. Files now play OK, so it seems NVENC in Emby is now broken? It worked fine on the last Emby version before I upgraded, though I admit I hadn't played these particular files at that time. The same files play perfectly locally on the Windows machine (MPC-BE with hardware acceleration enabled), as well as to the Chromecast via Plex.

 

4. The iOS Emby app rarely starts to play a file/stream if I'm using 4G. On wifi the streams start as quickly as any other device/machine, whether I'm at home (inside Emby's LAN) or away at someone else's house. However, with a 4G connection it just loads the background picture after I press play, and then sits with a spinning circle and then dies in a frozen state. I can't go back, or navigate away, and have to force close the app and re-open it. The file usually still won't play even if I retry, until I connect to wifi. That said, maybe one retry in ten it will actually start to play OK. Plex (on the same Windows machine, side by side) can send the same file to my phone instantly, so I don't think it's a network/machine issue. The phone is an iPhone 7 Plus 128GB with the latest iOS.

 

5. Streams in general can be very slow to start for all clients - meaning up to 30 seconds or more. It's worse outside the LAN, but even inside the LAN they can take 10 seconds or so. When outside the LAN, I can wait 30 seconds, nothing happens, so I go back and try again and it starts on the 2nd/3rd/4th/whatever try. Again Plex has no issue, so I think this relates to the iOS app mostly. That said, if I'm on my MacBook Pro (but inside the LAN) and connecting to Emby server via the browser, streams can take about 10-20 seconds to start up, but then are fine. This slow streaming may be caused (?) by the following issue (see 6 below). I think it's definitely confined to Emby (as opposed to being a machine/network issue) as Plex will play streams to those same remote clients within a second of pressing play, no matter what.

 

6. I have the 'transcode throttling not being enforced' bug listed on another thread. I know @@Luke said he was looking into it. I wonder if the slow remote streams are a consequence of this? What I mean is, if Emby is busy using all 8 cores at 100% trying to transocde stream 1 that never started on the remote device, and then the remote device requests stream 2.... well you can see where I'm going. I wonder if Emby is effectively choking itself by queuing them up this way?

 

Basically I am now in a position where a server app that seemed so feature rich and wonderful to use, is now unusable after paying £100. As you can imagine this is very frustrating, especially when I can fire up Plex and instantly everything works again the way you'd expect, regardless of device or network location etc. I'm not here to compare apples and oranges, or to get irate. I've been around Linux and development long enough to know that stuff happens, and that it could even be a local issue. So, I'm just here to ask for help, please. As you can imagine this is very frustrating - not to mention soul destroying - having paid so much money only to find out that everything is pretty much unusable and the only thing different to before I started using Emby is the hole in my wallet!  I'm now back to using Plex just because it works, and hoping I can get Emby fixed and working again, because despite the issues I prefer it!

 

If I can help with further info in any possible way, just let me know and I'll do my best to help you get these issues resolved. Many thanks in advance.

Emby-Cuda-error-log.txt

Edited September 2, 2017 by rainmakerraw

[Luke 42086]

Hi, welcome. As far as the cuda example goes, i see you have both decoding and encoding enabled. What happens if you disable one or the other? Thanks.

[rainmakerraw 0]

Hi, welcome. As far as the cuda example goes, i see you have both decoding and encoding enabled. What happens if you disable one or the other? Thanks.

 

 

Hi Luke, and thank you. I'll give it a go and let you know tomorrow when I get chance. Would one or the other be better to enable first?

[Luke 42086]

I would guess that disabling decoding might fix it but we'll have to see.

[rainmakerraw 0]

I can't test on the Chromecast until tomorrow, but I have been able to do some brief preliminary testing on my iPhone 7 Plus using both 4G and wifi.

 

NVENC decode enabled, encode disabled: Files now seem to play perfectly on remote device, after about 5 seconds delay (transcode starting, upload starting and buffering etc). No issues, nice quality. CPU usage on the server machine hovers between 25% and 45% depending on file. Seeking through the file on the remote device gives another 5 second delay and then playback resumes flawlessly. Open Hardware Monitor reports about 30% usage of the Nvidia 1050Ti's video engine too, so that's all as expected. Nice!

 

NVENC decode disabled, encode enabled: Files still play on the remote device, but the streams take about 20 seconds or so to begin. Seems to reproduce the odd behaviours listed in my OP. Still, they do at least play over 4G now whereas with both decode and encode enabled, they wouldn't play at all. Seeking through the file on the remote device gives another long pause, to the degree it feels unacceptable as a user. A little stuttery at times, just doesn't look and feel the 'same' as with the settings the other way around. CPU usage on the server machine is - interestingly - lower with the settings this way around. 

 

So, it seems disabling the NVENC encoding will 'fix' my issues. I'll have to test on the Chromecast tomorrow to be sure though, as that's the device that's given most trouble. Hopefully it, too, is fine and I can at least offload half the work to the graphics card and keep remote streams playable - which is, after all, the objective.

 

Thanks so much for your help so far, Luke. As I said I'm really wanting to make this work as I like Emby a lot and was happy to contribute financially to its development. For the record I've been a Linux and BSD user for about 15 years now, and currently hold Lifetime passes for both Plex and Emby. In other words I have no axe to grind either way, I just want to make everything play nice. Your support is 100% so far, which is an encouraging sign. Thanks again, and I'll update you tomorrow.

[Luke 42086]

Thanks for the feedback. As far as #1 goes, we're aware of it in certain environments. At this point we are in process of moving away from mono and onto the smaller, faster .NET Core runtime from Microsoft. The users who are already testing Emby Server on it have been reporting that the restart function is working well, so given that, that's how this is going to be fixed once our official linux packages switch to .net core.

 

For #4 and #5 we'd have to look at a specific example, although I suppose now given the NVENC changes you're testing that it should probably be re-evaluated. Thanks.

[rainmakerraw 0]

I managed to watch a movie last night without issue on my MacBook Pro, but today the Chromecast Ultra got close to the end of a movie (around 1.18) and dropped out. No matter how many times I restarted the play (resume from the server machine) it just kept dropping back to a black screen after a few moments. The kids weren't happy so I dropped back to Plex, and it streamed instantly without dropping (again, just trying to eliminate network or device issues etc, not doing a comparison/shame).

 

I've attached the full server log and three of the most recent transcode logs this time as I was by the server machine when it happened. I hope this helps.

Log.txt

transcode1.txt

transcode2.txt

transcode3.txt

[Luke 42086]

Did you try disabling nvenc?

[rainmakerraw 0]

In limited testing disabling NVENC works fine, but I haven't really tested the same scenarios where it failed before. I can see if I can get the kids to watch the same movie via the Chromecast Ultra tomorrow, and see if it still craps out toward the end with NVENC disabled. Sorry for the delay replying, I've had a busy one. Many thanks for staying in touch, I appreciate it. 

[Luke 42086]

Thanks for the feedback.