Chromecast streaming issues

[mechguy 12]

Hi team

 

I am suddenly having issues chromecasting from my Emby server.

 

After a cold boot of the Chromecast the stream plays

If I skip forward in the steam the video goes black and does not play. I am still able to see the emby video timeline. I am still able to skip around the timeline via my mobile app and the changes are reflected on the timeline one screen but the video will not play.

If I stop casting and try again the video still will not play and all of the behavior above is replicated.

 

I have attached a log of the issue occurring at   09/08/2019 22:30

embyserver.txt

ffmpeg-remux-6a241e76-775f-414b-96e9-ba11e36f80af_1.txt

Edited August 11, 2019 by mechguy

[Luke 42079]

Hi there @@mechguy, were there ffmpeg logs from this session? can you please attach them as well? Thanks.

[mechguy 12]

Done, let me know if you need anything else. Thanks

[Luke 42079]

As a test, if you lower the in-app chromecast quality setting to force a full ttranscode, does that play differently? Thanks.

[mechguy 12]

I suspected this might solve the issue too before posting this topic as it has in the past, but even full transcoding resulted in the same.

[Luke 42079]

@@mechguy

Can you please attach an ffmpeg log example from that? Thanks.

[mechguy 12]

@@Luke Have you been able to review the attached logs on the original post?
 

Edited August 30, 2019 by mechguy

[Luke 42079]

I did, but then I asked you to test with a lower quality setting to force a full transcode, and I was curious to see the ffmpeg log from that test. Can you please provide that? Thanks !

[Natilus13 14]

@@mechguy and @@Luke

 

Not sure if this is the same or not, but I was also experiencing playback issues where attempting to cast to a Chromecast was just getting me a black screen, and the app looked like it was doing nothing (I experienced this using the web app in Chrome, the Android app, and also the iOS app). I took a look at my ffmpeg log and found this:

 

Stream mapping:
Stream #0:0 (hevc) -> scale
scale -> Stream #0:0 (h264_videotoolbox)
Stream #0:1 -> #0:1 (copy)
T=0.012s
Press [q] to stop, [?] for help
[h264_videotoolbox @ 0x7fb8cb02ea00] Error: cannot create compression session: -12908
[h264_videotoolbox @ 0x7fb8cb02ea00] Try -allow_sw 1. The hardware encoder may be busy, or not supported.
Error initializing output stream 0:0 -- Error while opening encoder for output stream #0:0 - maybe incorrect parameters such as bit_rate, rate, width or height
Conversion failed!

 

I went back into my transcoding settings and turned off advanced, which in turn disabled the VideoToolxox H.264 encoder. Once I made that change, I was able to cast to the Chromecast without any issues.

 

I should also mention, that my emby server is running on macOS 10.13.6.

 

I'm hoping the issue with the VideoToolbox H.264 encoder can be sorted out as (in my experience) it seemed to do a better of transcoding over WAN.

 

Cheers,

N

Edited October 13, 2019 by Natilus13

[Luke 42079]

@@Natilus13, please attach the complete ffmpeg log. thanks.

[Natilus13 14]

Sure thing @@Luke

 

Here is the log I posted part of earlier.

 

Cheers,

N

ffmpeg-transcode-28778bb9-4f62-4c0b-b5ad-20f88418a253_1.txt

[Natilus13 14]

Hey @@Luke

 

Did you have a chance to take a look at the log I attached above? Did anything stand out?

 

Thanks as always for all your help,
N

[Luke 42079]

With the upcoming 4.3 release I believe the automatic fallback to cpu will work as expected with Chromecast and this won't fail anymore.

 

So then it just leaves the question of what is the issue with the hardware encoder.

[Natilus13 14]

Thanks for the update @@Luke ... wish I could help with figuring this one out but I think it is a bit beyond me.

 

If there is anything I can do to help though, I am more than happy to.

 

Cheers,

N

[softworkz 5067]

@@Natilus13 - Does hw encoding work at all in any other case?

 

We do not have hw capabilities detection on MacOs, so it just might not be available.

[Natilus13 14]

@@softworkz

 

I assume that HW encoding is working... but I will admit that I am not 100% certain (nor do I know how to confirm).

 

I can see my CPU usage spike when transcoding is happening, but that is pretty much all I can tell you.

 

If there is particular info I can get you, just tell me where to look and I'll grab it :-)

[softworkz 5067]

It's easy to confirm by looking at an ffmpeg log from a case where you assume that it's working.

[Natilus13 14]

It's easy to confirm by looking at an ffmpeg log from a case where you assume that it's working.

 

In that case, yes. HW encoding is indeed working :-)

[softworkz 5067]

In that case, yes. HW encoding is indeed working :-)

 

Could you post one of those logs?

[Natilus13 14]

Sure thing. Here you are. Hope it helps :-)

 

 

ffmpeg-transcode-log.txt

[softworkz 5067]

In that case, yes. HW encoding is indeed working :-)

 

Thanks for the log.

 

That's sw encoding, not hw encoding.

[Natilus13 14]

Oh. Well, in fairness... I did say I didn't really know what was going on ;-)

 

Is the HW encoding just not happening because my ATI Radeon HD 5870 is not supported? This was an old video edit machine from my office, so I had thought it would have been great for this.

 

At least it has 2 x 6-core Xeon procs to help with the load.

[Happy2Play 9780]

Oh. Well, in fairness... I did say I didn't really know what was going on ;-)

 

Is the HW encoding just not happening because my ATI Radeon HD 5870 is not supported? This was an old video edit machine from my office, so I had thought it would have been great for this.

 

At least it has 2 x 6-core Xeon procs to help with the load.

It would appear at most you might get decoding out of this "Evergreen" GPU series according to the wiki.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radeon_HD_5000_series

[Natilus13 14]

And how would I go about doing that?

[softworkz 5067]

At transcoding settings, choose 'Advanced' and then select all de-coders and deselect all en-coders.

 

I wouldn't set expectations too high, though.

Probably it won't work. The GPU is 10 years old and might be even slower than your cpu (assuming the cpu is a bit newer than the gpu)...