Media playback pausing - as of 2 days ago.

[bennymac 47]

Hi All,

2 days ago on Roku frequent buffering and loading messages started happening when playing media - affecting users locally and externally.

**UPDATE @ebr has altered me to a Roku firmware update that is causing widespread issues. That aside, I'm still having slow transcoding and stuttering issues on an Nvidia Quadro p2000. Playback stops/starts every 4 secs or so. I see the transcoding buffer on the dashboard show erratic numbers.

Most things are basically unwatchable now. When playing via the web, media randomly stops playing. When looking at the web dashboard I can see the Nvidia transcoding status figures jump around, start, stop etc. It seems like anything requiring transcoding causes an issues with playback.

This is an issue I have had before - but not seen in a at least an year or more. We are running Emby 4.4.3.0 on Windows 10 dedicated (headless) box which is an i5-4590 with an Nvidia Quadro P2000 graphics card which was installed to help with Transcoding earlier this year. Direct Playback media "seems" to be ok though I've never seen GPU utilization go above a few percent.

I have attached logs - hoping someone can determine what the cause would be. Last night i've updated the Quadro drivers to the newest version. Also tried restarting Emby and Windows - no change

Thanks heaps.

 

 

ffmpeg-transcode-9894a78e-40eb-467a-9945-d95c1243fa8d_1.txt

Edited June 26, 2020 by bennymac

[ebr 16178]

Hi. Did your Roku just update to 9.3?

[bennymac 47]

Hey,

Yep ours in particular had updated to 9.3 on June 4 - i'd have to check with other users. It had been playing fine until a few days ago.

Even playing via the web the transcoding seems like it's mucking up. I'd like to understand the transcoding side of it more but other than seeing 6.3 FPS on media playback (in the image example above) which seems very low i'm not sure if that's the cause of the problem.

That particular user has 3mpbs set for internet streaming but playback has never been a problem until now.

Does 9.3 on Roku 3 pose a problem do you know of?

Edited June 25, 2020 by bennymac

[bennymac 47]

Hi @ebrI've seen the Roku support forums regarding issues with the 9.3 update. However i still have issues playing via the web. After further testing playback starts and stops every 4 secs.

I've turned hardware transcoding ON and OFF during testing and it makes not difference.

Any ideas?

Edited June 26, 2020 by bennymac

[Carlo 4561]

I'd like to know why the trancode speed as shown above in the picture is so low?

Do you see this low fps speed a lot?

[bennymac 47]

Hey. I'd like to know too.

I've never seen the fps this that low and content is now pretty much unplayable. It's like the Hardware Transcoding on the Quadro isn't being used anymore. It's started 2 days ago.

I don't know enough to troubleshoot. I've seen other posts about HW transcoding dropping off but i don't know what applies to me here. eg this older post..

 

Edited June 26, 2020 by bennymac

[Carlo 4561]

You could install https://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/ GPU-Z to be able to see the utilization of the GPU to make sure it's working correctly when transcoding.

[Carlo 4561]

Can you post a screen shot of your Transcoding setup page?

[bennymac 47]

9 hours ago, cayars said:

Can you post a screen shot of your Transcoding setup page?

Sure. I just leave all defaults. It's just set to YES. 

If i set to Advanced, below is a screenshot also.

[bennymac 47]

10 hours ago, cayars said:

You could install https://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/ GPU-Z to be able to see the utilization of the GPU to make sure it's working correctly when transcoding.

Sure, I've installed it now. I then started playback via the Web and have uploaded the log from that transcode. That particular user has a 3Mpbs internet stream cap.

Playback starts and stops have few seconds and the dashboard reports max 12fps. GPU-Z reports no load on the Sensors tab.

 

ffmpeg-transcode-2477069d-659e-492b-bc58-123155bf919a_1.txt

[Carlo 4561]

@softworkz Do you have any ideas on this?

@bennymac If you turn off hardware decoding and play the exact same file in the log above the exact same way for the same minute of playback what kind of fps do you get and could you upload a log file of that?

Thanks,

Carlo

[bennymac 47]

52 minutes ago, cayars said:

@softworkz Do you have any ideas on this?

@bennymac If you turn off hardware decoding and play the exact same file in the log above the exact same way for the same minute of playback what kind of fps do you get and could you upload a log file of that?

Thanks,

Carlo

Sure. That's been done. Log attached.

Hardware Transcoding turned off, Emby restarted. Played same file. The same stop and start playback happened with same 12 fps.

ffmpeg-transcode-5929b4b6-146a-4c9a-ba16-b86ac8d2a112_1.txt

[softworkz 5066]

@bennymac - It shouldn't be that slow. What's your E: and I: drives? Network? Could you try from a local HD?

[bennymac 47]

35 minutes ago, softworkz said:

@bennymac - It shouldn't be that slow. What's your E: and I: drives? Network? Could you try from a local HD?

Hey @softworkz yep all are local drives, no network.

[Carlo 4561]

Try an experiment for me bennymac.  Pick a large movie file from your system and do the following:

Time how long it takes to move the file from C to E

From C to I

From E to I.

Report back how many seconds those three tests take.

[softworkz 5066]

I'm wondering because even software transcoding is slower than expetected.

@bennymac - How is the CPU usage during sw transcoding?

[bennymac 47]

30 minutes ago, softworkz said:

I'm wondering because even software transcoding is slower than expetected.

@bennymac - How is the CPU usage during sw transcoding?

Yeh it is way slower than it should be. Generally speaking the CPU is doing nothing.

This is task manager when playing that same file externally with a user that has 3mpbs stream cap. 

 

[softworkz 5066]

0% disk usage? Hm..

I can't say what's happening here, but I'd suggest to approach it from another side:

Let's forget about Emby for a moment.

Try to find a video conversion tool (ideally ffmpeg based) and then convert the 'Jungle Beat' video

• from I:\ drive to C:\ drive
• Video: from H264 to H264
• Scaling: from 1080 to 720
• Audio: from AC-3 to MP3

Let's see how this works..

[bennymac 47]

11 hours ago, cayars said:

Try an experiment for me bennymac.  Pick a large movie file from your system and do the following:

Time how long it takes to move the file from C to E

From C to I

From E to I.

Report back how many seconds those three tests take.

Hi @cayars

Sure, here as follows;

A 12gb MKV File

"E" Drive to "C" Drive 1min 45sec
"C" Drive to "I" Drive 1min 7sec
"E" Drive to "I" Drive 1min 9 sec

Thanks

Edited June 28, 2020 by bennymac

[Carlo 4561]

Do me one more favor.

Copy from C to C in another directory for the same file a provide the time.

[speechles 2055]

@bennymac Did you recently put those files that have playback issues onto the HDD? Have you ever defragged that hard drive? It is possible if you save metadata with your files when you delete those support metadata files they are tiny. Do this enough it is possible that a 12GB file could be spread across 16,384 different spots on the hard drive. The head has to move to that spot to read, as well as move to read whatever other data on that drive the PC may need. That could be all this is. If this happens across files you copied onto that drive when it was new then it is something else. Then files first copied on should be pretty much contiguous. They should be able to be read at the highest speed possible. But that file fragmented across the hard drive in 16,384 different places all uncontiguous would cause the problem. Especially if that hard drive is near end-of-life. Run drive speed tests as suggested. Migrate your data NOW onto new drives if you can afford. Have a backup. I cannot stress that enough. Compare a new hard drive speed against the old. I know this has a cost but this is the best way to solve your problem today and keep your sanity.

Edited June 28, 2020 by speechles

[softworkz 5066]

9 hours ago, bennymac said:

A 12gb MKV File

"A" file is not a valid test. You need to copy "the" file (Jungle Beat) from I: to C.
(no other test is relevant)

I don't have the impression though, that this is the problem.

Another test you could do is check for device driver problems. Download DPC Latency checker (https://www.thesycon.de/eng/latency_check.shtml) and run it at the same time while Emby is transcoding.

[bennymac 47]

8 hours ago, softworkz said:

"A" file is not a valid test. You need to copy "the" file (Jungle Beat) from I: to C.
(no other test is relevant)

I don't have the impression though, that this is the problem.

Another test you could do is check for device driver problems. Download DPC Latency checker (https://www.thesycon.de/eng/latency_check.shtml) and run it at the same time while Emby is transcoding.

Hi,

So i've download and run DPC whilst playing that file. Screenshots below.

Also i noticed that they transcoding-temp folder is crazy creating massive amount of 700kb files whilst the playback is starting and stoping every 4 seconds or so.

Is this normal? Its like just transcoding is mucking up - direct play is fine. 

Can transcoding break with ffmpeg.exe needing a reinstall?

[bennymac 47]

9 hours ago, softworkz said:

"A" file is not a valid test. You need to copy "the" file (Jungle Beat) from I: to C.
(no other test is relevant)

I don't have the impression though, that this is the problem.

Another test you could do is check for device driver problems. Download DPC Latency checker (https://www.thesycon.de/eng/latency_check.shtml) and run it at the same time while Emby is transcoding.

Here's that Move file (Jungle Beat) between E and C 

[softworkz 5066]

@bennymac

Very weird situation. I have no idea what it could be.

Let's go brute-force. I have prepared 7 command lines for you:

C:\Users\Media\AppData\Roaming\Emby-Server\system\ffmpeg.exe -loglevel +timing -y -copyts -start_at_zero -f matroska,webm -c:v:0 h264 -i "E:\Movies\Jungle Beat The Movie (2020)\Jungle.Beat.The.Movie.2020.1080p.WEB-DL.H264.AC3-EVO.mkv" -filter_complex "[0:1]scale@f1=w=720:h=298[f1_out0]" -map [f1_out0] -map 0:0 -sn -c:v:0 libx264 -g:v:0 72 -maxrate:v:0 1616000 -bufsize:v:0 3232000 -sc_threshold:v:0 0 -keyint_min:v:0 72 -pix_fmt:v:0 yuv420p -preset:v:0 veryfast -profile:v:0 high -level:v:0 3.0 -x264opts:v:0 "subme=0:me_range=4:rc_lookahead=10:me=dia:no_chroma_me:8x8dct=0:partitions=none" -crf:v:0 23 -c:a:0 libmp3lame -ab:a:0 192000 -ac:a:0 2 -metadata:s:a:0 language=eng -filter:a:0 "volume=2" -disposition:a:0 default -max_delay 5000000 -avoid_negative_ts disabled "C:\Users\Media\AppData\Roaming\Emby-Server\programdata\transcoding-temp\test1.mkv" 

C:\Users\Media\AppData\Roaming\Emby-Server\system\ffmpeg.exe -loglevel +timing -y -copyts -start_at_zero -f matroska,webm -c:v:0 h264 -i "E:\Movies\Jungle Beat The Movie (2020)\Jungle.Beat.The.Movie.2020.1080p.WEB-DL.H264.AC3-EVO.mkv" -filter_complex "[0:1]scale@f1=w=720:h=298[f1_out0]" -map [f1_out0] -map 0:0 -sn -c:v:0 libx264 -g:v:0 72 -maxrate:v:0 1616000 -bufsize:v:0 3232000 -sc_threshold:v:0 0 -keyint_min:v:0 72 -pix_fmt:v:0 yuv420p -preset:v:0 veryfast -profile:v:0 high -level:v:0 3.0 -x264opts:v:0 "subme=0:me_range=4:rc_lookahead=10:me=dia:no_chroma_me:8x8dct=0:partitions=none" -crf:v:0 23 -c:a:0 copy -max_delay 5000000 -avoid_negative_ts disabled "C:\Users\Media\AppData\Roaming\Emby-Server\programdata\transcoding-temp\test2.mkv" 

C:\Users\Media\AppData\Roaming\Emby-Server\system\ffmpeg.exe -loglevel +timing -y -copyts -start_at_zero -f matroska,webm -c:v:0 h264 -i "E:\Movies\Jungle Beat The Movie (2020)\Jungle.Beat.The.Movie.2020.1080p.WEB-DL.H264.AC3-EVO.mkv" -filter_complex "[0:1]scale@f1=w=720:h=298[f1_out0]" -map [f1_out0] -an -sn -c:v:0 libx264 -g:v:0 72 -maxrate:v:0 1616000 -bufsize:v:0 3232000 -sc_threshold:v:0 0 -keyint_min:v:0 72 -pix_fmt:v:0 yuv420p -preset:v:0 veryfast -profile:v:0 high -level:v:0 3.0 -x264opts:v:0 "subme=0:me_range=4:rc_lookahead=10:me=dia:no_chroma_me:8x8dct=0:partitions=none" -crf:v:0 23 "C:\Users\Media\AppData\Roaming\Emby-Server\programdata\transcoding-temp\test3.mkv" 

C:\Users\Media\AppData\Roaming\Emby-Server\system\ffmpeg.exe -loglevel +timing -y -copyts -start_at_zero -f matroska,webm -c:v:0 h264 -i "E:\Movies\Jungle Beat The Movie (2020)\Jungle.Beat.The.Movie.2020.1080p.WEB-DL.H264.AC3-EVO.mkv" -filter_complex "[0:1]scale@f1=w=720:h=298[f1_out0]" -map [f1_out0] -an -sn -c:v:0 libx264 -g:v:0 72 -maxrate:v:0 1616000 -bufsize:v:0 3232000 -sc_threshold:v:0 0 -keyint_min:v:0 72 -pix_fmt:v:0 yuv420p -preset:v:0 veryfast -x264opts:v:0 "subme=0:me_range=4:rc_lookahead=10:me=dia:no_chroma_me:8x8dct=0:partitions=none" -crf:v:0 23 "C:\Users\Media\AppData\Roaming\Emby-Server\programdata\transcoding-temp\test4.mkv" 

C:\Users\Media\AppData\Roaming\Emby-Server\system\ffmpeg.exe -loglevel +timing -y -copyts -start_at_zero -f matroska,webm -c:v:0 h264 -i "E:\Movies\Jungle Beat The Movie (2020)\Jungle.Beat.The.Movie.2020.1080p.WEB-DL.H264.AC3-EVO.mkv" -map 0:1 -an -sn -c:v:0 libx264 -g:v:0 72 -maxrate:v:0 1616000 -bufsize:v:0 3232000 -sc_threshold:v:0 0 -keyint_min:v:0 72 -pix_fmt:v:0 yuv420p -preset:v:0 veryfast -x264opts:v:0 "subme=0:me_range=4:rc_lookahead=10:me=dia:no_chroma_me:8x8dct=0:partitions=none" -crf:v:0 23 "C:\Users\Media\AppData\Roaming\Emby-Server\programdata\transcoding-temp\test5.mkv" 

C:\Users\Media\AppData\Roaming\Emby-Server\system\ffmpeg.exe -loglevel +timing -y -copyts -start_at_zero -f matroska,webm -c:v:0 h264 -i "E:\Movies\Jungle Beat The Movie (2020)\Jungle.Beat.The.Movie.2020.1080p.WEB-DL.H264.AC3-EVO.mkv" -map 0:1 -an -sn -c:v:0 libx264 -pix_fmt:v:0 yuv420p -preset:v:0 veryfast -x264opts:v:0 "subme=0:me_range=4:rc_lookahead=10:me=dia:no_chroma_me:8x8dct=0:partitions=none" -crf:v:0 23 "C:\Users\Media\AppData\Roaming\Emby-Server\programdata\transcoding-temp\test6.mkv" 

C:\Users\Media\AppData\Roaming\Emby-Server\system\ffmpeg.exe -loglevel +timing -y -copyts -start_at_zero -f matroska,webm -c:v:0 h264 -i "E:\Movies\Jungle Beat The Movie (2020)\Jungle.Beat.The.Movie.2020.1080p.WEB-DL.H264.AC3-EVO.mkv" -map 0:1 -an -sn -c:v:0 libx264 -pix_fmt:v:0 yuv420p -preset:v:0 veryfast -crf:v:0 23 "C:\Users\Media\AppData\Roaming\Emby-Server\programdata\transcoding-temp\test7.mkv" 

 

Please run each one for about 30s. Watch the CPU load and the fps and speed values in the ffmpeg output: