Playback Hangs/Freezes

[Blatherscribe 5]

Hello,

I've experienced some problems with Emby today. As of two days ago, everything was working perfectly, but today a movie froze completely and would not play. I exited and restarted the app and the Fire stick, and restarted the server on my computer, but it didn't help. I checked the video file, and it played perfectly on my computer. I checked the logs and noticed an error with something called MBSupporter. I deleted my old Emby Premiere key in case this was the root of the problem, and although I was able to finish the movie after that, there were another couple of brief freezes (lasting about ten seconds, as opposed to stopping completely for several minutes). Please let me know if there's anything I need to change, or if this is just one of those things that happens sometimes and has no explanation.

I've attached my server logs.

Thanks in advance!

embyserver.txt

[ebr 16176]

Hi.  The key would not have been related as the app would have told you why it could not play and it wouldn't have started and played for a while.  So that was just a coincidence and you will want to put that back in your server.

This could have been a resource issue on  your server (drive filling up or machine very busy).

[Blatherscribe 5]

My computer was doing nothing else at the time, just sitting idly in the office while I tried to watch a movie in another room. It has about 4 TB free on the drive where I keep the movies, and about 350 GB free on the main SSD. There was also no other network traffic at the time, as only the one computer in the house was even turned on, and I've never had problems like this even with multiple streaming services active and a large download in progress.

There was no error message, just the movie froze to a still image. I waited about two minutes but it didn't resume playback, so I exited the app, restarted, and tried again. It played for about two seconds, then froze. I restarted the Fire stick, and when I tried again it played for about a minute and then froze. Restarted the server and it played for about 30 seconds and then froze. When I deleted the Premiere key and again restarted the server, it played for about half an hour, then froze for about ten seconds, then played the last hour of the film without interruption. (Full sequence of events provided in case it's helpful information, not to argue. And I'll definitely put the key back next time I subscribe to Premiere.)

Is there anything it could be other than my computer being overloaded?

Thanks for the help!

[Luke 42078]

Based on the log, I would see this:

 

[Blatherscribe 5]

But the media format is supported? This file is exactly the same format, produced in exactly the same way, as every other media file in my library. I turned off transcoding because Emby always transcoded everything -- even though the file format was supported, even though I had plenty of bandwidth -- which reduced the video quality noticeably.

[Luke 42078]

Please still try changing that back to default.

[Blatherscribe 5]

Thank you for the advice, but it would cause additional problems. With transcoding enabled, Emby reduces the video quality on everything it plays, no matter what other settings I use. I'm only trying to get decent 1080p quality out of it, not 4K. My eyes aren't the best to begin with, I can't deal with a blurry picture as well.

Have you changed the program in some way such that it no longer works without transcoding? It's been working fine for me this way for a long time now.

[Luke 42078]

Quote

With transcoding enabled, Emby reduces the video quality on everything it plays, no matter what other settings I use. I'm only trying to get decent 1080p quality out of it, not 4K.

Then let's troubleshoot that, rather than troubleshooting your workaround for it.

Quote

Have you changed the program in some way such that it no longer works without transcoding?

No we haven't, however it's best to troubleshoot at default settings first, then move on from there.

[Carlo 4561]

5 hours ago, Blatherscribe said:

But the media format is supported? This file is exactly the same format, produced in exactly the same way, as every other media file in my library. I turned off transcoding because Emby always transcoded everything -- even though the file format was supported, even though I had plenty of bandwidth -- which reduced the video quality noticeably.

Then we need to find and fix the source of this issue first for as Emby will not transcode things it doesn't need to transcode.  It might only be remuxing instead of transcoding as well like if you use mkv and play them back in a browser that doesn't support mkv.

[Blatherscribe 5]

We actually tried troubleshooting the transcoding problem once before, and it couldn't be solved. Also, in part because you folks made (in a different troubleshooting session) the very plausible case that my network wasn't robust enough to play videos without transcoding *and* without freezing, I replaced my network and my playback devices.

I think the problem is that Emby always *thinks* it needs to transcode. It did this with my previous setup (older Roku, wifi supplied by the cable company), and it wants to with my new setup too (new Fire stick, my own cable modem and wifi). I've dramatically increased the speed and capacity of my home network and upgraded playback devices by several generations, but Emby still thinks it absolutely must transcode things. So it does, and the visual quality suffers. And when I disable transcoding, everything works fine except for this one movie. It isn't even extraordinarily large -- immediately after these problems, I played a movie twice the file size and twice the bitrate without a single hiccup.

I guess I'll just chalk it up to being one of those computer mysteries.

Thank you very much for your help. I hope you all have good holidays and stay safe.

[Carlo 4561]

Give us a quick refresher.  Does it transcode in your own network or only when playing remote?

Best of holidays to you as well!

[Happy2Play 9780]

Can you post a ffmpeg log now that you have enabled the media playback option.

If device/client playback quality is set to Auto, have you tried adjusting at device/client level?

[Ronstang 293]

If you have a new Firestick then Emby shouldn't need to transcode anything from my experience.  Mine all play everything I throw at them even Dolby sound which with some devices need transcoding....which is one of the reasons I upgraded to the Firestick in the the first place was to avoid the transcoding as I didn't want to re-encode all the audio in 4000 movies to stereo.

[Blatherscribe 5]

Sorry about the delay, been slightly busy. To answer your questions in order:

1) Emby used to transcode all the time in my own network. I've never used it remotely.

2) I haven't enabled transcoding, but just to see what happens I'll try it again tomorrow if I can.

3) This is why I keep asking why it's necessary to enable transcoding. If I don't want it and don't like it, and if Emby should never ever use it with my setup, why would enabling or disabling it matter? If something isn't being used, then turning it on shouldn't change anything, right?

Anyway, I'll try transcoding tomorrow and see what happens, and get back to you then. Thanks again!

 

[Luke 42078]

18 hours ago, Blatherscribe said:

Sorry about the delay, been slightly busy. To answer your questions in order:

1) Emby used to transcode all the time in my own network. I've never used it remotely.

2) I haven't enabled transcoding, but just to see what happens I'll try it again tomorrow if I can.

3) This is why I keep asking why it's necessary to enable transcoding. If I don't want it and don't like it, and if Emby should never ever use it with my setup, why would enabling or disabling it matter? If something isn't being used, then turning it on shouldn't change anything, right?

Anyway, I'll try transcoding tomorrow and see what happens, and get back to you then. Thanks again!

 

Thanks. If it's still transcoding after that then let's look at why.

[Blatherscribe 5]

OK, I turned transcoding back on. I watched an episode of Star Trek last night while keeping an eye on things with the Emby Android app. It said it was direct playing, and I couldn't detect a difference in the video quality, so that was good. But then, near the end, it started freezing again. The picture would freeze for about ten seconds, then play for five, then freeze for ten. So the cause is definitely not transcoding or the lack thereof. Restarting the Emby server on my computer managed to clear up the problem long enough to finish the episode, but this seems to be a recurring issue. It shouldn't be lack of bandwidth, as my home network is pretty good, and it's definitely not a lack of computer resources, as my computer wasn't doing anything but stream a single video.

Any thoughts? I've attached the relevant log. Thanks.

embyserver-63742285005.txt

[Carlo 4561]

Hi, You can try with a different episode or move unrelated to what you previously played.  It's always possible it didn't like something with the encoding of the file.

[Blatherscribe 5]

It previously did this with the movie of Henry V, encoded from Blu-Ray. But all my movies and TV shows are prepared from the original discs (which I own) the exact same way. So it should have been doing this *forever* if something is wrong with my encoding, right?

[Carlo 4561]

Not really as something could be wrong with a file from bitrot or any type of corruption.  That's why I suggested trying the test with a couple different videos just in case.

[Blatherscribe 5]

Well, we have it happening with two different videos, one I made about a year ago, and one I made about a month ago. Also in both cases eventually the file played, after fiddling with Emby, restarting the server, etc.

[Carlo 4561]

Hi, any chance we could set up a remote session so I could log in and do some diagnoses?
We could chat one on one, go over your internet bandwidth, try setting up a test account, etc.

Basically try and help you best we can based on your Internet connectivity.

If this is something you would like to do send me a PM (private message) and we can arrange it.

[Blatherscribe 5]

I have a TP-Link AC2600 router, which claims 1733 Mbps on the 5 GHz band, which is what my Fire stick uses. The Fire stick reads the signal strength as "very good." My computer has a wired connection to this router. There is no internet involved, only wifi. And the most wifi traffic I've had when this has happened has been one other person watching Sling TV -- not even Netflix in HD. I'm reasonably certain lack of bandwidth is not the problem here.

I appreciate the offer, but I've never been comfortable with remote access to my computer. I don't even have it enabled in Emby for my own devices.

Is there nothing in the log files that helps? Nothing the server could be doing that would go away with a restart (since that seems to clear things up temporarily)?

[Luke 42078]

It's possible the bitrate is just too high for the device.

[Blatherscribe 5]

Except it plays files with higher bitrates with no problems. Looking at the media information in VLC Player, the movie that gave me the most trouble runs between 7,000 and 10,000 kbps. Other movies that have played without the slightest difficulty have bitrates running up to twice that, even a bit beyond. Finally, if the playback device is having trouble with the bitrate, would restarting Emby server fix it (temporarily), but *not* restarting the playback device?

[Luke 42078]

It's also possible that the hardware decoder on the device might just be having trouble with those specific videos.