Roku + Emby Server (Windows) 480p HEVC Fast Forward/Rewind Consistently Restarts Playback

[GenPeatry 0]

Hello all,

I have an odd bug that I would appreciate help with (happy to become a premiere user if we can get this fixed).

All h.265 HEVC encoded videos on my server which are 480P, when played back via Roku, the video will restart if I try to fast forward or rewind.

The issue DOES NOT happen for 1080P h.265 HEVC encoded videos, or 4K h.265 HEVC encoded videos. I can fast forward and rewind with zero issues. But, weirdly, the smaller videos REFUSE to Fast Forward/Rewind. All of the videos in question are in MKV containers. MP4 encoded videos playback fine, and can fast forward and rewind.

The server itself has plenty of horsepower. It is an AMD Threadripper 2950X system with 32GB RAM running a Radeon RX550 on 64-bit Windows 10. It plays back 4K video without buffering.

So, something squirrelly is going on. Would appreciate any help :)

[Abobader 3464]

Hello GenPeatry,

** This is an auto reply **

Please wait for someone from staff support or our members to reply to you.

It's recommended to provide more info, as it explain in this thread:

Thank you.

Emby Team

[ebr 16185]

Hi.  Can we please look at a specific example?

Thanks.

 

[GenPeatry 0]

Hello EBR,

Here are the 2 most recent logs from the server. You can see the playback starting and stopping in the logs as I try to fast forward and rewind an episode of Spin City. Same issue happens on another 480P HEVC encoded video as well. But the 1080P video and the 4K videos I tested both played fine, and fast forward and rewind find as well.

embyserver.txt hardware_detection-63758663657.txt

[ebr 16185]

No ffmpeg logs were generated?

[GenPeatry 0]

I didn't have debugging turned on when those logs were generated. Would that generate the ffmpeg logs? Not sure how to generate the ffmpeg logs

[Carlo 4561]

No debug logging just writes more intense logs but not different ones.  You don't need to turn on debug logging unless asked as they just generate a lot more info that's not always wanted.

EDIT: sorry hit enter by mistake.  The ffmpeg log file is generated per media playback for anything that is transcoded or direct streamed.

Edited June 8, 2021 by cayars

[GenPeatry 0]

Okay, well in that case, no it didn't generate any ffmpeg logs. Only logs in the logs view in the emby admin control panel are are insane number of hardware detection logs (why on earth does it need to scan the hardware that often?) and the occasional emby server playback logs.

[GenPeatry 0]

I just now went and checked the physical logs location as well, just to be sure, but %appdata%\Roaming\Emby-Server\programdata\logs doesn't have the ffmpeg logs in some hidden state now showing in the dashboard.

[Carlo 4561]

From File Explorer you should be able to sort by date and that will show the most recent files at the top.  If you play something that generates an ffmpeg log file it would be right at the top likely next to the currently written server log file.

[GenPeatry 0]

Hi Cayars,

I just ran a fresh test. There are zero ffmpeg logs in the physical log directory, or showing in the Emby app's control panel. Attached in the most recently generated log file from a few minutes ago.

embyserver.txt

[speechles 2055]

If you enable "stats for nerds" of the video player OSD inside the cog/playback menu does it show as "Play method: DirectPlay" or does it show something else?

My guess is these are MKV which have a compressed header or have put chapters at the end. You might have to simply Remux those MKV with MKVToolNix GUI or run them through MKClean. That should clean up the headers. That is all this is. The Roku is imcompatible with the media because it cannot read the header of the MKV to determine the runtime correctly.

We cannot detect in the application when headers are this way. We do not know what the Roku does not like about those headers. We assume it will play correctly and DirectPlay just fine. In this case that isn't happening and we do not know what the Roku dislikes about certain MKV headers just that it is a fact. Running the MKV through MKClean or MKVToolNix GUI will solve your problem guaranteed.

You can also use "Attempt Playback Correction" to force the container to change to TS and remux both streams directly but that will DirectStream instead of DirectPlay. It still will copy both video/audio and any other streams but the container will change from MKV and use segmented TS inside an m3u8 manifest using HLS.

Edited June 8, 2021 by speechles

[GenPeatry 0]

I am trying to find where on earth I can check the stats for nerds setting. But I am not finding that setting in any of the settings menus. As soon as I figure out where it is, I will turn it on and tell you what it says

 

[speechles 2055]

5 minutes ago, GenPeatry said:

I am trying to find where on earth I can check the stats for nerds setting. But I am not finding that setting in any of the settings menus. As soon as I figure out where it is, I will turn it on and tell you what it says

 

Play any item. Once the video player takes over press down on your Roku remote. The video player OSD (on screen display) appears. On the OSD find the cog/gear and click it once. It will open the "Playback Menu". Inside this menu will allow you to change behavior of the video player on-the-fly during playback. Using "stats for nerds" will be persistent for the session. That means once you turn on stats for nerds it remains on until you turn it off, log off as that user, or exit the app. This way you can use it to solve issues or check things during playback without having to toggle the setting every time.

I apologize we don't make this easier to discover these settings. We need to do better and provide some one-time tips for users to discover these things more intuitively without having to be told to look for them.

Edited June 8, 2021 by speechles

[GenPeatry 0]

I had just found another forum topic that covered how to find it as you were posting this. Thanks for the information though! Useful.
Attached is a picture I took of the information on-screen.

Interestingly, I tried the "attempt playback correction (remux)" option up on the screen, let is buffer for a second, THEN tried to FF/rewind and it worked fine. So ... yeah, not sure what is wrong. I am using the same exact process to generate the 480P MKV HEVC-encoded files as I am for their 1080P and 4K bretheren. It's weird to me that the little files are the ones having problems o_O

[GenPeatry 0]

My thanks to everyone who helped me in this thread!

I examined one of the MKV files in question in the MKVToolNix tool, and the headers seemed more verbose than they needed to be (since I have no idea what they are supposed to look like, that is the best description I can provide). So I then downloaded the MKClean tool which was recommended, and did a test run of the tool on a copy of one of the MKVs. It did its thing and then generated a "clean" version of the MKV, which I renamed back to the original name, and copied that back to the Media NAS, replacing the older version.

I then ran another test, and sure enough, THAT particular MKV is now able to FF/rewind without any issues. Any of its neighbors in the same folder though -- still behaving exactly the same as before. I COULD use the "fix playback (remux)" option (which I didn't know about until today), on a per-file basis, but I think I will just solve the problem once and for all and "clean" all of the problem MKVs and be done with it.

My sincere thanks to @Speechles, @Cayars, and @ebr for your help with this. And, as promised, I will be upgrading to a "premiere" membership this month as a thank you to the team
One question before I do that, I see one of the "benefits" of Premiere is offline file backups for Emby files. I am data capped and DO NOT want it to do that. Can I turn that off?

[Carlo 4561]

Nothing to worry about.  Unless you configure converting/backing up files including the location nothing will happen automatically.
You have nothing to worry about data cap wise with any feature like this.

[GenPeatry 0]

Thanks again for all your help, everyone.

As promised, I have upgraded to Premiere

[Carlo 4561]

Congrats, we know you will enjoy the additional benefits you get with Premiere!
First things first, go install the configuration backup plugin and configure it.

Maybe checkout the Coverart plugin as well just to get you started.

[GenPeatry 0]

Do I need to install the plugins to control the offsite backups thing?

[Carlo 4561]

What I'm referring to is the configuration backup plugin from the catalog, which copies the the system config files and a few core Emby things, not your media or large amounts of data.  You can write this to any other drive in your system.plugin.

[GenPeatry 0]

Ah, good to know. Thank you. I have installed it