This is really only happening on my "Music Videos" channel which is mostly videos downloaded via youtube-dl but basically after each music video Plex keeps trying to load the stream but it's never does, stopping watching and starting again fixes it for the current video but then stops again at the end.
#Stream stops between episodes but works fine if I stop and play again
undone timber
Some more info: About half of those videos were downloaded via an online web YouTube downloader, and the other half were downloaded via youtube-dl. The issue doesn't seem to happen when going from a video that was downloaded via the web downloader to another one that was downloaded the same way.
I'm guessing this is the same issue that dizqueTV puts in their limitations section of their documentation "Most players (including Plex) will break after switching episodes if video / audio format is too different. dizqueTV can be configured to use ffmpeg transcoding to prevent this, but that costs resources.".
If this is indeed the issue, is there a way to force ErsatzTV to transcode?
Or possibly are there some specific youtube-dl settings I should be using that would work better?
drowsy hearth
Can you paste your etv version? This should not be happening, generally speaking
undone timber
jasongdove/ersatztv:v0.8.5-vaapi
drowsy hearth
can you also try with a player other than plex - something like vlc or mpv?
undone timber
I'll try it out with vlc right now, will report back in a few minutes
undone timber
So I played it on vlc for a while just to make sure it got through a good mix of "web downloaded" vs "cli downloaded" videos and it worked just fine. So then I did the same thing with Plex and it's working fine now?
Maybe patience was the key. I'll do some more testing over the next few days and see if it starts doing it again and if I can capture any logs if it does.
Thanks!
undone timber
This just happened again. Plex shows it's trying to transcode over and over again in an endless loop but I just see a loading animation. Eventually I got a message from Plex "This live TV session has ended". Attached is the last things in the Plex logs.
Ersatz shows nothing in the logs except "Unexpected pixel format null may have playback issues".
When I view the channel again right after that, it's playing just fine.
rancid shell
It's kind of weird that Plex is transcoding the data, it should be direct-play for Etv?
undone timber
I agree that is weird. I'm guessing maybe I have something configured wrong in my Etv settings maybe?
drowsy hearth
depends on the plex client, it often transcodes for browser
rancid shell
Are the Etv containers and Plex containers (assuming you're running in a container) on the same host? Etv can read the files directly from disk if it has access to those paths, instead of streaming from Plex, while still syncing the library and it's metadata from Plex
undone timber
Containers are on the same host but I guess I didn't think about testing more outside of the browser. If the issue is only happening for the browser then I don't care as that's the least common way I use Plex. I'll do more testing on my TV and will see if the issue is replicated. I'll also see if it's transcoding when watching on my TV or not.
rancid shell
Oh, I understood now. You're using Plex to watch, so Plex transcodes the live channel.
undone timber
One thing that I think could possibly be part of my problem is that my music video library isn't imported via Plex, but Local.
I do now have the Music Video library added to Plex however when I go to my Plex Media Source and refresh libraries, it's not detecting the new library from Plex.
rancid shell
well, last time I checked, that wasn't supported #809414823464796200 message
undone timber
It's not a music library. Just a "OtherVideos" library as far as Plex is concerned.