Freezing on CBSNY

[mhartman]

@eric @tmm1- Let me know if I should start a new thread for this but while watching CBSN NY TVE (channel 6970) on my Apple TV, the video freezes when going from their news broadcast to a commercial break. The audio continues to play during the commercial break and when they return to the news broadcast, the video is choppy. Also mirroring my experience with Fox News on the Shield, if I exit to the guide while the video is frozen, I get a notice that I'm behind the timeline.

This issue also happens while watching using the Channels web player on my PC.

Surround sound disabled, playing on original quality.

Logs from the web portal and the Apple TV submitted. Adding to this thread because the experience is very close to the issue I was having with Fox News on my Shield but will start a new thread if needed.

[mhartman]

@tmm1 @eric were you able to see any issues from the logs I submitted last week?

[tmm1]

Please open new threads in the future because that makes it easier to respond.

If this is happening on both Apple TV and web player then there is probably something strange in the stream when it switches to commercials.

[mhartman]

Is there anything in the logs that will validate a stream issue? If the issue doesn't occur using the provider's native website or the provider's app, why would the Channels experience be any different?

[eric]

These messages are confusing and not something I would expect to be seeing:

2020/04/05 11:00:46.410131 [M3U8] Generator: err=cannot replace "/mnt/nfs/dvr/Streaming/m3u8/898/stream.m3u8" with tempfile "/mnt/nfs/dvr/Streaming/m3u8/898/stream.m3u8780156700": rename /mnt/nfs/dvr/Streaming/m3u8/898/stream.m3u8780156700 /mnt/nfs/dvr/Streaming/m3u8/898/stream.m3u8: permission denied
2020/04/05 11:04:31.496741 [M3U8] Generator: err=cannot replace "/mnt/nfs/dvr/Streaming/m3u8/898/stream.m3u8" with tempfile "/mnt/nfs/dvr/Streaming/m3u8/898/stream.m3u8664624190": rename /mnt/nfs/dvr/Streaming/m3u8/898/stream.m3u8664624190 /mnt/nfs/dvr/Streaming/m3u8/898/stream.m3u8: permission denied

Did you have something changing permissions for that directory?

[mhartman]

No. I just completed a server rebuild and within 5 minutes of playing the CBSN stream from the new server, the issue surfaced.

Logs have been submitted.

[mhartman]

Also to be clear on this, I was watching the CBSN stream from their website on my phone while simultaneously playing the TVE stream on my Apple TV. The audio continued to play on the Apple TV while the video was frozen. My phone was playing the stream without any issues.

[mhartman]

@eric do you see the same permissions error in the most recent set of logs?

[eric]

Nope. It doesn't look like it has that issue. Are you running the App Store version of the Apple TV app or the beta?

[mhartman]

App Store version

[mhartman]

This isn't isolated to just me:

TVE Channel issues

I'm having issues with the following channels on AppleTV4k... ch6972 LA-CBSNEWS - It seems when the channel goes to commercial the video stops and eventually turns into a slideshow while the audio continues to play fine. ch6971 NJ-NEWS12 - No audio, just video ch6970 NY-CBSNEWS - It seems when the channel goes to commercial the video stops and eventually turns into a slideshow while the audio continues to play fine. There may be more but I'm still in the testing phase... Channels play fine …

Stream Freezes every-time Channels Goes to Break

2019/08/14 17:14:44 [TNR] Opened connection to TVE-YouTubeTV for ch6973 LA-KTLA [transcode=none] 2019/08/14 17:15:49 [TNR] Opened connection to TVE-YouTubeTV for ch6971 NJ-NEWS12 [transcode=none] 2019/08/14 17:15:49 [TNR] Closed connection to TVE-YouTubeTV for ch6973 LA-KTLA 2019/08/14 17:16:02 [TNR] Closed connection to TVE-YouTubeTV for ch6971 NJ-NEWS12 2019/08/14 17:16:03 [TNR] Opened connection to TVE-YouTubeTV for ch6973 LA-KTLA [transcode=none] 2019/08/14 17:16:10 [TNR] Opened connect…

[eric]

It may be related... it may not. It’s always hard to see if something is related without having a lot of diagnostic details.

Could you update to the latest DVR beta? It has additional diagnostic logging that could help us track down what’s going on better. I think I understand what’s happening but it will help us confirm.

Once you’ve upgraded, when you reproduce it if you could send Diagnostics from the DVR and the app it should give us what we need.

[mhartman]

Logs submitted- 5bef301d-7b13-4dbf-ba98-f6d56e20c3fc

I am running DVR build 2020.04.08.2010 and Apple TV app 3.2.35.

[eric]

If you record the channel and play back the recording, does it have the same issue?

I do see a couple log messages about audio issues around the time that you're having problems, but generally when we see them in the logs everything will resolve itself fairly easily, so this is surprising...

[mhartman]

There is no option to record these channels in the Apple TV app or on the web guide.

Sometimes using the playback controls to rewind and then ff will allow the video get unstuck but the audio has a lag of up to 1 minute or so.

[eric]

Okay. We think we understand the issue but don't know how to solve it at this moment. We're doing more investigating and will update you as we know more.

[eric]

Can you try updating the DVR to the latest pre-release build that was just released and then set your Streaming Quality to 8Mbps and see if that fixes it?

We believe we understand what is going on and are in the process of testing a fix for the Apple TV app that we will be releasing soon as a new Testflight beta.

[mhartman]

Updated and set quality to 8Mbps. Made it through a couple commercial breaks without any issues. I will set back to original quality and continue to test. What can you share about the root cause?

[mhartman]

Update: Issues occurs when streaming quality is set to original.

[eric]

What can you share about the root cause?

The Dynamic Ad Insertion platform that is being used by this HLS stream is using different MPEG-TS pids for the audio and video streams for the ad segments compared to the show segments.