I think Hallmark Movies and More is newish and is on Plex. I actually find it’s content isn’t as saccharine but your mileage may vary. Problem is it seems to get lost during commercials which seems to make for some audio side effects (out or sync or gone altogether). Is anyone else seeing this behavior?
This sounds like a Plex issue, and has nothing to do with Channels.
Have you reached out to Plex (and their stellar support staff) for assistance? Or is an unaffiliated company and forum the best place to get aid, especially considering the stellar quality of Plex's support?
Nope. Sure it works fine on their platform. Reminds me of issues in the early days of Pluto getting screwed up switching to the commercial feed that was fixed. Only reason I bring it up here.
Could be the source m3u you're using.
I remember people having issues because everybody was using the same m3u url for some service.
Have you tried doing a recording of the channel and looking at the log?
1 Like
Recording are fine. If I pause for a bit and watch the buffer, that seems fine. Live seems to be the issue. If it’s just me, I’m happy to drop it. Just reminds me of a earlier issue that was fixed on the channels side.
Even the web site is buffering
Fine. I’m going over to the “Almost ready to abandon Channels” thread. Although it bores me so… 
Seems to be okay bar the jumps between Plex commercials.
https://epg.provider.plex.tv/library/parts/5e20b730f2f8d5003d739db7-6244cf3c742b0d58cd4f2514.m3u8?includeAllStreams=1&X-Plex-Token=CF7ia7Z8dgmyjzXpVxPw
Confused.
I see what you mean now. Using that m3u8 as a custom channel works fine until Plex cuts in the feed to serve their commercials.
Logs show:
2022/06/13 17:37:08.687068 [TNR] Opened connection to M3U-gggg for ch4000 PCAM
2022/06/13 17:37:08.688902 [HLS] Starting live stream for channel 4000 from 192.168.88.137 (bitrate=5253)
2022/06/13 17:37:09.956839 [HLS] ffmpeg: ch4000-dANY-ip192.168.88.137-remux: [hls @ 0x6161800] Timestamps are unset in a packet for stream 1. This is deprecated and will stop working in the future. Fix your code to set the timestamps properly
2022/06/13 17:37:10.001499 [HLS] Probed live stream in 1.312080403s: h264 1920x1080 progressive 4792320bps
2022/06/13 17:37:10.140526 [HLS] Session ch4000-dANY-ip192.168.88.137 started in 2.193044671s
2022/06/13 17:45:00.257665 [HLS] ffmpeg: ch4000-dANY-ip192.168.88.137-remux: [mpegts @ 0x60fe680] New audio stream 0:2 at pos:286206500 and DTS:484.915s
2022/06/13 17:49:15.420626 [HLS] Stopping transcoder session ch4000-dANY-ip192.168.88.137 (out: 12m33.2889s, finished: false)
2022/06/13 17:49:15.420999 [HLS] ffmpeg: ch4000-dANY-ip192.168.88.137-remux: [mpegts @ 0x60fe680] Dropped corrupted packet (stream = 1)
2022/06/13 17:49:15.433804 [TNR] Closed connection to M3U-gggg for ch4000 PCAM
2022/06/13 17:49:16.644865 [ERR] Failed to clean up /share/Streaming/ch4000-dANY-ip192.168.88.137-2379936287: unlinkat /share/Streaming/ch4000-dANY-ip192.168.88.137-2379936287/cache: directory not empty
1 Like
Yep. That’s consistent with my experience.
Looks like it may be an ffmpeg configuration modification issue. Plex commercials do something with the segment count and ffmpeg can be set to either drop a packet that it thinks is corrupt or it can ignore it. Channels may have ffmepg for HLS set to drop. Ref: video streaming - Packet corruption during download, then ffmpeg hangs - Super User
If I get a chance then I'll try to set up an ffmpeg restream and confirm if the above is correct. Or if @tmm1 has some insight if Channels is set up with -fflags +discardcorrupt and if it can be removed if it is flagged with that.
1 Like
Could also be this
1 Like
That line happens a few minutes before ffmpeg borks.
I've been running it through vlc and there are errors that show during commercial breaks:
http error: local stream 199 error: Cancellation (0x8)
ts warning: discontinuity indicator (pid=481)
ts warning: discontinuity indicator (pid=481)
http error: local stream 201 error: Cancellation (0x8)
gnutls error: Error in the push function.
gnutls error: The specified session has been invalidated for some reason.
adaptive info: Ending demuxer stream. [discontinuity]
main error: Timestamp conversion failed for 20507217601: no reference clock
main error: Could not convert timestamp 0 for FFmpeg
ts warning: discontinuity indicator (pid=481)
main error: buffer deadlock prevented
main error: buffer deadlock prevented
direct3d11 error: SetThumbNailClip failed: 0x800706f4
qt warning: orphaned video window
http error: local stream 203 error: Cancellation (0x8)
ts warning: discontinuity indicator (pid=481)
mpeg4audio info: AAC channels: 2 samplerate: 48000
faad warning: decoded zero sample
http error: local stream 205 error: Cancellation (0x8)
d3d11va warning: not enough decoding slices in the texture (6/24)
avcodec info: Using D3D11VA (NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER, vendor 10de(NVIDIA), device 1e81, revision a1) for hardware decoding
ts warning: discontinuity indicator (pid=481)
2 Likes
Very nice progress. I really appreciate your help. Schmaltzy family friendly entertainment may soon be incoming. 
1 Like
Possible fix in next build (v2022.06.16.1757)
2 Likes
So far it looks pretty good. It doesn’t seem to be having trouble with commercials and the audio is still in sync. Question is how long I can stand to watch Hallmark to truly confirm it’s fixed? But I reported the issue so I will tough it out and let you know.
1 Like
Meow Madness. Yea!
Okay. It’s been a half hour and all is still working fine so I’m declaring this bug squashed. If it takes longer than 30 minutes for symptoms to develop, no one will ever now.
2 Likes