Unpredictable skipping/fast forward during remote playback of recordings

Channels DVR Server Troubleshooting
#1

Recently, I've had strange experiences with ad skipping, fast forwards, and rewinds on an Apple TV 4K connected to Remote DVR. This is most noticeable after ad skips. Let’s say commercial detection will correctly mark 18:25 as where a show resumes. Yet, when I double click to skip (or use the beta tvOS app to automatically skip), it may jump further than the appropriate marker to 19:09 or even further ahead.

Then when I try to skip back to where the ad skip should have landed, playback controls become unpredictable. Tapping backwards for 15 sec rewind may fast forward instead. I haven’t been able to reproduce this with any other clients so this doesn’t seem like an issue with my server.

This happens on this specific Apple TV 4K regardless of what version of the app I use. I’ve tried both the latest App Store version and the latest two builds in TestFlight.

Latest DVR v2019.04.27.0504 H264 recording remux gets stuck playing in web browser
#2

Sounds like your remote is acting up. I've had similar issues when the touchpad gets dirty or the remote battery is low.

#3

I don’t think that’s the case because it happens during automatic commercial skipping in the beta as well, when I don’t touch the remote.

#4

Okay I understand. This is a bug that's specific to watching h264 recordings remotely at a high quality setting. We are working on a fix.

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#5

Great, just wanted to know if it was being worked on. Thanks for the quick replies!

#6

Has there been any progress made on a fix? I do still see this behavior when watching remotely in original quality.

#7

We have tracked down the issue and are testing some ways to fix it.

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#8

I'm running into this too. It basically makes the remote DVR useless for watching h.264 recordings unless you don't seek at all.

As an interim workaround, it would be nice to have the option to force transcoding even if the source material already satisfies the requested bitrate.

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#9

On second thought... I just tried turning the quality down to 2mbit to force transcoding, and the problem still seems to occur :frowning:

Edit: Must have been a fluke (maybe the setting change hadn't fully propagated to the transcoding session already in progress). Because now using 2mbit fixes it (but the picture quality is awful).

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#10

On what devices? Not sure if it’s related to the issue I posted about and still experience as of the latest beta releases. For my Apple TVs and iOS devices, transcoding at any quality allows me to scrub through recordings as they should. The jumping around only occurs with remux.

#11

Maybe it wasn't actually transcoding. I'll be sure to check the logs and verify next time I attempt.

#12

Any hope for a fix in the near future? It's been ~2 months and I've been getting by having remote users transcode everything, but I'd prefer to avoid transcoding.

#13

Just wanted to report on what I’m experiencing in regards to this bug and the TVEverywhere channels. Even when I set my remote playback quality to 1080p/8mbps (which was enough to force transcoding on all of my OTA channels), a lot of TVE channels remux and do not transcode, again leading to the erratic skipping around for remote recording playback.

Temporarily I’ve set my remote quality down to 720p/6mbps to force transcoding on everything, but this is less than ideal. Is there any significant progress on a fix?

#14

We are writing a new transcoder which is taking a while.

Let me see if we can put a workaround in place for now..

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#15

Just having a cURL command to disable remux for recording playback would go a long way

#16

Better yet would be a force transcode option so no matter if local or remote you could force transcode at the bitrate you selected for local or remote.

#17

Any updates on the workaround? I'm not seeing any changes so far with the latest DVR beta.

#18

Is the new transcoder still planned? This is by far my top pain point in Channels right now.

#19

Agreed, remote playback is significantly compromised especially with the addition of TVE. If you want proper playback/ad-skipping you have to force encoding to 720p/4mbps, which doesn’t support any captioning.

#20

@tmm1 I saw the post about the new remuxer, will it have any implications on this bug for remotely streaming OTA and/or TVE recordings without transcoding?