Web player buffering

Channels DVR Server Troubleshooting
#1

I am having buffering issues in my web browser with Channels DVR. I am using Chrome on Windows 10 and my DVR server is running on a Synology DS918+. All devices have wired connections to my gigabit network.

When watching on my various TV's using the Android and Shield apps, I don't have any issues, but when I stream video to my PC I get a lot of hitching and buffering. I have tried various settings, but I am currently using Hardware decoder and Deinterlacer with Adaptive Streaming Off and the web player set to 720p@6mbps with a 30 second client buffer.

Occasionally I will get a brief flash of a buffering icon in the middle of the screen, and other times I get a momentary pause or slow down of the video which causes it to fall behind the live broadcast. Are there any logs that can be analyzed to try to determine what is causing this poor performance?

#2

Is this on recordings or live tv?

What does it say underneath the video?

#3

Live TV.

Underneath the video (in windowed mode), it currently shows "Transcoder Running at 6mbps".

#4

Any suggestions? Even more annoying is that playback often freezes completely, and I have to click "skip forward" to get it to start back up again. How can I diagnose what the problem is?

1 Like
#5

Have you tried 1080p @ 10 mbps?
Is it OTA, CABLE or TVE source having the issue?

Also just a tip that if I pause for 10-15 seconds to buffer a little before starting playback I don't see those issues. If the player is trying to keep up to live, I do see issues.

#6

I have tried many different settings (1080, 720p, 480p) and haven't really seen it make a difference.

As for the source, it is both OTA and cable, although I'm still trying to narrow down whether the problems are the same for each. Based on the past few days, OTA is buffering and slowing down for short periods, whereas cable is the one that freezes completely.

#7

After I saw your post I tried watching both CABLE and TVE live,
CABLE worked fine, TVE stopped remuxing at 3:49 into viewing for some reason.
Running DVR v2020.09.30.1642 and nothing in the logs but
[TNR] Closed connection to TVE-Comcast_SSO
[HLS] Stopping transcoder session

#8

Transcoding vs. Remuxing may explain part of the difference in behavior. When I was watching OTA, it was Transcoding, but when I watch cable, it is Remuxing. I'll have to keep monitoring to see if the only time that streams stop completely is when they are Remuxing.

#9

I did a test recording of the same TVE channel I was watching live remuxed and that stopped for no apparent reason and the recording worked fine.

There may be an updated video.js and hls.js available, but from my experience I don't think the devs consider the browser a 'supported' Channels client.

#11

Actually the recording was interrupted twice, but since it was a recording, Channels DVR reconnected both times. Didn't notice until I looked at the recording entry and saw Interrupted, then looked at the logs.

#12

The next time if this happens for someone can you submit a diagnostic log from the DVR and let me know what browser you were using?

This is very strange and isn't what I would expect to happen, so something is going on that is unusual.

#13

I'm sure your reply wan't meant for me as I've never been invited to the party and have been told the web UI isn't a client or supported. I have offered to help in the past and was turned down, so not sure what this is about?

#14

We can't work around all bugs and issues in browsers but without diagnostic logs from when situations like this are happening, it's impossible for me to know what's going on in this specific situation.

It's very true that there are a lot of things that we don't have control over in the browser, but with the server logs we can see why the remuxing stopped completely.

#15

I just had this issue occur again on Marquee Sports Network, channel 1254. The stream stopped, but I was able to skip backward/forward to get it to start back up again.

Logs have been submitted as 1a5bdf53-34ac-4573-8b58-a1b057a139f5

Browser is Google Chrome, 85.0.4183.121 (Official Build) (64-bit)

#16

Good Luck, let us know how it turns out.
FireFox 81.0.1 (64-bit)

I assume your problem channel is on Cable.

I gave up on most of my TVE channels because of issues, but my cable channels work fine.
I can rely on my 'local' TVE channels, like my PBS, otherwise I have issues with most of the rest of them.

#17

I just submitted more logs when the playback stopped in Chrome:
0017d961-16a3-4e38-8daa-5bdbbf6087e9

Any updates on this?

#18

Nothing particularly interesting in the logs you sent. You're watching a h264 cable channel, so no transcoding is occurring, only remuxing. Did the text underneath the player change when the stall happened?

#19

It just happened again, and the timeline continues to grow, but the stream is stopped and the test is stuck at:
Remux Running at 1mbps: 3h51m8s @ 1.00x (59.91fps)

#20

Please press-and-hold on the Check For Updates button in the Settings page of your DVR. I have added some additional handling of cases where we run into problems with the remuxing and it will now report it in the logs and the stream will now reconnect in those circumstances.

#21

I'll try that out, thanks. The other thing that is happening frequently is that the audio gets significantly out of sync. It always starts in sync, but once it goes out of sync there is no fixing it except to stop and restart the stream. Do you know if there is a common resolution for that problem?

I seem to notice it most when I'm multi-tasking, so I'm wondering if it is a resource issue where a temporary spike in CPU or GPU usage can cause the audio to go out of sync. I have no idea whether that makes sense, but just an observation.