Channel is Offline

subvocal

I've tried setting this up a couple of different ways (presently it's using Plex and local mounted files & no GPU). This is as close as I've gotten to getting it to work, and all I'm getting is "Channel is Offline."

I'm trying to watch the "Connecticut and Doctors" channel. It's a channel with a schedule and a playout. When I try previewing the channel within the ErsatzTV webpage, it works fine. However, once I try to plug it into Plex, it's not working.

Any ideas?

{
"Version": "0.8.7-25604294-docker",
"Health": [],
"FFmpegSettings": {
"FFmpegPath": "/usr/local/bin/ffmpeg",
"FFprobePath": "/usr/local/bin/ffprobe",
"DefaultFFmpegProfileId": 1,
"PreferredAudioLanguageCode": "eng",
"UseEmbeddedSubtitles": true,
"ExtractEmbeddedSubtitles": false,
"SaveReports": false,
"HlsSegmenterIdleTimeout": 60,
"WorkAheadSegmenterLimit": 1,
"InitialSegmentCount": 1,
"HlsDirectOutputFormat": "MpegTs"
},
"Channels": [
{
"Id": 1,
"UniqueId": "5170a0c5-3c24-42b6-b00c-6ae65062d12a",
"Number": "1",
"Name": "ErsatzTV",
"Group": "ErsatzTV",
"FFmpegProfileId": 1,
"StreamingMode": "TransportStreamHybrid",
"SubtitleMode": "None",
"MusicVideoCreditsMode": "None"
},
{
"Id": 2,
"UniqueId": "0be1e50d-9340-4da9-bb38-4a27f46bebd5",
"Number": "2",
"Name": "Sitcom City",
"Group": "Subvocal TV",
"FFmpegProfileId": 1,
"StreamingMode": "TransportStreamHybrid",
"PreferredAudioLanguageCode": "",
"PreferredSubtitleLanguageCode": "",
"SubtitleMode": "None",
"MusicVideoCreditsMode": "None"
},
{
"Id": 3,
"UniqueId": "23c40a2d-5ff4-4ed9-a1e3-697bceaf59c8",
"Number": "3",
"Name": "Connecticut and Doctors",
"Group": "Subvocal TV",
"FFmpegProfileId": 1,
"StreamingMode": "TransportStreamHybrid",
"PreferredAudioLanguageCode": "",
"PreferredSubtitleLanguageCode": "",
"SubtitleMode": "None",
"MusicVideoCreditsMode": "None"
},
{
"Id": 4,
"UniqueId": "791cb489-4908-46d2-b302-89e9843d0ef2",
"Number": "4",
"Name": "QuizShows!",
"Group": "Subvocal TV",
"FFmpegProfileId": 1,
"StreamingMode": "TransportStreamHybrid",
"PreferredAudioLanguageCode": "",
"PreferredSubtitleLanguageCode": "",
"SubtitleMode": "None",
"MusicVideoCreditsMode": "None"
},
{
"Id": 5,
"UniqueId": "549c5a2e-6fac-46be-a2b8-33c2db78bcd4",
"Number": "5",
"Name": "Food! Food! Food!",
"Group": "Subvocal TV",
"FFmpegProfileId": 1,
"StreamingMode": "TransportStreamHybrid",
"PreferredAudioLanguageCode": "",
"PreferredSubtitleLanguageCode": "",
"SubtitleMode": "None",
"MusicVideoCreditsMode": "None"
}
],
"FFmpegProfiles": [
{
"Id": 1,
"Name": "1920x1080 x264 ac3",
"ThreadCount": 0,
"HardwareAcceleration": "None",
"VaapiDriver": "Default",
"QsvExtraHardwareFrames": 64,
"ResolutionId": 3,
"Resolution": {
"Id": 3,
"Name": "1920x1080",
"IsCustom": false,
"Height": 1080,
"Width": 1920
},
"ScalingBehavior": "ScaleAndPad",
"VideoFormat": "H264",
"VideoProfile": "high",
"VideoPreset": "",
"AllowBFrames": false,
"BitDepth": "EightBit",
"VideoBitrate": 2000,
"VideoBufferSize": 4000,
"AudioFormat": "Aac",
"AudioBitrate": 192,
"AudioBufferSize": 384,
"NormalizeLoudnessMode": "Off",
"AudioChannels": 2,
"AudioSampleRate": 48,
"NormalizeFramerate": false,
"DeinterlaceVideo": true
}
]
}

subvocal

What looks like relevant errors from /config/logs/...:

2024-07-05 12:10:26.081 +00:00 [INF] ErsatzTV version 0.8.7-25604294-docker
...
2024-07-05 13:20:42.242 +00:00 [INF] Starting ts stream for channel 4
2024-07-05 13:20:42.350 +00:00 [INF] Starting HLS session for channel 4
2024-07-05 13:20:42.735 +00:00 [WRN] Error locating playout item {"$type":"UnableToLocatePlayoutItem"}. Will display error from "2024-07-05T13:20:42.3541683+00:00" to "2024-07-05T13:20:42.3541683+00:00"
2024-07-05 13:22:28.018 +00:00 [INF] Starting HLS session for channel 3
2024-07-05 13:22:28.237 +00:00 [WRN] Unexpected pixel format null may have playback issues
2024-07-05 13:24:30.938 +00:00 [INF] Terminating HLS session for channel 3
2024-07-05 13:24:31.016 +00:00 [WRN] Unable to locate session worker for channel 3
2024-07-05 13:24:33.019 +00:00 [WRN] Unable to locate session worker for channel 3
2024-07-05 13:24:36.023 +00:00 [WRN] Unable to locate session worker for channel 3
2024-07-05 13:26:44.807 +00:00 [INF] Terminating HLS session for channel 4
2024-07-05 13:27:21.521 +00:00 [INF] Starting ts stream for channel 4
2024-07-05 13:27:21.530 +00:00 [INF] Starting HLS session for channel 4
2024-07-05 13:27:21.542 +00:00 [WRN] Error locating playout item {"$type":"UnableToLocatePlayoutItem"}. Will display error from "2024-07-05T13:27:21.5312902+00:00" to "2024-07-05T13:27:21.5312902+00:00"

I saw in another thread about Channel is Offline, that it may be due to the develop version of the image. It was recommended to use the VAAPI version of the image, but like I said, I'm not hardware transcoding so I don't know if that's the right move for me.

jason

subvocal the offline image only displays when the playout doesn't contain an item for the current time. If you look at the playout details (click on the playout row in the playouts page, a new table will appear below) I think you will confirm this. The easiest way to test a channel is to add one schedule item, probably a TV show, set to dynamic start and flood playout mode (so it plays 24/7). From there, you can try more complicated schedules.