Keeps transcoding channel after I stop watching

Nik

I'm running the latest version of ETV on Windows 11. When watching via the latest version of the Jellyfin Roku app, it continues to transcode the channel after I stop watching it.

Sometimes, it will have multiple channels transcoding at once with no one logged into Jellyfin

Going in manually to ETV Channels, when I stop it, it restarts itself a few seconds later, but usually stays off once I hit stop a second time

I've checked the mobile Admin control panel of my Jellyfin Server while this is happening and it does not list me as watching it, whereas it does when I am actively watching a channel

This would be less of a problem, if I could kill transcoding from my phone; currently the machine it's running on is headless, in another part of my apartment, so it's a very inconvenient to manually kill it

jason

This is discussed a bit here https://github.com/ErsatzTV/ErsatzTV/issues/2585

TLDR: it is a Jellyfin bug, not an ErsatzTV bug. I have not been able to reproduce using HLS Segmenter streaming mode, only MPEG-TS streaming mode, so switching may help your scenario, too.

Nik

jason thanks for such a fast response! I will try this

Nik

Now I'm getting

"Error During Playback
There was an error retrieving data for this item from the server."

Restarting ETV & Jellyfin didn't help. The good news is, it didn't keep trying to encode indefinitely this time

jason

Make sure you are on the latest ETV release v25.9.0.

Nik

jason I am, yes. The playback Error seems to have resolved itself, but changing the streaming mode seems to have made the original problem worse

Same issue as my OP, only this time, I could hear the drive spinning even after the Channels menu no longer said any of the channels were on. Task Manager said an Ffmpeg process was running and it didn't stop until I killed ETV and Jellyfin

There was no one logged into Jellyfin and all of my files are Direct Play compatible, so it had to be related to ETV somehow-- either Jellyfin or ETV continuing to transcode even after ETV marked it stopped.

I am able to access the ETV dashboard on my phone now, which will help tremendously, so I'm going to switch back to the original streaming settings and hopefully I can actually stop it from my phone

jason

My guess is that you have Settings > FFmpeg > Extract Embedded (Text) Subtitles enabled, which will cause ffmpeg to work in the background, extracting text subtitles on upcoming playout items so they are ready to use.

jason

Also, you need to refresh the M3U in Jellyfin when changing the channel streaming mode. The symptoms still sound like the original Jellyfin bug (where it keeps playing the channel in the background even after all clients have disconnected).

Nik

jason Subtitle extract was off, but I hadn't realized that I needed to update the M3U after changing to HLS Segementer. Completely uninstalled and reinstalled the channel in Jellyfin and it's working perfectly now! Thank you so much! I really love the app