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Author Topic: JRemote stopped playing audio when transcode is on  (Read 1324 times)

Mike Foran

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JRemote stopped playing audio when transcode is on
« on: November 17, 2018, 10:14:31 am »

I've had years of generally flawless playback but I just came across a situation where JRemote will not play audio on my Apple devices if the 'Transcode' option is set to 'On' with the general message "Audio Streaming Error..." This happens on all the Apple devices in our home running JRemote (4 iPhones of various generations and an iPad). We don't stream to the devices often so I'm not sure where this issue was introduced, but it would have happened in the past couple months. The only new introduction to my system in that time was upgrading to MC24. It's currently at v.24.0.55. My JRemote apps are all up to date. Any ideas?
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JimH

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Re: JRemote stopped playing audio when transcode is on
« Reply #1 on: November 17, 2018, 10:51:58 am »

Check the conversion settings.  It may be converting to something Apple won't play.
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Mike Foran

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Re: JRemote stopped playing audio when transcode is on
« Reply #2 on: November 17, 2018, 12:36:26 pm »

Check the conversion settings.  It may be converting to something Apple won't play.

Thanks Jim. My understanding is that the transcode settings are on the JRemote app, not in MC. And the app only gives quality options, not codec options. I can't seem to find anywhere in MC options to set the transcoder used for JRemote.
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Mike Foran

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Re: JRemote stopped playing audio when transcode is on
« Reply #3 on: November 17, 2018, 01:47:22 pm »

Following up, I have done some more debugging and the issue is definitely with some setting in the current library. Here's what I have tested and the results:

- I logged on to a library from a different computer (also running v.24) and it streamed to the iPhone fine with transcoding enabled

- From the main server, I closed v.24 and ran v.23, and it streamed to the iPhone fine with transcoding enabled

- I backed up the v.24 library and restored from an earlier version from a month ago, and it streamed to the iPhone fine with transcoding enabled

- I restored the recent v.24 library and streaming with transcoding gave me the error.


This indicates to me that it's something in the current settings but I cannot figure out what it is. All my transcoding options haven't changed, and I'm not even sure which transcoding options relate to JRemote anyway. All trascoding options I can find are set to MP3 'if needed.' I switched them to 'Always' just to test, and it did not fix it.

Any ideas?
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Mike Foran

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Re: JRemote stopped playing audio when transcode is on
« Reply #4 on: November 19, 2018, 07:25:21 am »

Well I didn't solve this issue but I was able to use the settings from the earlier backup with the database of the more recent backup. So I had to re-set up some zones and changes I had made, but things are working again at least.

I would LOVE to know what option in the preferences controls JRemote transcoding so if this happens again I can fix it.
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bob

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Re: JRemote stopped playing audio when transcode is on
« Reply #5 on: November 19, 2018, 01:44:30 pm »

Well I didn't solve this issue but I was able to use the settings from the earlier backup with the database of the more recent backup. So I had to re-set up some zones and changes I had made, but things are working again at least.

I would LOVE to know what option in the preferences controls JRemote transcoding so if this happens again I can fix it.
Transcoding when using JRemote to play on the iDevice is ONLY controlled by the options in JRemote itself.

If transcoding is not working in that situation the MC service the content is either missing the mp3 encoder plugin, the material to be transcoded isn't available at the time or there is an issue with the temp directory on the server MC.
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Mike Foran

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Re: JRemote stopped playing audio when transcode is on
« Reply #6 on: November 19, 2018, 08:57:37 pm »

Transcoding when using JRemote to play on the iDevice is ONLY controlled by the options in JRemote itself.

If transcoding is not working in that situation the MC service the content is either missing the mp3 encoder plugin, the material to be transcoded isn't available at the time or there is an issue with the temp directory on the server MC.

This is my understanding as well. However, all of those parameters were the same between the working library and the non-working library. The non-working library was transcoding fine to Panel, but not to JRemote. The non-working library was working fine just two weeks before when I took a trip, and I can't think of a significant thing I changed in that time. I renamed a DSP profile from "Desktop" to "Default" but otherwise the profile was identical, my options were the same, and the library only had new content added to it. I rebooted everything. I turned off firewalls. I can't figure it out. Ghosts in the machine.

It shall remain a mystery unless it rears its head again. I've restored everything to it's former state and the workaround has taken less effort than a solution. If it happens again I'll post it.
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bob

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Re: JRemote stopped playing audio when transcode is on
« Reply #7 on: November 20, 2018, 08:31:29 am »

This is my understanding as well. However, all of those parameters were the same between the working library and the non-working library. The non-working library was transcoding fine to Panel, but not to JRemote. The non-working library was working fine just two weeks before when I took a trip, and I can't think of a significant thing I changed in that time. I renamed a DSP profile from "Desktop" to "Default" but otherwise the profile was identical, my options were the same, and the library only had new content added to it. I rebooted everything. I turned off firewalls. I can't figure it out. Ghosts in the machine.

It shall remain a mystery unless it rears its head again. I've restored everything to it's former state and the workaround has taken less effort than a solution. If it happens again I'll post it.
Were you using zone switching or zone linking when it wasn't working?
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Mike Foran

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Re: JRemote stopped playing audio when transcode is on
« Reply #8 on: November 20, 2018, 08:40:37 am »

Were you using zone switching or zone linking when it wasn't working?

Nope. I have some zones, but none are linked and I don't use automatic zone switching.
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ZenOli

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Re: JRemote stopped playing audio when transcode is on
« Reply #9 on: November 22, 2018, 05:36:44 am »

I am not sure if this could be relevent information here, but on Android, transcoding to JRemote can give errors if the conversion cache directory on the server contains spaces (for example if your user login on the server contains spaces). This can be solved by setting another directory in JRiver's options.
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bob

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Re: JRemote stopped playing audio when transcode is on
« Reply #10 on: November 26, 2018, 08:51:10 am »

I am not sure if this could be relevent information here, but on Android, transcoding to JRemote can give errors if the conversion cache directory on the server contains spaces (for example if your user login on the server contains spaces). This can be solved by setting another directory in JRiver's options.
That's interesting. On what platform are you running MC?
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ZenOli

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Re: JRemote stopped playing audio when transcode is on
« Reply #11 on: November 27, 2018, 03:44:43 am »

That's interesting. On what platform are you running MC?

This conclusion came from exchanges I had with my brother who had issue this issue with JRemote.
I took a look at the conclusions from then. The server computer was running Windows 10 and I believe MC22 or MC23. The issue came from the user name which had spaces and accents 'é' (in fact I would say that accents are more likely to cause the issue than spaces).
In that particular case, Web Gizmo also threw an error "file not found"
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