Playback delays to start

Video Playback
#1

During the past month or so, I have noticed that when I start playing a file, initial playback may delay for 30 secs up to a minute (white circle spinning). After this initial delay however, playback and all other functions (rewind, fast forward, chapter skip etc) work fine for the duration of the file. While this behavior is easily reproducible, it does not happen every time I select a new file to be played but appears to be random.

This affects both my Apple 4K TVs, its a newly introduced bug (about a month or so), no settings have been changed to the NAS or the clients (apart from the normal push updates to the latest software releases on all devices).

My video collection is stored on a Synology NAS (with HDD sleep timeout disabled), accessed through Gigabit Ethernet to two Apple TV 4K players via NFS and played directly by Infuse 6 (no Emby/Jellyfin integration). All devices are running the latest versions of software.

Can somebody please help me?

#2

It really sounds like your server is taking some time to respond. Any chance a push update enabled some sleep or hibernate function?

A test would be to run some other app and access your server by playing a file there before you start infuse and then immediately launch Infuse and play your video and see if you see the delays.

Also one thing that may help is to make sure you have the MAC address of the server in the settings of the share in Infuse. That may help.

#3

Thanks for getting back to me, NC_Bullseye

It really isn’t HDD sleep related. I start watching one show, it ends, I navigate immediately to watch another show (stored on the same share) and I get the spinning white circle again.

I have also confirmed that the server side is ok by trying a Vero4K client running Kodi. No delays there starting files from this very same share.

Is there some kind of diagnostic or debug file I can send you guys to have a look?

#4

As to watching one show and going right to the next and experiencing the delay would still be normal with a server hibernating. Infuse will buffer a show so it may have buffered the entire show and not touched the server to keep it awake. I have a Synology NAS that does have the sleep function enabled and it will go to sleep mid movie most of the time. It takes about 15 to 30 seconds to spin back up and I’ve gotten used to it. If I hit the NAS from say VLC and start a video to wake it just before it works without delay.

There are diagnostics that my shed some light but that would fall into Firecores realm. It may take a bit for them to get to it but if you go to settings in Infuse and scroll down to the bottom there’s a button to send diagnostics. When you do that you can post the 5 digit code here. I’d still recommend trying to work it out here since things may be a settings issue.

What do you have the cache setting on in the Infuse Settings?

#5

In the Settings / Playback section try changing the Streaming Cache setting from Auto to Legacy and see if that makes a difference.

When set to Auto Infuse will try to read as much of the video into a local cache which helps to reduce the impact of network issues. It could be the time taken to do the initial read which is causing issues for you.

Legacy uses a much smaller buffer, so it may solve your startup time but possibly introduce glitches while watching the video.

#6

GMTA :wink:

#7

Thank you both guys for reaching out;

The NFS share under “Advanced” did not have the MAC address entered, so I entered that. I also changed the Streaming Cache setting from Auto to Legacy but still did not solve the issue. I select a few shows at random, they start immediately. I stop and select an episode from another show; sometimes it also starts immediately, sometimes it takes 30 secs up to a minute to start.

#8

One other thing I am suspicious of is the new (ish) background app refresh in the ATV settings. I had some issues early on with things dragging in Infuse on occasion and I went to this setting in the ATV and turned off everything but Infuse. I didn’t seem to have any problems after that. I’m guessing that when Infuse stops pulling in a file the ATV may have seen it as a free time to let another app update in the background and when you go back it has to let the app gracefully stop it’s update and that may be the delay. Just a guess though.

#9

I’ve reproduced the problem; waited till the file started playing, immediately stopped it afterwasrds and then generated a diagnostics ticket. The code is X0Z9F. I’d appreciate it if someone from the product team could take a look.

#10

Just personal curiosity, did you see what apps are doing background refresh?

#11

Only Infuse and Podcasts. I have very few non-stock apps installed since my ATVs are used almost exclusively for Infuse movie watching. Even taking this hiccup into consideration, this is a seriously amazing piece of software.

Coming from the kodi world, would I prefer more features and UI customization? Sure; in my opinion the UI leaves a lot to be desired. But this thing just works! And to fully appreciate what an amazing job the developers have done, one has to only try the competitor products…Lifetime subscription? Best money I ever spent!

#12

Is this still an issue for you in the current 6.5.5 release?

Does this affect playback of other files after the initial issue?

IE Does it happen once per file, or once per session?

#13

Hi James,

Yes it still occurs in 6.5.5.

The issue is not limited to a single file and it appears randomly. To reproduce, I start watching any random episode of a show; it may play immediately or it may be stuck in the white spinning circle for 30 seconds or more. Regardless of the initial delay, as soon as the episode starts, it will never stutter, never freeze, even if I hit f/fwd or reverse.

I have noticed that the issue randomly occurs only if I select episodes from another series (another folder) in the NFS share. It doesn’t seem to be reproducible when I select random episodes from the same season of the show. All series are stored under the same NFS share and are of course on the same NAS.

I’ve reproduced the issue again and submitted diagnostic code Q9PT4.

James, if this consumes too much of your time and resources, it’s not a big deal for me. I only mentioned it since it started happening out of the sudden a few releases back and thought it might be easy to check and fix from your end. I’m just worried that since we don’t know what the root cause is, it might introduce additional problems in the future (freezing in the middle of an episode, issue appearing every time, even when the next sequential episode of a series starts streaming, etc). For the time being, it doesn’t happen every time; it is indeed a minor annoyance, but after 30 secs or so, the movie/series starts and you simply forget it.

Best Regards,

Nikos.

#14

Hi,

Jumping onto this for a similar issue that brought me here. My Infuse exclusively uses a Plex library. Over the past couple weeks, possibly up to a month, increasingly when I go to play a file it black screens or spin wheels for 30-60 seconds until often producing an error that content failed to load.

I thought maybe the issue was Plex, but using the Plex app on Apple TV or iOS or Web never has any delay problem. It is now happening with Infuse almost 75% of the time I try and play something.

The only fix has been to force quit Infuse and then always the next play attempt works as it should. Last night, after twice a file wouldn’t play, just going back to the ATV Home Screen, then going back into Infuse fixed the issue.

After the failed two play attempts mentioned above I uploaded a diagnostics: S0NTE

Hopefully that’s helpful @James

As always - Thanks!

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#15

This happened again last night, and I was curious if there was a way to re-connect Infuse with Plex (without fully deleting and re-adding). So after a file failed to load twice, I went to Settings > Shares. As soon as I clicked on Shares, the screen never loaded, Infused just disappeared/crashed and I went back to the ATV Home Screen.

When the app was relaunched it worked perfectly again, content played first time. Just thought I’d add in case in illuminates some issue with Infuse talking to Plex which trying to bring up Shares in the moment also poked at.

#16

I think I’ve found the issue with this one! My library consists of two different NFS shares, residing on two different servers. I had the one server shutdown, since I was watching content only residing on the other server. I don’t know why Infuse needs to periodically query all the shares prior to starting a stream when the content I want to access is on the running server, but ever since I brought the other server back online, the delays seem to have disappeared!

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#17

Thanks for following up!

Connections to saved shares (even inactive ones) are part of Infuse’s indexing routine, so depending on the type of response Infuse gets when attempting to access these shares can impact how quickly it determines if they are available or not.

#18

I am glad I found this thread & your suggestions. I have been having similar issues with playback from my Plex server lately. Randomly the file would either play right away, or the spinning white wheel. Sometimes I would get a failure after spinning for about 30 seconds and have to click play on the file again, which would often then play right away. This behaviour was becoming annoying.

After seeing you mention the background app refresh ATV settings, I checked mine which had Infuse, Podcasts & Netflix. I turned it off completely. So far this seems to have cured the spinning wheel. All files I test with so far start immediately. Thanks for the suggestion!

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#19

You’re welcome and thanks for the follow up! :+1:

#21

Thanks for following up!

We’re going to look into this a bit and see if we can avoid delays like this when attempting to access inactive shares.

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