Doesn't auto-play next episode

[nuentes]

I've been having a weird issue with UpNext for a while. Hard to say how long, but I believe it goes back several versions. The dialog comes up just fine, and I can click both buttons, and they both work correctly if I manually click them. However, if I do nothing, the video simply ends. In the settings, I definitely have "Default action when nothing selected" correctly set to "Play".

I've tried an uninstall/reinstall of UpNext, and I've also downgraded from 1.1.2 to 1.0.5, and I have the exact same issue with either version. I was previously using the BOX skin, but I'm switching to Arctic Zephyr 2 and seeing the same issue on AZ2. All my media is added via Emby for Kodi. I have also confirmed that I do not have anything selected in the "Play next video automatically" setting for Kodi.

This logfile is from a clean Kodi boot (I still have 1.0.5 at the time of testing). I played an episode of a series. I skipped to the end of the episode and waited for the dialog to come up. For the first test episode, I selected "Watch Now" and the next episode correctly played. For the 2nd episode, I simply did nothing. The dialog came up, and the video player simply closed after the 20 seconds. Relevent part of my kodi logfile: https://paste.kodi.tv/vepepereca.kodi

[dagwieers]

This is probably a duplicate of #139 or #170, please test PR #198

[nuentes]

It looks like those commits were merged into master, so I downloaded and manually installed a zip of the master branch, and still had the same issue. I disabled and re-enabled the service just to be sure. I previously still had 1.0.5 installed (with auto-updates disabled) and now it shows 1.1.2 again.

I didn't mention it before, but this is installed on an Android device, if that's relevant.

[nuentes]

Based on updates in 198, it sounds like this is something that could potentially be resolved by the way an addon handles playback. Would it make sense to report this in the Emby forums?

[im85288]

@nuentes Emby for Kodi has two playback methods. If you selected Direct Paths (which I advise) then the behaviour is just like having your media locally installed in Kodi. The other method would use our addon integration method for showing upnext. It has all worked well in the past but not sure why it's not now. @angelblue05 does not seem to be active on Emby for Kodi so I think you'll have more success pursuing the issue here.

Can you try on a different device to see if we can rule out it being an Android issue?

[nuentes]

Direct Paths requires me to change how my media is added in Emby. Right now my media is added via local folder paths. However, in the near future, I hope to move them to NFS or SMB paths, which would allow me to switch to Direct Play.

I currently only have Kodi installed on Android Devices. I'll install it on my laptop to test.

[im85288]

Can you do me a favour and test via Embycon if your not using direct paths. If it works correctly with Embycon we know it's Emby for Kodi that needs fixing.

[nuentes]

Identical issue with Embycon.

[GOvEy1nw]

I have the same issue here.

I've just moved from Plex to Emby and have always used Kodi as the 'client' for either servers. When using Plex Kodi Connect (via it's default Add-on Path method) 'Up Next' worked pretty flawlessly, albeit with a kind of weird delay between episodes where it would pop back to the screen I started playing the episode from and hang there for a second or two, I guess while PKC prepped and loaded the next episode, but it did work all the time.

With Emby for Kodi (again using add-on path method), 'Up Next' rarely works (like it works maybe 5% of the time, but when it does work it goes straight to the next episode with no weird waiting on the selection screen etc. But again it doesn't work most of the time at all.

Also as a side note, I noticed that once when I was watching an episode of Show A, when then next up pop up appeared it was suggesting it was going to play an episode of Show B, even though there were still more episodes of show A to continue watching. So that was weird too.

I haven't tried Direct Path method as I'm aware this will reduce some usability between Kodi and Emby, so I'd prefer to keep with the Add-on path option if at all possible.

If you need any logs from me too, let me know and I'll sort some for you.

Cheers!

[nuentes]

once when I was watching an episode of Show A, when then next up pop up appeared it was suggesting it was going to play an episode of Show B, even though there were still more episodes of show A to continue watching. So that was weird too.

Yeah, now that you mention it, I've seen this several times as well. For me, it usually only has come up when Show A had no more episodes.

[GOvEy1nw]

once when I was watching an episode of Show A, when then next up pop up appeared it was suggesting it was going to play an episode of Show B, even though there were still more episodes of show A to continue watching. So that was weird too.

Yeah, now that you mention it, I've seen this several times as well. For me, it usually only has come up when Show A had no more episodes.

I think that behaviour might make a little more sense, but in my case there were definitely more episodes left, & I had the 'include already watched episodes' option ticked or whatever it's called, so strange that it happened in my case.

[dagwieers]

once when I was watching an episode of Show A, when then next up pop up appeared it was suggesting it was going to play an episode of Show B, even though there were still more episodes of show A to continue watching. So that was weird too.

This is a bug in the Up Next integration of the add-on. It is best to report this upstream as an issue in order to get this resolved. Up Next only processes what it receives, so in this case it appears to have received the wrong thing?

[im85288]

When I get the chance I'll also test. I used to use EmbyCon all the time and worked with the Dev to make sure everything worked. Recently though I use Emby for Kodi with Direct Paths (and as stated before this method simulates having a native Kodi database..which therefore means it works perfectly).

[dagwieers]

'Up Next' worked pretty flawlessly, albeit with a kind of weird delay between episodes where it would pop back to the screen I started playing the episode from and hang there for a second or two, I guess while PKC prepped and loaded the next episode, but it did work all the time.

This is caused by the delay of triggering the add-on to play the next episode (and the time it takes to start playing). We could tigger it earlier (when we near the end of the video), but risk cutting off the video too soon. We do not know how much time it will take to start the next episode so Kodi simply returns to the calling menu before the next playback is actually started.

Since v1.1.0 we support play_url playback, which makes Up Next perform playing the next episode (so avoids the call to the add-on service). This should help in a more efficient codepath.

In this master branch we add the upcoming episode to the playlist, which should make things smoother when the video finishes.

However we still depend on the time it takes to start the next episode (possibly re-authenticating). If you press "Play next" in the notification pop-up, things will be smoother, because playback is still ongoing until the next episode is started, but when the video ends, Kodi returns to the calling menu (until playback starts) and this does not offer a good user experience.

With Emby for Kodi (again using add-on path method), 'Up Next' rarely works (like it works maybe 5% of the time, but when it does work it goes straight to the next episode with no weird waiting on the selection screen etc. But again it doesn't work most of the time at all.

This requires some troubleshooting to understand what is going on. There is a bug in Kodi related to concurrent busy dialogs in Kodi (possibly fixed in xbmc/xbmc#18104) that could be happening here too.

[nuentes]

I just started thinking, and it seems like it's related to what you're discussing above. As I said, clicking "Watch Now" works, but waiting for the auto-playback fails. I know this idea is a bandaid solution, but would it be possible to detect if the filepath looks like an emby path, and if it is, UpNext waits until there is a very tiny increment of video playback remaining (say 0.01s), and then it simply replicates the "Watch Now" action to play the next episode?