Direct UNC Path being removed?

[Gernash 19]

I have been playing with the Synology build (Beta) and have noticed in testing with my Media center version that only Emby for media center and Emby Theater seem to use UNC pathing, otherwise all other clients get the transcoding treatment. 

 

Is this PLEX like solution(the main reason I don't use plex) going to be where Emby is heading or will decoding on local hardware come back again (ie. android app,web browser with embedded playback with 3rd party player)?

 

The reason I ask is having it on a NAS serving up files to the client is low power/processor usage(i.e. Synology). Building a mega transcoding server to cope with 5-10 clients transcoding at 1080P is a massive cost and expense to run in a 24/7 environment.

 

Or have I missed a tickbox somewhere that makes all clients use UNC paths rather then transcoding or disable transcoding entirely?

 

 

[deepseth 10]

Have you checked what's actually being transcoded? I've noticed with my Plex most of my devices get transcoded streams, but it's only the audio that's being transcoded, the video is direct play, so the CPU hit is negligible and there's no drop in video quality.

 

Additionally, container format support can result in a need to repackage the media without transcoding anything. e.g. if you're trying to play an mkv on an appletv, it needs to be repackaged into mp4. No media transcoding occurs, but the media still needs to go via the server to repackage which can result in a IO and CPU hit on your server depending on the hardware.

 

The only way to ensure you always get UNC paths for all your media is to ensure your media is pre-packaged in a format that the majority of your devices support natively, and potentially transcode all your audio down to the lowest common denominator too.

 

Or get a more powerful device to run emby server on. You can pick up a 1st gen core i5 laptop for £130 on eBay. Lowish idle power consumption, significant performance boost, small form factor and built in UPS!

[Vidman 589]

I believe Luke mentioned adding samba support to the android app so that will be able to use direct paths sometime in the future, but I believe it's only useable when on the same LAN.

[deepseth 10]

And again, that'll only happen if the media (video codec, audio codec, container) you're playing is supported for native playback on the android app. I imagine the range of formats will be higher on the android app than on the ios app, but there still may not be full coverage compared to the full range the server supports depending on how that all works (is it just ffmpeg on the backend on android?)

[Gernash 19]

If you use  Emby for media center and Emby Theater from any PC there is no Transcoding at all I think they use the VLC player now. The android app and browser get stream. The early version of android used UNC path when he was coding for his Nexus 7 but most people own SHIT er less powerful devices and cannot hardware decode. 

 

Drop in quality is present if you do 1080p streaming you get a grainy "film" effect as the highest setting is 1080p 30Mbps so it needs to transcode the video, irrespective of the container type.

Emby for media center and Emby Theater do not have this issue

 

It would be nice if there was an option to decode locally rather than the generic Home brand streaming service (which will suit most minimal usage end users)

My question was more to devs as to whether it's an end of an era for unc and local decoding or will it be back (was there in older versions prior to decoder simplification).

Edited June 30, 2015 by Gernash

[Luke 36992]

that's not the goal. it's our intention to have every app play in the most efficient way possible. when there's an oppurtunity to improve that, we will.

 

and correction - the android app has never had unc support

[Gernash 19]

With windows 10 coming out and media center being removed. I was looking at an Android tv device like Nvidia Shield(or a myriad of other android devices with hardware decoding) to run Emby client and be able to play HD content (TV/Movie) in multiple rooms simultaneously. At the moment I'm doing this with a win7mce for the TV room and xbox 360s (but with big TV being cheap I need to up up the playback resolution)

 

Most Cheap Smart TV's would struggle decoding locally so streaming is best.

 

Maybe I should change my question - does the Android TV app support UNC/local network playback and if not is there any thought in providing HW decoding version on google play for specific devices like Tegra, PowerVR G6230,Mali-T764 3D GPUs.(I have not played with the Android TV, only the android google play one)

[Deathsquirrel 741]

Maybe I should change my question - does the Android TV app support UNC/local network playback and if not is there any thought in providing HW decoding version on google play for specific devices like Tegra, PowerVR G6230,Mali-T764 3D GPUs.(I have not played with the Android TV, only the android google play one)

 

The Android TV app will directly play whatever the local default media player on that device says it can handle.  Anything else is transcoded to a format the device says it supports.  What the device says it supports will vary by device.  As far as I'm aware the shield has relatively wide codec support when compared to other android tv devices but it's not comprehensive like a PC-based client.

 

There is also a Kodi client for android TV that can direct play and bitstream formats that aren't necessarily licensed on that platform.  That requires using a Kodi client though so that option is dependent on you tolerating that product.