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Poor remote streaming performance


Mossop

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Mossop

I'm trying out Emby since I've gotten annoyed with Plex but so far it seems that remote streaming really doesn't perform very well. Both Plex and Emby are running on the same server using the same library yet streaming to a mobile device and particularly Chromecast gives an almost unwatchable stream. Lots of buffering even if I turn the bitrate down to 2Mbps, which is far less than the bandwidth I can see to my home server. Plex on the other hand is just set to auto and works seamlessly.

Is there some way I can diagnose and resolve this? I'd really like to switch to Emby but remote playback is really important to me.

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Mossop

Here are the logs from two attempts to play the same video to a Chromecast. I am currently in the US, my server is in the UK. In the second attempt I had set my playback internet quality to 720p 2Mbps but if I'm reading the logs right that didn't actually have any affect. In both cases the playback yielded stuttering audio and video making the video unacceptable to watch. In between playing the videos I ran a bandwidth test to my home network using iperf, it showed I could receive data at 29.6 Mbps.

I'm running Emby in docker on a server with an AMD A8-5500 with 16GB of RAM. Not a beefy machine but as I say Plex runs on the same server and playback of the same video is flawless.

 

embyserver.txt ffmpeg-transcode-58fca357-e295-40a0-aa6c-60999551ff98_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-b432a577-8276-49ba-b82a-86c8f2159330_1.txt

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Hi, for starters I would try setting the h264 preset back to default.

When you did the speediest to your home network was on the same port that emby server is using? That's important because you could be getting hit with isp throttling on either side of the connection.

A couple options to try and mitigate that are setting up ssl on your server so that you can use https, and or using the same router port that Plex is using.

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Mossop
1 hour ago, Luke said:

Hi, for starters I would try setting the h264 preset back to default.

When you did the speediest to your home network was on the same port that emby server is using? That's important because you could be getting hit with isp throttling on either side of the connection.

A couple options to try and mitigate that are setting up ssl on your server so that you can use https, and or using the same router port that Plex is using.

I couldn't see a "default" for the h264 preset so I chose "Auto" and that had the same issue. I tried doing a few speed tests to the same ports as emby and plex run. Both consistently came in over 14Mbps, usually 20Mbps.

It would be a bit of work for me to get SSL working, why would that help? I would generally expect SSL to add overhead to both bandwidth and CPU usage.

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seanbuff
7 minutes ago, Mossop said:

It would be a bit of work for me to get SSL working, why would that help? I would generally expect SSL to add overhead to both bandwidth and CPU usage.

Adding SSL can be a way of preventing your ISP from inspecting your traffic, and therefore throttling you. Plex does this by default given their reliance on centralised servers, with Emby you host your own server and therefore must secure it yourself.

There are a few different methods and quite a few helpful guides here in the community forum:

https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/81404-ssl-made-easy/

https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/81476-ssl-made-easier-with-a-reverse-proxy/

https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/75471-step-by-step-for-ssl/

 

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Mossop

I had done this with a reverse proxy previously (using traefik) but with the issues I assumed pulling that out would improve things. I just installed a basic letsencrypt cert so the connection is direct to emby with no reverse proxy and I'm still seeing the same problems.

 

Edited by Mossop
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On 4/16/2022 at 12:29 AM, Mossop said:

I had done this with a reverse proxy previously (using traefik) but with the issues I assumed pulling that out would improve things. I just installed a basic letsencrypt cert so the connection is direct to emby with no reverse proxy and I'm still seeing the same problems.

 

@Mossop can you try using a different public facing port to see if that helps?

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  • 3 weeks later...
Mossop

I'm travelling again so I could test this. Now 90% of the time I try to cast something to the chromecast I just see the spinning blue progress ring and it never starts playing. The few times it has started it did play ok. Plex is still performing flawlessly in this case.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 5/14/2022 at 12:59 PM, Mossop said:

I'm travelling again so I could test this. Now 90% of the time I try to cast something to the chromecast I just see the spinning blue progress ring and it never starts playing. The few times it has started it did play ok. Plex is still performing flawlessly in this case.

Hi @Mossop can we please look at an example?

Thanks.

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