Hardware acceleration in Emby for Windows

[Yann 0]

So, here is my setup:

• Emby server running on a Synology NAS which supports transcoding. v4.6.7.0 is currently installed
• Emby Theater 3.0.15 running on an HTPC, and old intel NUC, approx. 5-6 years old, supports 4K decoding
• And there is a brand new laptop with a Ryzen 7 5800H CPU and integrated Radeon graphics, which is by far the most powerful device I own. On this machine I'm using Emby for Windows 1.1427.0 (from Windows Store) and Emby Theater 3.0.15

I selected a movie for testing. It's a 4K HEVC HDR10 movie with a bitrate of 30.7 Mb/s. It has 2 audio tracks: TRUEHD 7.1 (Dolby Atmos) and AC3 5.1

Most of the times, I play the movies on my HTPC (through Wifi 6) and this particular movie plays flawlessly with hardware acceleration. If I play the same movie from my laptop using VLC (also WIFI 6), the playback is perfect. If I use Emby Theater 3.0.15 on the laptop I also get a flawless playback. See the stats of the movie (1st picture below), they show that there is no transcoding and that hardware acceleration is active.

When running Emby for Windows, I get 2 different experiences depending on the audio track. If I select the AC3 track, I'm going to get a Playback Error stating that no compatible streams are available. If I select the Dolby Atmos track, emby is going to get stuck on a loading screen and my NAS will be working very hard in the background, and keep doing so until I restart the server. I think it's trying to transcode the movie.

I have similar issues with other movies. If I select a lower resolution movie it will playback with a very low framerate. If I look at the stats (2nd picture below) it doesn't show a lot of information.

It seems to me that Emby for Windows doesn't use hardware acceleration? Is that normal? I can't find any option related to hardware acceleration in the options.

Thanks!

 

 

Edited July 17, 2022 by Yann

[Luke 37309]

Quote

 If I select the AC3 track, I'm going to get a Playback Error stating that no compatible streams are available

Hi there, can we please look at an example of this?

Thanks !

[Yann 0]

Hi Luke, Here are the logs from Emby Server in attachment. I also joined several logs for ffmpeg that were also generated. I'm surprised by the number of logs generated within just a couple of minutes.

First I tried to play the movie with the AC3 5.1 soundtrack. See the error I got in the image in attachment.

Then I tried a few seconds later with the TrueHD 7.1 (ATMOS) soundtrack and Emby went into a perpetual black screen while my NAS was working hard.

Thanks for your support!

 

Logs EmbyServer 20220806.txt ffmpeg-directstream-0ea7af57-d361-410f-8e10-355c05a42489_1.txt ffmpeg-directstream-4d022b6a-b825-4803-91c3-5030badd9af4_1.txt ffmpeg-directstream-4d140084-5e81-4371-8bb7-bc24e7f27e72_1.txt ffmpeg-directstream-8e600bb9-01aa-4142-8e57-78d562f85a4e_1.txt ffmpeg-directstream-15a7932c-7aa1-40e6-bfda-f7adcd0f2dae_1.txt ffmpeg-directstream-37c09d2d-e6b0-44fb-9b16-e9d38daaea02_1.txt ffmpeg-directstream-336c210c-8c25-480a-ae1f-e4765134c65a_1.txt ffmpeg-directstream-e3bf4ac4-19cc-4595-b38b-e8893ad0ab74_1.txt

[Luke 37309]

Hi @Yann, I believe this is your issue:

[Yann 0]

Indeed you're right @Luke, with these settings I am now able to watch the movie with both soundtracks. Thanks!

What's interesting is that now Emby transcodes both audio and video when I use Emby for Windows. If you look back at my first post, it was able to play the video without transcoding with Emby Theater (same movie, same device, same Wifi). Not sure about the audio though. Any particular reason why the two Emby clients don't behave the same way? It seems to me that it would be better if the server does transcoding only if the client is not able to handle the media. Does Emby for Windows not have access to the same codecs than Emby Theater?

[Luke 37309]

They use different video players. The desktop app supports a broader range of formats than the store app, although they will be unified in the near future.