Hardware Transcoding Not Working on Intel Mac

[kirkb 0]

I payed for the lifetime premium membership to enable hardware transcoding and have not been able to get it to work. I've tried selecting both "Yes" as well as "Advanced" with Video Toolbox checked. FFMPEG, no matter the setting, burns through CPU not GPU. Any help here?

Thanks,

Kirk

[Luke 37064]

 

Hi there, let's look at an example. Please attach the information requested in how to report a media playback issue. Thanks!

 

[kirkb 0]

Thanks Luke. See attached.

ffmpeg-transcode-e71d2e30-0d4a-4b93-a768-71ac5c8a9ea3_1.txt embyserver.txt

hardware_detection-63809742056.txt

Edited January 19, 2023 by kirkb

[Luke 37064]

Hi, does the server dashboard recognize your Premiere status? If you try this on a video file with h264, how does that compare?

[kirkb 0]

9 minutes ago, Luke said:

Hi, does the server dashboard recognize your Premiere status? If you try this on a video file with h264, how does that compare?

I have the gold bubble next to my server name on the dashboard ... I'm guessing that indicates it recognizes me as premiere status. I don't have many h264 videos. However, I'll give it a try ... what seems odd is that it doesn't appear to be passing ffmpeg a video toolbox profile setting; unless im missing something. I would assume Emby just passes the parameters over to ffmpeg and assumes ffmpeg calls the appropriate video toolbox api's. Since im not seeing that in the ltranscode ogs (correct me if im wrong), I'm guessing there is another reason Emby isn't passing along video toolbox to ffmped. On the same server, I'm using TDARR which leverages ffmpeg and video tool box without a problem. 

[kirkb 0]

Tried a file that was in h264 format:

/Applications/EmbyServer.app/Contents/MacOS/ffmpeg -loglevel +timing -y -print_graphs_file "/Users/kirk/.config/emby-server/logs/ffmpeg-transcode-df27738e-1603-4294-9dde-fde41ab2d3b8_1graph.txt" -copyts -start_at_zero -f matroska,webm -c:v:0 h264 -i "/Volumes/Media02_HD/Movies/Bank of Dave (2023)/Bank of Dave (2023).mkv" -filter_complex "[0:0]scale@f1=width=720:height=404[f1_out0]" -map [f1_out0] -map 0:1 -sn -c:v:0 copy -b:v:0 1116000 -g:v:0 72 -maxrate:v:0 1116000 -bufsize:v:0 2232000 -profile:v:0 100 -level:v:0 30 -keyint_min:v:0 72 -r:v:0 24 -c:a:0 libmp3lame -ab:a:0 192000 -ac:a:0 2 -metadata:s:a:0 language=eng -filter:a:0 "volume=2" -disposition:a:0 default -max_delay 5000000 -avoid_negative_ts disabled -f segment -map_metadata -1 -map_chapters -1 -segment_format mpegts -segment_list "/Users/kirk/.config/emby-server/transcoding-temp/13BB7F/13BB7F.m3u8" -segment_list_type m3u8 -segment_time 00:00:03.000 -segment_start_number 0 -individual_header_trailer 0 -write_header_trailer 0 -segment_write_temp 1 "/Users/kirk/.config/emby-server/transcoding-temp/13BB7F/13BB7F_%d.ts"

Nowhere do I see it attempting hardware transcoding. I’ve attached the full log.

ffmpeg-transcode-df27738e-1603-4294-9dde-fde41ab2d3b8_1.txt

[kirkb 0]

So …. I clicked on the little gold orb on the dashboard; the one that indicates premier status. This brought me to the screen where you enter your premiere code. My code was already pre populated from the initial setup. I simply clicked save.

Now, I’m running 4 remote streams all started a minute or so apart and all down scaling quality to 1.5Mbps. Also, 1 stream is h264 the other 3mare h265. This is on a 2016 Intel Mac minI i5 with 32gb ram running Monterey. After an initial ramp in cpu on initiation of the stream, the CPU floats between 60-80% Idle. Yes mostly idle. Oddly, ffmpeg in activity monitor does not indicate any GPU usage. However, prior to today and clicking save on the premiere setting page, 2 streams would push cpu utilization to 90% and would keep it there until the stream transcode was completed. 3 stream seamed to work but would hold cpu pretty close to 100 causing obvious other lag on the server. That behavior is gone for now. Woot.

Also, flipping between hardware acceleration: yes and advanced with videotoolbox checked both seem to produce the same results performance wise. 
 

I can’t say for sure that clicking save on the premiere status setting page resolved the issue. However, it’s the only configuration change on the server that I have made recently aside from working through metadata cleanup. 
 

As a side note, I’m also getting the safari issue where playback suddenly quits out. I don’t regularly use safari unless testing something so it’s not an issue for me. However, this seems to be impacting a lot of folks and should be prioritized appropriately. 

[Luke 37064]

Hi, we are looking into this. Thanks for reporting.

[xploz1on 0]

Hello!
Has there been any update? I have a Macbook Pro (intel) too and i would love to help solve this. I have also Premiere. There once particular kind of video format that always stutters and makes it impossible to watch on my Samsung Smart TV.

When using IINA video player and checking the status, it uses videotoolbox for HW decoding. While emby doesn’t show any.

I am gonna run some tests and report back.

embyserver.txt hardware_detection-63813981070.txt

[Luke 37064]

On 3/9/2023 at 4:56 PM, xploz1on said:

Hello!
Has there been any update? I have a Macbook Pro (intel) too and i would love to help solve this. I have also Premiere. There once particular kind of video format that always stutters and makes it impossible to watch on my Samsung Smart TV.

When using IINA video player and checking the status, it uses videotoolbox for HW decoding. While emby doesn’t show any.

I am gonna run some tests and report back.

embyserver.txt 29.41 kB · 1 download hardware_detection-63813981070.txt 123.32 kB · 1 download

Hi, we are working on improving our videotoolbox support. Thanks.

[hywell 1]

Hello!

Has there been any update?

[Luke 37064]

Hi, we are looking into this. Thanks.