Problems with 4K playback. Transcoding Issue?

[jprobins007 21]

I am having trouble playing 4K movies on my Samsung 4k TV through the Samsung Emby App.  My Emby server runs on a QNAP TS251+ NAS.  I believe it may be a transcoding issue since the video appears to play just fine on PC using Emby Theater.  However,  changing the transcoding settings seems to have no effect on the playback issue on the Samsung TV. Frankly, I know next to nothing about transcoding.  Any help would be appreciated.

P.S.-Audio seems fines, but the video basically shows 6 pixelated screens.

[jprobins007 21]

I meant to add that the videos play fine through Windows Media Player, So, I do not think the files themselves are corrupt.

[Happy2Play 8217]

 

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

 

[jprobins007 21]

Thank you for the link.  I am attaching several logs from this time frame.  There are also many more, but I suspect most are repetitive of my trying the same things over and over again.,

embyserver.txt ffmpeg-transcode-5d3b6896-1853-42a1-b55c-f949045bd3cb_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-1fef79e5-a8ad-4110-96af-c73f9d1f4d9d_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-08ab3dc3-206a-40b9-a804-6e0e06e194ad_1.txt ffmpeg-remux-78fee048-a6de-4f4a-8ea5-a87aaa96a0db_1.txt ffmpeg-remux-8e4b4701-c17c-4244-b2f7-8cc5e05f4394_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-ab46bd9b-298a-4d9a-9ba9-62461051b903_1.txt

[Happy2Play 8217]

Not sure what is going on with your "Despicable Me_t00.mkv" file as the FF log show all tracks and the Samsung log shows it only has a audio track.

Honestly don't know the Samsung app but can't you select a supported audio track before playback to Direct Play?

TranscodeReasons=AudioCodecNotSupported

18:02:38.679 Stream mapping:
18:02:38.679   Stream #0:0 -> #0:0 (copy)
18:02:38.679   Stream #0:1 -> #0:1 (truehd (native) -> ac3 (native))

Devs will have to comment more but thought if audio needs converted, video would be also with HEVC.

@SamES

 

Edited March 19, 2023 by Happy2Play

[jprobins007 21]

OMG!! You have saved my marriage.  Just kidding, but I am very grateful.  I changed the audio playback to a format I knew was supported, and the movie played perfectly. You are awesome.

 

Jim

[SamES 888]

7 hours ago, jprobins007 said:

OMG!! You have saved my marriage.  Just kidding, but I am very grateful.  I changed the audio playback to a format I knew was supported, and the movie played perfectly. You are awesome.

 

Jim

Yes, this is the right solution, avoid TrueHD if your server is underpowered to avoid playback issues.

[jprobins007 21]

I recently added the Harry Potter movies in 4K. The audio codecs available are DTS-HD MA 7.1, DTS 5.1, and AC3 Stereo. Oddly, the AC3 audio includes a voiceover narration. I am not really sure what that is for, but I do not see an option to turn it off.  Using either DTS codec, the movie will play for 10 to 15 minutes, and then start to pixelate. From the earlier discussion, I am guessing that this is a processing power issue.  Is there any reason to think that is incorrect?

I run Emby on a QNAP TS-251+ NAS, with a Celereon J1900 processor. Does it make sense that that would be underpowered to run these? Or is it likely something else is going on?

I am toying with upgrading to a QNAP TVS-h674, which has a Core™ i5-12400 processor.  So, a significant step up in processing power. Presuming it is a processing power issue, it is likely this would solve it?

As an aside, I note that other 4K movies I have play fine with DTS 5.1 codec.

[jprobins007 21]

Some relevant logs.

ffmpeg-remux-c3b54417-fa8f-4bdf-9b10-1bab9a2e2cf8_1.txt ffmpeg-remux-72b21f38-44b1-45f2-a008-8913d7d5fb76_1.txt ffmpeg-remux-b0ee39fe-3f5d-4656-963e-1ddcd02da46f_1.txt ffmpeg-remux-48ca3b5f-eeec-4c69-b62f-079b42dd5b54_1.txt ffmpeg-remux-ff012f7d-e634-4b16-9d5a-e26881190a80_1.txt ffmpeg-remux-a06abaed-23f9-44d2-8264-a2565a8c6833_1.txt embyserver.txt

[SamES 888]

12 hours ago, jprobins007 said:

I recently added the Harry Potter movies in 4K. The audio codecs available are DTS-HD MA 7.1, DTS 5.1, and AC3 Stereo. Oddly, the AC3 audio includes a voiceover narration. I am not really sure what that is for, but I do not see an option to turn it off.  Using either DTS codec, the movie will play for 10 to 15 minutes, and then start to pixelate. From the earlier discussion, I am guessing that this is a processing power issue.  Is there any reason to think that is incorrect?

I run Emby on a QNAP TS-251+ NAS, with a Celereon J1900 processor. Does it make sense that that would be underpowered to run these? Or is it likely something else is going on?

I am toying with upgrading to a QNAP TVS-h674, which has a Core™ i5-12400 processor.  So, a significant step up in processing power. Presuming it is a processing power issue, it is likely this would solve it?

As an aside, I note that other 4K movies I have play fine with DTS 5.1 codec.

It may resolve, but it might not.  You also have to consider the TV performance to process the hls stream, network, etc.  Bottom line is that there are no guarantees, but the performance should be much better than the J1900.  If it is playing now, but breaking up after a period of time then you would expect that the i5 should give you the performance you are looking for.

You can always convert the DTS track to AC3 offline if you are only talking about a few files that are missing an AC3 track (without commentary)

Edited March 27, 2023 by SamES

[jprobins007 21]

Thanks, Sam.  I am confident the TV is not the bottleneck.  The idea on converting the DTS track is an excellent one as it is only showing up on the HP 4K movies. No guarantees, of course.  Just trying to make the most informed guess.

I also played the disks on my 4K Bluray player on the same TV to make sure there was not an issue with the disks themselves.  They played perfectly.  However, I did notice that video quality was, in fact, better than via Emby.  Admittedly, it is the different between fantastic and mind blowing. I am thinking this might also be due to a processing power deficiency of the server.  Is this a reasonable assumption?

 

[SamES 888]

6 hours ago, jprobins007 said:

I also played the disks on my 4K Bluray player on the same TV to make sure there was not an issue with the disks themselves.  They played perfectly.  However, I did notice that video quality was, in fact, better than via Emby.  Admittedly, it is the different between fantastic and mind blowing. I am thinking this might also be due to a processing power deficiency of the server.  Is this a reasonable assumption?

If it is only converting the audio, then Emby should have been in DirectStream playback mode (so the video should be untouched).  It is most likely that the Bluray player is doing some image processing, sharpening, etc to enhance the image.

Having said that, if you are playing directly from the disc vs a ripped file, then I would expect the disc to be better as the file would probably have some compression depending on how it was created.