Exoplayer vs VLC

[marshallwyoung 5]

I began leaning on Emby last year as it seemed to handle the 1080p & 4K a lot better then Plex has been. However, lately not so sure anymore. I have 20/20 vision and can see the difference quite distinguished between 4k and 1080p even though "they say" the human eye cannot, 

I use my 4K Fire Cube on a 4K 85" TV, Ethernet through Orbi to my Server PC (4K) with internal HDD, So my 4k chain link doesn't have a weakest link, it's solid. I've checked the ratings on everything from my PC to the Ethernet cord, distance, to the HDMI cables, everything.

Both Plex and Emby use the ExoPlayer on my Fire Cube. I just played a larger 4K movie on Plex and it direct plays just fine which is weird because my settings say max x264 with 5.1 while the file is x265 with aac7.1 ... When I went to play it in Emby, it transcodes it. I'm trying to understand why and how Emby is making that decision other then a log that shows it didn't meet whatever threshold required for direct play.

I downloaded VLC and changed the playback to use an external player (VLC) and when I play the same movies in 4K they are direct play to Emby with VLC player instead of Exo.

I guess I could review the log and figure it out why the threshold is met on one vs the other and probably it's codec related.

I've noticed that even the 1080p version of a tv show will appear crisp and sharp with the VLC player over the ExoPlayer even when both are direct play while streaming at the same bitrate and everything. I can visually see the difference and the ExoPlayer just always seems grainy or blurry around some aspects of the screen, especially during CGI scenes. Everything is up-to-date. It literally makes no sense to me why the picture quality would be any different.

Idk why the quality with the ExoPlayer just seems so poor sometimes or why it decides to transcode when it should be direct play as VLC or Plex would direct play the same file. 

Is this normal? Is there a way to improve it? For example is there a codex pack I could add or download that would help?

Edited April 9, 2023 by marshallwyoung

[GrimReaper 3314]

27 minutes ago, marshallwyoung said:

When I went to play it in Emby, it transcodes it. I'm trying to understand why and how Emby is making that decision

Post ffmpeg log created. 

[ebr 14939]

1 hour ago, marshallwyoung said:

I've noticed that even the 1080p version of a tv show will appear crisp and sharp with the VLC player over the ExoPlayer even when both are direct play while streaming at the same bitrate and everything. I can visually see the difference

Hi.  It is very possible that VLC is doing additional processing during the rendering as it is basically just a wrapper for ffmpeg but I'm really not sure exactly how it is delivering it.

[ALD76 24]

The beta releases have fixed the 7.1 aac transcoding issue.

[Luke 37131]

6 hours ago, ALD76 said:

The beta releases have fixed the 7.1 aac transcoding issue.

Hi, do you mean beta releases of Emby?

[ALD76 24]

Yes i had same issue with the Amazon release version. But is okay after this beta version.

2.0.80 (23 Aug)

• Tweak some Exo settings
• Exo fix for AAC 7.1

[marshallwyoung 5]

I had noticed that my Emby version 4.7.11.0 has ffmpeg 5.0 and the 4.8.0.21 Beta updates to 5.1, but I've just kept the stable release 4.7.11.0

My Amazon Cube has Emby 2.0.79a and to add the 2.0.80 beta I'd probably have to side-load it? Good to know about the exo updates. I don't see an exo app and in my apps, all apps are up-to-date. That Exo Player must be built into the Plex & Emby apps? Possibly, different versions? Maybe, Plex had an updated version?

Interestingly, I went to the ffmpeg site and downloaded the 6.0 version (von Neumann) on my win 10 PC running these servers, it was just an exe. file but since that time, Emby hasn't transcoded any of the 4k, it's been direct stream. That's the only change I made, that I can recall.

Edited April 11, 2023 by marshallwyoung

[Luke 37131]

3 hours ago, marshallwyoung said:

I had noticed that my Emby version 4.7.11.0 has ffmpeg 5.0 and the 4.8.0.21 Beta updates to 5.1, but I've just kept the stable release 4.7.11.0

My Amazon Cube has Emby 2.0.79a and to add the 2.0.80 beta I'd probably have to side-load it? Good to know about the exo updates. I don't see an exo app and in my apps, all apps are up-to-date. That Exo Player must be built into the Plex & Emby apps? Possibly, different versions? Maybe, Plex had an updated version?

Interestingly, I went to the ffmpeg site and downloaded the 6.0 version (von Neumann) on my win 10 PC running these servers, it was just an exe. file but since that time, Emby hasn't transcoded any of the 4k, it's been direct stream. That's the only change I made, that I can recall.

Exoplayer is built into the android apps, yes.