Emby UHD Playback Recommendations

[FlameRed 2]

Please forgive me if I posted this in the wrong section as I am a newbie!

I am having difficulties with UHD 4K playback and would like some guidance on Emby recommended setup.

First, my setup. I am running Emby on a Asustor Lockerstor 4 NAS. I found the best result was running Emby directly on a Samsung QLED 4K Q80C Series TV.

I have tried converting the UHD into a MKV container with various settings. In all cases, when played back, I get buffering or shuttering, picture pauses, or spinning torrent.

In all cases, when I try to playback the converted MKV container on the NAS on a windows PC they play flawlessly so the conversions seem to be ok. DNLA does not work as it seems to always say some cryptic message about the encoding being incompatible. I would prefer Emby anyway.

The Samsung built-in Emby app has the least buffering. I have tried payback using Emby on two different model Roku devices and they buffer even worse. I tried other TVs, including a LG and another Samsung and they are about the same buffering.

I definitely determined that if I turn off closed captioning, the buffering is less, but it is still bad without captions.

I have been searching for days and have seen posts saying to stay away from TrueHD.

I understand that for full support, I should post logs from the playback to get at the root of the problem. But before I do that, what are the Emby recommendations for 4k UDH playback and I will try converting to that first and then post logs. I would think there is little point posting logs for settings that are not optimal.

Thank you in advance!

[Luke 37068]

Hi @FlameRedwhat kind of bitrates are these files? Can we please look at an example?

How to Report a Problem

Thanks !

[FlameRed 2]

Hello,

Here is are two samples where I could use some advice in regards to playback of a 4K video.

 

In the first log file, ffmpeg-transcode-3166ed1f-69a0-492d-a855-159d22a5c85f_1.txt - I had subtitles turned on (English) and in all cases of 4K media, that seems to really cause it to throttle, shutter, whatever you call it.

 

In the second log file, ffmpeg-transcode-ac5e1260-925b-44db-9568-59ec02e05d70_1.txt I had subtitles turned off, and it throttled (spinning torrent) and after the video came back, there was no sound at all.

 

Any advice would be so much appreciated!

embyserver.txt ffmpeg-transcode-3166ed1f-69a0-492d-a855-159d22a5c85f_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-ac5e1260-925b-44db-9568-59ec02e05d70_1.txt

[Jägs 72]

Luke (et al.) should be able to help, but just to let you know, I run UHD/4K rips on my older Asustor AS5304T, which has Intel Celeron 4105, and it handles the rips just fine.  I suspect it's a limitation of your choice of streamer (e.g., transcoding TrueHD/DTS:X).  Also, is your TV/streamer connected via WiFi or ethernet?  If you can do the latter, it might help.

I primarily use an Apple TV 4K—only because my Nvidia Shield stopped working properly—and even with transcoding the audio, 4K plays back flawlessly.

[rbjtech 4266]

18 hours ago, FlameRed said:

Hello,

Here is are two samples where I could use some advice in regards to playback of a 4K video.

 

In the first log file, ffmpeg-transcode-3166ed1f-69a0-492d-a855-159d22a5c85f_1.txt - I had subtitles turned on (English) and in all cases of 4K media, that seems to really cause it to throttle, shutter, whatever you call it.

 

In the second log file, ffmpeg-transcode-ac5e1260-925b-44db-9568-59ec02e05d70_1.txt I had subtitles turned off, and it throttled (spinning torrent) and after the video came back, there was no sound at all.

 

Any advice would be so much appreciated!

embyserver.txt 71.22 kB · 0 downloads ffmpeg-transcode-3166ed1f-69a0-492d-a855-159d22a5c85f_1.txt 124.85 kB · 0 downloads ffmpeg-transcode-ac5e1260-925b-44db-9568-59ec02e05d70_1.txt 100.02 kB · 0 downloads

Your playback device does not support PGS type subtitles - and thus emby is needing to transcode the 4K video.    Even with hardware acceleration, it appears to not have the power to do this in realtime (being a NAS) and thus this results in unwatchable playback.

I would suggest you aquire the text (SRT) based subtitles for the file instead (using emby/other means) and then use those to playback.

Also note that being a Samsung TV - it will not support Dolby Vision - but 'should' fallback to HDR10 as this file has HDR10 fallback.

I'd also suggest using the 'Compability Track' - which is Dolby Digital 5.1 

Finally, for high bitrate 4K Remux's (such as this file) - your client needs either a very good wireless signal (modern wifi) - a 100Mbit Ethernet wired connection 'may' be causing issues as it may not have sufficient peak bandwidth.  1000Mbit (from a Shield Pro etc) is perfectly fine.

You want both the Video and Audio to be 'Direct' where possible - use 'Stats for nerds' to check for this when you play the file back.   Look for this in the client settings.

In summary, you are asking emby to playback the most demanding of files - but you don't have the optimal equipment to play it back, nor convert it.

 

Edited November 26, 2023 by rbjtech

[FlameRed 2]

7 hours ago, rbjtech said:

Finally, for high bitrate 4K Remux's (such as this file) - your client needs either a very good wireless signal (modern wifi) - a 100Mbit Ethernet wired connection 'may' be causing issues as it may not have sufficient peak bandwidth.  1000Mbit (from a Shield Pro etc) is perfectly fine.

 

Bingo.

A speed test indicated the TV was receiving 76mb WiFi and while 5gz WiFi could get over 100mb, I ran a cat-6 cable and now the shuttering is gone!

I will experiment with the CC per your recommendations.

Thank you!