Transcoding isn't working on M2 Ultra Mac Studio

[dreamxwarden 0]

As the photo and logs indicate, hardware transcoding isn't working, no matter what playback quality I chose.

I have valid Emby Premiere subscription, and already enabled VideoToolbox H.264 in transcoding settings.

embyserver.txt ffmpeg-transcode-b1ff3c14-58aa-414a-aa4b-1ee5ccdbad3d_1.txt

Edited May 17 by dreamxwarden
minor change of description

[sa2000 144]

@dreamxwardenIs there a hardware detection log as well ?  filename: "hardware_detection-xxxxxxxxxx.txt" 

[sa2000 144]

Looking at the logs you provided, it has detected the hardware transcoding 

>>>>>>  Hardware Encoders for h264
        [X] VideoToolbox H.264

but then fell be to software transcode after getting a failure

It had selected hardware for encoding and software for decoding

Info    Previous transcoding attempt failed. Falling back to software transcoding.

I will see if there are any clues as to why that happened
 

 

[sa2000 144]

Is this a standard 4.8.6.0 release installation

Could you find the ffmpeg version being used by running in terminal this command

/Applications/EmbyServer.app/Contents/MacOS/ffmpeg -version

 

Edited May 17 by sa2000

[dreamxwarden 0]

4 hours ago, sa2000 said:

@dreamxwardenIs there a hardware detection log as well ?  filename: "hardware_detection-xxxxxxxxxx.txt" 

 

hardware_detection-63851532039.txt

[dreamxwarden 0]

3 hours ago, sa2000 said:

Is this a standard 4.8.6.0 release installation

Could you find the ffmpeg version being used by running in terminal this command

/Applications/EmbyServer.app/Contents/MacOS/ffmpeg -version

 

And the latest version of macOS (Sonoma 14.5)

[keemy 16]

As far as I know there's still no hardware transcoding for MacOS m1 chips. Numerous user have been requesting/asking when it will be enabled .

[wtko1 0]

Have you solved it?

[dreamxwarden 0]

1 minute ago, wtko1 said:

Have you solved it?

Nope. I solved it by return the Mac Studio to Apple.

[sa2000 144]

On 17/05/2024 at 16:45, dreamxwarden said:

And the latest version of macOS (Sonoma 14.5)

Thank you for confirming the ffmpeg version. We are behind on the version of ffmpeg on MacOS and this is being looked into. 

[sa2000 144]

On 18/05/2024 at 19:28, keemy said:

As far as I know there's still no hardware transcoding for MacOS m1 chips. Numerous user have been requesting/asking when it will be enabled .

Thank you. I will follow this up

[keemy 16]

On 5/22/2024 at 6:25 AM, sa2000 said:

Thank you. I will follow this up

Any updates on this?

[sa2000 144]

7 hours ago, keemy said:

Any updates on this?

There may be a build of ffmpeg to try out.  Which version of Emby Server are you running on? Are you running on this embyserver-osx-arm64-4.8.10.0.zip ?

 

 

[keemy 16]

Yes this is the version I'm using on macOS sonoma. I've only gotten hardware transcoding to work sometimes when I change the settings to advanced and select videotoolbox. It's also hit and miss when it works and it never works for hevc/265 encoded content, it only works on a few 264 encoded files.

[sa2000 144]

19 hours ago, keemy said:

Yes this is the version I'm using on macOS sonoma. I've only gotten hardware transcoding to work sometimes when I change the settings to advanced and select videotoolbox. It's also hit and miss when it works and it never works for hevc/265 encoded content, it only works on a few 264 encoded files.

I will be sending you a later emby ffmpeg build to try out and see if it is better with hardware transcoding. 

[keemy 16]

7 hours ago, sa2000 said:

I will be sending you a later emby ffmpeg build to try out and see if it is better with hardware transcoding. 

So I loaded the new binaries as instructed and ran some tests. Just as before HW transcoding could only be detected when selected manually in advanced settings.
10800/264 - works on all the files I tested. Previously was hit or miss.
1080p/265 - works on all the files I tested. Previously did not work at all.
4k/265 - Fails for all the files I tested. It tried to use HW transcoding then fails and falls back to software. Previously failed as well.

For all the files that successfully used HW transcoding they all had issues with subtitles. They would play for the first 2 or 3 minutes then completely stop rendering. These were all embedded plain text subtitles. I tested these with software transcoding and the subtitles had no issues displaying the entire time. All tests were done on a 2019 Nvidia Shield Pro.

 

ffmpeg-transcode-4K-265.txt ffmpeg-transcode-1080p-264.txt ffmpeg-transcode-1080p-265.txt

[Carlo 4354]

@softworkz

Can you take a look at this.

10:34:27.311 Streamcopy requested for output stream 0:0, which is fed from a complex filtergraph. Filtering and streamcopy cannot be used together.
 

[Luke 38096]

HI we'll take a look at this. Thanks for reporting.

[sa2000 144]

18 hours ago, keemy said:

10800/264 - works on all the files I tested. Previously was hit or miss.
1080p/265 - works on all the files I tested. Previously did not work at all.

That is good news - Thank you for trying out emby ffmpeg version 5.1-emby_2023_06_25

18 hours ago, keemy said:

4k/265 - Fails for all the files I tested. It tried to use HW transcoding then fails and falls back to software. Previously failed as well.

So the provided ffmpeg log ffmpeg-transcode-4K-265.txt covers this. Could you also download and attach the main embyserver log for this period 2024-10-03 10:34

18 hours ago, keemy said:

Just as before HW transcoding could only be detected when selected manually in advanced settings.

Could you provide the emby server logs for the first launch together with the hardware detection log file

18 hours ago, keemy said:

For all the files that successfully used HW transcoding they all had issues with subtitles. They would play for the first 2 or 3 minutes then completely stop rendering. These were all embedded plain text subtitles. I tested these with software transcoding and the subtitles had no issues displaying the entire time. All tests were done on a 2019 Nvidia Shield Pro.

Could you provide the emby server logs and emby ffmpeg logs for one of these examples - together with the media info details

and thanks for all your help

 

[keemy 16]

6 hours ago, sa2000 said:

So the provided ffmpeg log ffmpeg-transcode-4K-265.txt covers this. Could you also download and attach the main embyserver log for this period 2024-10-03 10:34

embyserver-full.txt

6 hours ago, sa2000 said:

Could you provide the emby server logs for the first launch together with the hardware detection log file

embyserver-first launch.txthardware_detection-63863546889.txt

 

6 hours ago, sa2000 said:

Could you provide the emby server logs and emby ffmpeg logs for one of these examples - together with the media info details

The full emby server log plus the 1080p ffmpeg files yesterday contain the files that had issues with subtitles. I attached the mediainfo JSON output for 2 of the affected files.

 

media info (2).txtmedia info.txt