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Transcode in H265


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byakuya32
20 minutes ago, runtimesandbox said:

Even though h266 is out, i'd much rather we focused on getting h265 support in especially as many generations of graphics cards and cpu have support for it now. 

I know it uses ffmpeg so it should just be a matter of adjusting the config string to live transcode.

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syadnom

most devices support h265.  so that should be the target.  h266 is years from having wide client hardware support so it's pretty uninteresting now and for at least a couple of years.

 

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11 hours ago, byakuya32 said:

I know it uses ffmpeg so it should just be a matter of adjusting the config string to live transcode.

from what I see in the FFmpeg arguments in Jellyfin, you are right. Plus any client/server UI adaptation to control it and detect wether or not to use it because a client is not compatible...

But this feature must not be on the top priority list of the tasks's backlog in here. Same for Plex team, as h264 is working great for everybody anyway, but hey, we are not everybody since we ask this for years :) We are not just enough to complain about...

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byakuya32
15 minutes ago, nSGecko said:

from what I see in the FFmpeg arguments in Jellyfin, you are right. Plus any client/server UI adaptation to control it and detect wether or not to use it because a client is not compatible...

But this feature must not be on the top priority list of the tasks's backlog in here. Same for Plex team, as h264 is working great for everybody anyway, but hey, we are not everybody since we ask this for years :) We are not just enough to complain about...

If you travel and watch your stuff in areas of low bandwidth due to work h265 is a must or the image looks like crap as you are luck in those areas to get 2mbps down. H264 works great when you are accessing your server with good internet.

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2 minutes ago, byakuya32 said:

If you travel and watch your stuff in areas of low bandwidth due to work h265 is a must or the image looks like crap as you are luck in those areas to get 2mbps down. H264 works great when you are accessing your server with good internet.

Exactly!!!

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33 minutes ago, byakuya32 said:

If you travel and watch your stuff in areas of low bandwidth due to work h265 is a must or the image looks like crap as you are luck in those areas to get 2mbps down. H264 works great when you are accessing your server with good internet.


Exactly my case :)

+ the fact that my upload speed at home is limited to 35mbits so the number of decent streams away from home is more limited in h264 than h265.

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byakuya32
25 minutes ago, nSGecko said:


Exactly my case :)

+ the fact that my upload speed at home is limited to 35mbits so the number of decent streams away from home is more limited in h264 than h265.

There is that that's not so much an issue as when I have to travel as I have gigabit symetrical at home but when I travel the down speeds are questionable.

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  • 1 month later...
tofuSCHNITZEL

I would like for the AndroidTV app to be able to play h265 directly so the h265 videos that are already on my server can be played WITHOUT transcoding (NAS is to slow for that)

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byakuya32
25 minutes ago, tofuSCHNITZEL said:

I would like for the AndroidTV app to be able to play h265 directly so the h265 videos that are already on my server can be played WITHOUT transcoding (NAS is to slow for that)

I have an android TV and all my h265 plays in direct play. I have a debian based server with an 8 core ryzen cpu.

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6 hours ago, tofuSCHNITZEL said:

I would like for the AndroidTV app to be able to play h265 directly so the h265 videos that are already on my server can be played WITHOUT transcoding (NAS is to slow for that)

Hi.  The app already does and that is not related to this particular request.  If you are having an issue, please create a new thread in the Android TV forum.  Thanks.

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  • 4 weeks later...
Roei000

It's been a more than a year since the last update so I'm not 100% sure but, has this been implemented? It'd be a massive time (and data) saver.

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  • 5 months later...
archecon

Dear Luke and developers, it's been 5 years since this thread was started. Within 5 years the h265 standard is already in every phone, smart TV, media stick.  Hardware has undergone big changes, we are no longer reliant on 4 Intel cores on the server side, in the 2022 and 2023 generation it is multi-core systems. 
Please, do you plan to have the possibility to stream in h265? ISPs are increasingly not adhering to internet neutrality. Single threaded connections are often very bad, which doesn't help streaming.
As a beta tester, can we start maybe experimentally from the software version first and then gradually add HW vendors, NVIDIA, AMD.. ?
Thank you M.


 

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I know this isn't an answer you want to hear and isn't a substitute to what you asked but thought I'd mention it in case anyone was aware.

Emby can direct stream media with H.265 already.  It just won't transcode to it yet.

What many of us do is convert all our media to mkv format with H.265 video, keep/copy audio and subs in languages we use, and then add a 2 channel aac audio track created from another track if it doesn't exist already.  The 2 channel audio track is there to make sure no client needs a transcode due to audio which could also cause the video to transcode.  So as long as the bitrate isn't over any system or user limits it should direct play.

 

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Cayars, I know you just wanna help and this even might help some of us but this request is 5(!) years old and still nothing.

A new standard is already on the way (AV1) and still nothing.

Imagine those that need to transcode their cable or satellite TV source when on mobile data away from home, those cannot pre-convert stuff like you suggested.

I appreciate your effort but as you wrote that is not what the majority of us wants to hear.

Thanks anyways!

PS: Nice to see you around, seemed like were a bit more absent lately.

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VirulentPip

Very strange to still not be an optional feature, sure you can pre-encode your entire library to H265/HEVC (mine mostly is) but that not only takes time what happens when the next "standard" comes, say AV1 for example, re-encode them all again? Quite a few people here are already transcoding from high bitrate 4K HDR to H264 SDR (up to like 7-8+ streams), don't see why not have the option for 4K HDR to H265 SDR as the output would be either same bitrate but higher quality or choose a lower bitrate for "equal" quality. That's not even getting into 1080p content, if people can transcode that many high bitrate 4K with tonemapping, I am sure 15-30Mbps 1080 SDR H264 > 7.5-15Mbps H265 won't be an issue, as the UHD 770 can do 20-30 transcodes from H264 > H264. Or even a high number of H265 > H264 when needed, so even if the number of possible streams is halved, that's still more than sufficient for majority of people, cause realistically who is sending out over 10 remote streams at once on avg ?

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archecon

I think the introduction of H265 into streaming may be hampered by licensing fees more than technical issues.  These issues can be sensitive and that may be why we are getting strange answers.

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heciruam
On 9/10/2022 at 5:29 PM, archecon said:

I think the introduction of H265 into streaming may be hampered by licensing fees more than technical issues.  These issues can be sensitive and that may be why we are getting strange answers.

That might be it. If it is than AV1 shouldn't have that problem.

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visproduction

AV1 initial licensing appears to be royalty fee, but any future development may cost some fees.  See: https://ipeurope.org/blog/royalty-free-standards-are-not-free-of-costs-av1-as-a-case-study/

The article urges caution, because there could be hidden fees coming. 

What kind of additional costs might happen?

===
Here is a 3rd party encoder and cloud service that already sets fees for AV1.  They are making profit, but it is not clear if they are also paying for bulk licensing to AV1 or not.

The example 3rd party service fee structure:
See: https://www.sisvel.com/licensing-programs/audio-and-video-coding-decoding/video-coding-platform/license-terms/av1-license-terms
AV1 licensing appears to be EUR 0.168 per media playback and Eur 0.32 per hardware that plays AV1 media.  

Once a computer / phone pays the Eur 0.32, then apparently the license fee would just be Eur. 0.168 per media that is played back. Playing something back twice might not have any extra charge, but I don't find that info anywhere.  You could play back if the movie is still cached, otherwise pulling it again from the server might create a new fee.

This would mean for say 500 media plays anywhere in the world in a day, this 3rd party service monthly license fee for AV1 would be about Euro 7,320...  
This all 3rd party fees, supposidly not payments to the license owner of AV1.
===

Hmmm, Still,  I would be a little cautious.
 

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japtain_cack

My emby server has a dedicated rtx 3080 for transcoding. I would like to +1 this feature request, to have a non-default power user option to enable this. H265 might not be supported by everything, but most modern devices support native hardware H265 decoding, even my 4 year old TV does. Imho, it's widely available enough to have an option to enable this.

I would suspect, if clients could set their preferred decoder for streaming h264/h265, with an "allow h265 encoding" option on the server, there should be minimal to no impact.

That being said, I absolutely love emby. I fired plex, and never looked back. Keep up the good work emby team! 

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  • 3 weeks later...
mediaGuy

Confused at why this is not an option as well.  ffmpeg has been doing it for years (via libx265) and it's royalty free.  Prior to using emby for LiveTV I was using tvheadend which has 265 transcoding support (and that was 3+ years ago).

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visproduction

Is everyone aware that native browser support for h.265 or AV1 is pretty limited.  It's nice that you guys set up your systems to playback h.265 in a browser with some plug-in or hardware or mobile app and it works fine.   But 99% of the desktop user use a browser, where playback  does not work.  Have a look here for the green blocks on browsers that h.265 or Av1 can playback today.

https://caniuse.com/hevc
https://caniuse.com/?search=AV1

The question is why develop code that helps possibly less than 1% of desktop users.  What is the percentage of users on mobile where h.265 does work?  I think it makes more sense to wait until most browsers roll our updates to give playback for h.265 or AV1.  By that time, perhaps things will change and any code update you spend time on now, would also have to change again.

I don't do the code dev on this, but I would guess at AV1 and h.265 feature, setup, UI options, QA testing, UX design and bug fixing could total perhaps  200 employee / volunteer hours.  That's if you are lucky.  It's probable that you would have to come back every year to check that all the browser continue to work correctly with all new browser updates and also check any bug reports.

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EricGRIT09
22 minutes ago, visproduction said:

Is everyone aware that native browser support for h.265 or AV1 is pretty limited.  It's nice that you guys set up your systems to playback h.265 in a browser with some plug-in or hardware or mobile app and it works fine.   But 99% of the desktop user use a browser, where playback  does not work.  Have a look here for the green blocks on browsers that h.265 or Av1 can playback today.

https://caniuse.com/hevc
https://caniuse.com/?search=AV1

The question is why develop code that helps possibly less than 1% of desktop users.  What is the percentage of users on mobile where h.265 does work?  I think it makes more sense to wait until most browsers roll our updates to give playback for h.265 or AV1.  By that time, perhaps things will change and any code update you spend time on now, would also have to change again.

I don't do the code dev on this, but I would guess at AV1 and h.265 feature, setup, UI options, QA testing, UX design and bug fixing could total perhaps  200 employee / volunteer hours.  That's if you are lucky.  It's probable that you would have to come back every year to check that all the browser continue to work correctly with all new browser updates and also check any bug reports.

Fair point if you are looking only at desktop playback users.  However, in my case 0% of my users playback in browser - by far most are on set top boxes, then maybe some plays on mobile.  I’d imagine the majority of playbacks across all Emby users are not in browser on desktop, but that’s just my guess.

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