Android Mobile can't play transcoded HEVC files.

[echoxxzz 22]

If I play an HEVC file using Android Mobile and either have a poor enough connection or force a really low max bitrate to trigger the server to transcode the file, Android Mobile just flickers and stops and starts trying to play the movie. HEVC movies play just fine using Direct Play and x264 movies play just fine being transcoded. Apple iOS, Chrome, and Emby Theatre all play the hevc file just fine when it's being transcoded so I know it's not the file itself. I've tried a dozed different versions of Android Mobile on four different Android devices running Android 4.4,2, 5.1 and 7.0 and they all seem to behave this way. It's very annoying as most of my videos are encoded using hevc.

 

 

[Luke 37010]

Hi there, welcome. Please attach the information requested in how to report a media playback issue. thanks !

[echoxxzz 22]

I've attached two zip files with the logs from a clean start and stop of the Emby server.

 

The log files contained in "Emby Mobile App.zip" was created when I logged onto Emby server using the Emby mobile app on my Android Tablet and played an HEVC video.

The log files contained in "Emby HTML5.zip" was created when I logged onto Emby server from my Android Tablet via Firefox mobile browser and played the same HEVC video.

 

 

 

 

Emby HTML5.zip

Emby Mobile App.zip

[echoxxzz 22]

After studying the log files it appears that my server does not support NVENC hardware acceleration and I had it enabled.

This was never causing any issues with Emby Theatre or Emby for HTML5.

After I reconfigured the server not to use any HW acceleration features HEVC videos are being transcoded properly on Android Mobile.

 

On a side question. What NVidia cards does Emby Server support in order to get HEVC hardware acceleration?

I was using a GT710 and I want to get a card that can offload HEVC transcoding.

[Luke 37010]

These are the ones that support hevc:

https://developer.nvidia.com/video-encode-decode-gpu-support-matrix

 

@@Waldonnis do you suggest any in particular? thanks !

[Waldonnis 148]

Best options are probably a Pascal card (GTX-1050 or above) since they support HEVC Main10 en/decoding in hardware and some improvements were supposedly made for speed/efficiency after Maxwell (900 series).  Be aware that I've seen reports that the GT-1030 doesn't have the media block, but haven't looked into it enough to confirm it (some research would be needed no matter what).

 

Usual big caveat applies with NVENC, though: 2 simultaneous streams max with consumer cards, so if you need more and want to stay with NVENC, you'd have to bump up to a Quadro card.  Other downsides with nVidia include no B-frames at all with HEVC (and I think it's limited to 1 refframe as well still), issues with HDR metadata inclusion during transcoding have been discussed, it doesn't do true 2-pass despite the options indicating it does, and getting it to do a CRF encode isn't easy option-wise (CBR is significantly easier).  Most of that probably doesn't matter much to most people, especially for live transcoding, but it's stuff to be aware of if you decide to use it for transcoding otherwise. HDR10 metadata seems to be especially problematic outside of x265, but I would suspect most wouldn't need to wrestle with that quite yet and future hardware generations will probably address it eventually (don't even get me started with Dolby Vision...that is a lot more complicated).

Edited November 9, 2017 by Waldonnis