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A question about transcoding


BEis

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Hi all, I have Emby server running on a Mac Mini (late 2012, Intel Core i7, Macmini6,2 with Intel HD Graphics 4000). I've been playing with the different hardware acceleration transcoding settings, but I'm not sure if I am seeing any difference at all.

 

Does anyone know which options are available on this particular machine? Or are none of them relevant?

 

Thanks in advance!

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Ok then, does anyone know where I might be able to look up such information? I've tried Google searching but I'm not really sure what I'm looking for, and so far haven't had any luck.

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The only possibility is going to be intel quicksync, but given the age of the machine, does it even support that? @@Waldonnis do you know?

 

In any event, try the Quick Sync option. Thanks.

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Waldonnis

Hi all, I have Emby server running on a Mac Mini (late 2012, Intel Core i7, Macmini6,2 with Intel HD Graphics 4000). I've been playing with the different hardware acceleration transcoding settings, but I'm not sure if I am seeing any difference at all.

 

Does anyone know which options are available on this particular machine? Or are none of them relevant?

 

Thanks in advance!

 

 

The only possibility is going to be intel quicksync, but given the age of the machine, does it even support that? @@Waldonnis do you know?

 

In any event, try the Quick Sync option. Thanks.

 

Pretty sure it should support it...especially since my i5 has the same generation of iGPU and it works (HD Graphics 4000)  :P   Knowing Intel, though, some SKUs may not be equal, so best to double-check the exact processor model against...well, I can't find a chart anywhere, but Intel's spec sheets should list it.

 

That being said, I have no idea what Apple supports on the OS level nor if Intel's driver would include the necessary libraries.  I'm assuming they do now (at least for decoding), but no idea about older hardware or if encoding is supported.  I guess you could try running ffmpeg using h264_qsv instead of libx264 to convert a short video clip as a test.  Handbrake may also indicate if it's working (at least on Windows, the codec dropdown on the Video tab will list "H.264 (Intel QSV)" if it's detected).

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Ok, so here's a really dumb question ... how do I know when it's working? I have it turned on, what should I be looking for?

 

I downloaded Handbrake and the codec dropdown doesn't include the Intel QSV entry you mentioned. So maybe there is my answer...

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We don't actually indicate this in the UI, although we should add that for a future update.

 

In the meantime if you attach an ffmpeg log I will tell you if it is being used. Thanks.

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 3 weeks later...

Is then the answer is No, Mac Mini late 2012 cannot use Hardware transcoding (or Emby doe not support it)?

 

I'll have to review but I think QuickSync would be your only option and our macOS ffmpeg builds might not be including that yet.

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Everbrave

I'll have to review but I think QuickSync would be your only option and our macOS ffmpeg builds might not be including that yet.

 

 

I have the latest  ffmpeg 3.4.1 installed and monitored the CPU load with Activity Monitor; with and without Quicksync the CPU (core i7) load is the same (around 33%) while playing a HEVC file.

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Hey guys, for what it's worth, I believe the Mac Mini (in my case, 2011 model) does support Quicksync, but it just isn't being utilized by Emby. The reason I think this is, if I play the same video in Plex, it indicates "Transcoding (hw)" ... I'm assuming the (hw) indicates hardware based transcoding, although they don't specify which type is being used. Not sure if that helps at all...

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Everbrave

did you configure it in the emby transcoding menu?

 

 

yes, of course :)

choosing QuickSync and "enable Hardware transcoding" ticked/unticked for comparison.

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Everbrave

Hey guys, for what it's worth, I believe the Mac Mini (in my case, 2011 model) does support Quicksync, but it just isn't being utilized by Emby. The reason I think this is, if I play the same video in Plex, it indicates "Transcoding (hw)" ... I'm assuming the (hw) indicates hardware based transcoding, although they don't specify which type is being used. Not sure if that helps at all...

 

 

I have the Mac Mini (late 2012) and the MacBook Pro 15" (also 2012, the same CPU core i7). An indication that Emby does not utilise QSV "correctly" (it says experimental) is that it doesn't work on Synology DS918+ Apollo Lake CPU which defiantly supports QSV. As far as I know, Plex uses Libav which allows both QSV and AV-API.

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the ffmpeg build does not have quicksync support, which reminds me, there's no way for you to customize the ffmpeg build in our macOS release. 

 

I think for the next release what we'll do is start using these macOS builds:

https://ffmpeg.zeranoe.com/builds/

 

If you want to download them and then just replace these files, that would be an interesting test:

2018-01-04 12:44:19.704 Info MediaEncoder: FFMpeg: /Applications/EmbyServer.app/Contents/MacOS/ffmpeg
2018-01-04 12:44:19.704 Info MediaEncoder: FFProbe: /Applications/EmbyServer.app/Contents/MacOS/ffprobe

Thanks.

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I just replaced those files and restarted the server. Tried playing something that needed to be transcoded, let it play for a few seconds. Here are the server log and ffmpeg log.

 

When I was playing the transcoded video, my CPU meters on the Mac Mini spiked to quite a high value ... almost 600% (it treats separate cores individually, which is why it reads above 100%). So I'm guessing the HW acceleration still isn't working. But I'd be curious to see what the logs say.

Archive.zip

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