iclay 1 Posted January 13, 2018 Share Posted January 13, 2018 I just installed the beta version of Emby and am using a Hauppauge quad tuner. My issue is with Live TV. The issue is during transcoding live TV, my CPU gets crushed under a single stream. It gets better with lower resolutions and bit rates, but there is no way I could stream multiple TVs with this setup. It's an AMD FX, which runs at 4.09GHz with 8 logical cores (4 physical). Maybe the issue is that it's AMD.... If I use NextPVR with Kodi, the CPU on the media server barely even notices. My client CPU, currently my laptop using the Kodi app from the Windows Store, gets close to topping out, but that's ok as that only affects me and I get no pausing. If I use the Emby Theater Windows app, the media server CPU goes up to about 50-60% and the laptop CPU hits about 50%. There isn't enough left on the media server for Emby to safely run 2 streams without some pausing going on. Is this just expected behavior of the different apps? Does it all boil down to using AMD? Is AMD just crap for transcoding? It seems like the Kodi app is playing the stream natively with no transcoding, or maybe the client is doing the transcoding. My plan is to use Xbox Ones for each TV, so ideally, I'd use the Emby app in there. Any thoughts? I love the Emby interface, especially compared to Kodi, so I'd like to stay with it if I can make it work. Thanks!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arrbee99 1561 Posted January 13, 2018 Share Posted January 13, 2018 (edited) No idea about AMD's. LiveTV is generally OK for me, but its only light use, probably only one user / device at a time and our broadcast TV is SD not HD. Looking at this https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/53253-xbox-one-app/page-5 around the bottom of page 5 looks like it might be better to use Ember for Emby on a XBOX rather than Emby Theater. There's a Kodi for XBOX version apparently if you feel the urge. Edited January 13, 2018 by arrbee99 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Appl3seed 1 Posted January 13, 2018 Share Posted January 13, 2018 It is not about AMD. Intel here and it is the same. you can enable gpu transcoding if you have an nvidia card it will help for CPU usage %. But the real issue is why Emby native Tv server always transcoding? That is not standard behaviour it should just direct stream standard format like rtsp. When I link emby to a separate tv server, I can play full HD live smoothly, But with native emby server (iptv only i don't have compatible hardware), well it is painfully slow to start and only sd works ok because transcoding is triggered. Sounds like not a big issue, Hope they will solve this transcoding thing soon. The whole live tv is quite new in emby. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iclay 1 Posted January 15, 2018 Author Share Posted January 15, 2018 It looks like Ember will play direct when watching live TV. At least, on the Windows app. The Xbox One version is having issues for me. I'm going to have to post in that forum. It also looks like the Emby Theater app for Android streams live TV with no transcoding there as well. I had 2 different HD streams going with ZERO CPU impact which is AWESOME!!! If I can get live TV and recorded episodes to stream without transcoding, then I am all in with any premium version I have to get! Thanks!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tdiguy 96 Posted January 16, 2018 Share Posted January 16, 2018 Are any of those devices able to use VLC? For my setup i use a firestick and a fire tv i use emby on both but for live tv i have it use an external player and select vlc and it nearly always direct plays even for interlaced content. Its weird though that a 8 core machine is being taxed so much transcoding, do you set a limit on how many threads it can use to transcode? I ask this because i have a very cheap setup with 4 cores ( no virtual cores / threads ) and i can transcode 2 streams hd quality with vaapi but i have it limited to 2 threads. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iclay 1 Posted January 16, 2018 Author Share Posted January 16, 2018 No, it is not set to limit on cores. I do believe that there is a VLC app for the Xbox. I see the external player option on my Android. I'll look again at the Xbox app when I get home. I'm not familiar with vaapi. I don't see a lot about it on the forum. Do you have any detail as to what that is and how it might help? Thanks!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tdiguy 96 Posted January 16, 2018 Share Posted January 16, 2018 No, it is not set to limit on cores. I do believe that there is a VLC app for the Xbox. I see the external player option on my Android. I'll look again at the Xbox app when I get home. I'm not familiar with vaapi. I don't see a lot about it on the forum. Do you have any detail as to what that is and how it might help? Thanks!! Setting a thread limit especially on a system with so many physical cores can be helpful to not instantaneously max out the cpu's if something requires transcoding. You might have to do a bit of trial and error with it to find a balance of how many threads it takes to transcode smoothly on your system. VLC i find useful to use as an external player but that is just my preference i encourage checking it out but to each his own in that regard. Vaapi is a type of hardware acceleration, if you have a semi modern intel cpu ( by semi modern almost anything less than 10 years old ) it is likely supported and you might even have the drivers built in. If you run a linux server add emby to the video group and test out using vaapi hardware acceleration, this can also lessen the burden on your cpu. I have issues using hardware encoding when it comes to converting recordings myself so i don't suggest using the hardware encoding but again experiment and see what fits your needs best. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iclay 1 Posted January 16, 2018 Author Share Posted January 16, 2018 Yeah, like I mentioned above, I'm running an AMD CPU. That probably rules that out...I guess I figured that if it's using 100% of the CPU, limiting it would make it all choppy. I'll try it out and see if it can remain smooth with multiple HD streams. Thanks!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tdiguy 96 Posted January 16, 2018 Share Posted January 16, 2018 Yeah, like I mentioned above, I'm running an AMD CPU. That probably rules that out... I guess I figured that if it's using 100% of the CPU, limiting it would make it all choppy. I'll try it out and see if it can remain smooth with multiple HD streams. Thanks!! This might be of some use here regarding vaapi and there are some amd chipsets on it: https://wiki.libav.org/Hardware/vaapi As far as limiting threads go from what i understand ffmpeg will use as much resources as you allow it to in order to quickly transcode as much of the stream as it can at once. So for instance if you play a movie that is 3 hours long and it needs to transcode it ffmped will gladly brutilize your cpu's, all of them, as hard as it can to transcode all 3 hours in as little time as it possibly can. So the trick really is experimenting and seeing how many threads are needed to have smooth playback. I would experiment with the highest resolution content you have available and see how many threads are needed on that for smooth playback since anything with lower resolution will likely need less horsepower. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luke 37118 Posted January 16, 2018 Share Posted January 16, 2018 The only reason the store app is not direct playing is to allow seeking the live stream, which the default windows player doesn't support on it's own. It's something we can review for a future update to the app to try and achieve the seeking along with direct play together. thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iclay 1 Posted January 16, 2018 Author Share Posted January 16, 2018 Thanks for the update! Much appreciated!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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