Nvidia Shield Live TV Transcoding

[cbdudek 15]

I have a couple Nvidia Shield 2017 units and I love these players.  One of the things I have been trying to figure out is how to optimize this player.  One of the things I have noticed is that it is transcoding all live tv channels.  It says it is Transcoding because of an unsupported container.  I have tried changing the video to MPV to no avail.  I can direct stream, but I like being able to time shift the live tv if I am watching live sports and miss a play.  Is eliminating transcoding possible on live tv?  Should I be concerned?  My emby server is a core i7-2600k and has 8gb of ram.  I use Intel Quicksync.

 

I think Live TV would be a lot better if it were not transcoding, but so far, I have tried a lot of settings and I haven't been able to get it to not transcode.  Maybe that is required in order to time shift.  I don't know.

 

Any advice?

[okEric 2]

I'm just getting setup with emby and I'm also finding that my shield tv can't seem to direct stream live Tv like my PC can with the emby theatre program.

 

Even my Android phone can direct play without issue so it's odd the shield seems to be having trouble.

 

I did some searching on these forums and it seems to be an issue with the surround sound setting within the Shield's settings.

 

I turned surround to never and then tried emby and sure enough it was direct playing and allowing me to pause tv no problem.

 

Unfortunately disabling surround sound is not a good solution for me.

 

Hopefully it's something that can be fixed soon.

 

Edit: I spoke too soon.. after several moments of playing it goes to remux apparently because "video bitrate over limit" even though I have it maxed.

Edited July 18, 2018 by okEric

[cbdudek 15]

I don't have a surround sound system on the Nvidia Shield here in my office.  Its just the regular TV speakers.  I also have just "high quality stereo" set in the advanced settings of my shield TV.  It is still transcoding.

 

I am starting to think that if I want to timeshift live TV, I need to have some kind of transcoding going.  So maybe it isn't a bad thing.  I guess I am looking for some tips on how to optimize my Shield TV for Emby.  There are a lot of settings in the Emby app itself that I am looking up because I really don't know what is best. 

[okEric 2]

That's sort of what I'm beginning to think too. If you view stats for nerds when watching TV does it show that the video codec is direct but the audio isn't?

 

The emby theatre app on PC seems to be able to timeshift without issue while direct playing as does Android phone so it's still weird the shield is having trouble.

 

At least in my case it seems to be related to the aac decoding.

[kanipek 224]

I have a couple Nvidia Shield 2017 units and I love these players. One of the things I have been trying to figure out is how to optimize this player. One of the things I have noticed is that it is transcoding all live tv channels. It says it is Transcoding because of an unsupported container. I have tried changing the video to MPV to no avail. I can direct stream, but I like being able to time shift the live tv if I am watching live sports and miss a play. Is eliminating transcoding possible on live tv? Should I be concerned? My emby server is a core i7-2600k and has 8gb of ram. I use Intel Quicksync.

 

I think Live TV would be a lot better if it were not transcoding, but so far, I have tried a lot of settings and I haven't been able to get it to not transcode. Maybe that is required in order to time shift. I don't know.

 

Any advice?

So you can Direct Play live TV but choose not to so you can pause and rewind. Is that correct?

 

Sent from my SM-N900T using Tapatalk

[cbdudek 15]

So you can Direct Play live TV but choose not to so you can pause and rewind. Is that correct?

 

Sent from my SM-N900T using Tapatalk

That is correct. Direct play works flawlessly but I cannot time shift if I do that.

 

Sent from my SM-G955U1 using Tapatalk

[kanipek 224]

Okay. Timeshifting is going to require some form of transcoding.

It has been awhile since I played with the settings on my Shield but I believe if you select Use MPV for live TV and then under playback settings select deinterlace SD & deinterlace HD that will do an internal transcode instead of a server transcode.

There have been quite a few changes lately so I haven't really kept up.

That is correct. Direct play works flawlessly but I cannot time shift if I do that.

 

Sent from my SM-G955U1 using Tapatalk

Sent from my SM-N900T using Tapatalk

[cbdudek 15]

I will check that out. I thought that it might need to be transcoding to time shift. The dvr is emby after all so it has to do the work. So maybe I have the best setup right now.

 

Sent from my SM-G955U1 using Tapatalk

[Q-Droid 634]

Are you sure it's transcoding and not just remuxing? It's not the same thing and the overhead to change the container type is negligible. If it's remux, which is what both my Shield and MiBox are doing, the streamed content remains the same as the source.

Edited July 18, 2018 by Q-Droid

[Guest asrequested]

Yeah, it has to buffer to the transcode location. It's not transcoding, it's just changing the transport and remuxing. If you want to timeshift, that's what has to happen.

[cbdudek 15]

I should have known this in the first place.  Thanks for the education!

[Sammy 735]

Okay. Timeshifting is going to require some form of transcoding.

It has been awhile since I played with the settings on my Shield but I believe if you select Use MPV for live TV and then under playback settings select deinterlace SD & deinterlace HD that will do an internal transcode instead of a server transcode.

There have been quite a few changes lately so I haven't really kept up.

Sent from my SM-N900T using Tapatalk

I couldn't get playback with mpv under server version 3.5.0.0 and hadn't tried previously..

 

Sent from my SM-G930P using Tapatalk

[cbdudek 15]

I couldn't get playback with mpv under server version 3.5.0.0 and hadn't tried previously..

 

Sent from my SM-G930P using Tapatalk

 

I can get playback with mpv on live TV with the latest 3.5.0.0 version.  I am still trying to determine if the quality is better or not though.

[Carlo 4330]

Okay. Timeshifting is going to require some form of transcoding.

It has been awhile since I played with the settings on my Shield but I believe if you select Use MPV for live TV and then under playback settings select deinterlace SD & deinterlace HD that will do an internal transcode instead of a server transcode.

There have been quite a few changes lately so I haven't really kept up.

Sent from my SM-N900T using Tapatalk

 

 

Are you sure it's transcoding and not just remuxing? It's not the same thing and the overhead to change the container type is negligible. If it's remux, which is what both my Shield and MiBox are doing, the streamed content remains the same as the source.

 

There is no technical reason why it needs to remux at all which is the issue.  This is due to the Emby shield TV programming and not the device itself.

If other programs can direct play (no transcoding or remuxing) the content then Emby can as well.

 

TS files with mpeg2, h.264, h265 and AAC or dolby can play just fine on the Shield TV.  TS files don't have an index so that makes RW/FF but that's doesn't need to be a big deal deal because you can "guess" with a rough index based on math of the files. For example if you RW 0 seconds but get 28 to 32 instead it's not the end of the world as that RW is good enough for live streaming.  Emby itself knows the total duration of the recording from the EPG and padding, it knows how long it has been recording for and knows the files size of the recording so far so it's just basic math for a pretty accurate guess of building an index that's "good enough".

 

While "remuxing" isn't CPU intensive it's still IO intensive and can make sports a pain to watch.  Try starting a recording in progress of a football game and FF to 1/2 time or the 3rd quarter or a baseball game and FF to 7th inning and you have to wait a long time and it "feels broken" since you presently have to wait until the remux catches up from the beginning of the file to where you want to FF to.  This is the same of course with NEWS programming as well which I like to skip through as I record about 7 hours or programming on Fox, CNN, MSNBC each day.

 

As mentioned other programs like LiveChannels, Kodi and Plex can direct play the files while being recorded and avoid the remux.  Plex can direct play recordings in progress that Emby is recording.

 

One of the powerful options of the Shield TV is the hardware transcoding ability of the device.  This can be used by client programs just like it can be used server side.  If the Emby client was to take advantage of this especially for audio the server would almost never have to remux/transcode anything played on the Shield TV. Kodi and Plex do this for example.

[ebr 14904]

There is no technical reason why it needs to remux at all which is the issue.  This is due to the Emby shield TV programming and not the device itself.

If other programs can direct play (no transcoding or remuxing) the content then Emby can as well.

 

TS files with mpeg2, h.264, h265 and AAC or dolby can play just fine on the Shield TV.  TS files don't have an index so that makes RW/FF but that's doesn't need to be a big deal deal because you can "guess" with a rough index based on math of the files. For example if you RW 0 seconds but get 28 to 32 instead it's not the end of the world as that RW is good enough for live streaming.  Emby itself knows the total duration of the recording from the EPG and padding, it knows how long it has been recording for and knows the files size of the recording so far so it's just basic math for a pretty accurate guess of building an index that's "good enough".

 

While "remuxing" isn't CPU intensive it's still IO intensive and can make sports a pain to watch.  Try starting a recording in progress of a football game and FF to 1/2 time or the 3rd quarter or a baseball game and FF to 7th inning and you have to wait a long time and it "feels broken" since you presently have to wait until the remux catches up from the beginning of the file to where you want to FF to.  This is the same of course with NEWS programming as well which I like to skip through as I record about 7 hours or programming on Fox, CNN, MSNBC each day.

 

As mentioned other programs like LiveChannels, Kodi and Plex can direct play the files while being recorded and avoid the remux.  Plex can direct play recordings in progress that Emby is recording.

 

One of the powerful options of the Shield TV is the hardware transcoding ability of the device.  This can be used by client programs just like it can be used server side.  If the Emby client was to take advantage of this especially for audio the server would almost never have to remux/transcode anything played on the Shield TV. Kodi and Plex do this for example.

 

The quote you responded to here was talking about time-shifting live TV so that explanation doesn't really apply.