What causes my emby Theater stuttering?

[Jennice 19]

Hi all,

 

I hope you can help me...

I have my emby server running on an i7-8700k, and it works fine.

 

I also have emby theater running on it for viewing.

 

On another PC, I have emby theater running. But it stutters a lot at higher bit-rates (above 2 mbbps I estimate).

 

Other clients do not have this issue.

 

The stuttering PC has an E8400 cpu, 4 GB ram, and uses the on-board graphics (H55D-M Evo motherboard).

 

It's connected to the server via wired LAN (100 mbit).

 

Any hints on, where the weak spot is?

[muppets4 23]

Are you sure the E8400 is on that motherboard. Because if it is, I found the reason for the stuttering....... This CPU will not fit this motherboard (: 

 

100Mbit is enough for most 1080p video's. That will not be the reason.

 

edit: the motherboard seems a socket 1156 motherboard. The cpu is a socket 775 type

 

edit 2: if you play a video and open taskmanager, what % is the cpu at? And what memory is free?

Edited September 24, 2018 by muppets4

[Jennice 19]

Must be recalling the MB wrong then. But is is indeed an E8400 CPU, and the system has been running Win7 media center for years.

 

I'm thinking it's a Q45 chipset, Asus p5q-em. (as it's obviously not the h55 I mentioned originally) 

 

Could it be that the GPU is too weak for the streams (is it mpeg4?) to be decoded / displayed, or is it my CPU?

Is there a tool to check if it's missing CPU or GPU power?

[muppets4 23]

This motherboard had a X4500HD graphic chip that -should- be able to play 1080p X264 video. X264 is fairly common. But I am reading mixed results on Google. Something about a needed bios update that Intel made available for it's own motherboards, but has to be implemented by the 3rd party companys like Asus. In the list of bios updates on the Asus site I cannot see anything related to this. And since the motherboard is 10 years old, don't expect it. Your best bet will be to buy a discrete videocard. The CPU will be strong enough if the video is handled by the video card. 

Edited September 24, 2018 by muppets4

[Jennice 19]

Hi Muppets4,

 

Thank you for your efforts investigating the options.

 

Spending money on a ~10 year old PC, hoping it'll eventually be able to play Emby correctly, feels expensive.

After all, I suppose just about any imaginable CPU today (with iGPU) would be better suited for the task.... right? Maybe it's about time to retire the old PC

I don't really know what kind of life expectancy the PC (especially the original HDD and Corsair PSU) has.

 

The cooling fans sound worn, too.

[muppets4 23]

I think you are right. For viewing purposes I mostly use low powered NUC's from Intel. Some of them are pretty cheap and have good features for viewing video/using Emby. Hardware accelerated x264/x265 video, HDMI 2.0 for 4k@60hz, InfraRed built in and very silent. I am typing on one right now: NUCC6CAYH. I beleive this is the successor: NUC7CJYH

[Jennice 19]

I have considered NUC and other small devices, too, but I am (we are?) old(-fashioned) enough to play CDs and DVDs, and it's not easy to squeeze a CD into a NUC. 

 

The wife would miss a CD tray, so that's a NO-GO!

 

Therefore I am considering a "full size" PC, i3-8100 or i5-8400 (could do as a secondary Emby server, I suppose).

[Guest asrequested]

You can buy external optical drives.

[Jennice 19]

True about extra box, but the WifeAcceptanceFactor rises is inversely proportional with the number of boxes and cables.

 

Regarding better graphics card which could handle the playback in HW decoding... 

I have another old-ish PC (a game server for the kids), which has a HD7850 GPU. Even if old, it's better then Intels  Q45 chipset graphics. I have looked, but am unsure if the 7850 will support the video codec Emby used when streaming (I suppose it's h264, but I am not sure). But if you guys think it can improve my Emby playback, I could transplant the GPU to the E8400 based PC and try.

 

I would appreciate if someone more tech-savvy then me could indicate if the HD7850 could solve the playback stutter using HW decoding.

[stettler 27]

You said you are using Windows 7? Start to play the video, minimize the window and than maximize it again. See if that resolve the problem for the video you are playing. 

[Jennice 19]

You said you are using Windows 7? Start to play the video, minimize the window and than maximize it again. See if that resolve the problem for the video you are playing. 

 

Now THAT sounds re-assuring! 

 

And to describe the W.A.F. of this solution, I think I need complex numbers... especially the imaginary part.

[stettler 27]

Now THAT sounds re-assuring! 

 

And to describe the W.A.F. of this solution, I think I need complex numbers... especially the imaginary part.

 

Well, I always had that problem with Win7 since ET changed to electron/mvp:

https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/46763-theater-mpv-test/page-82&do=findComment&comment=483667

 

and how I fixed it at that time:

https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/46763-theater-mpv-test/?p=483845

 

The fix won't work anymore: even if you change the lua script, the window doesn't go back to exactly full screen when maximizing it with nircmdc.exe because of a problem related to the new version of electron. (If you replace electron with an older version than it works fine)

 

I can repeat that problem, and this fix, 100% reliably on 2 Win 7 computers I have. I don't have the problem with Win 10 on same computers. 

 

Naturally, there is other causes of judders:

- Video fps doesn't match the refresh rate of the display (but it's much less noticeable than the problem I described above. It doesn't even bother some people)

- Your GPU/CPU isn't powerful enough to process the video and is dropping frames: try to set all scaling options to less resource intensive algorithm like linear or bilinear. Disable others enhancements. Try to enable GPU hardware acceleration

- There is a bug with the GPU hardware acceleration which result in a lot of presentation glitch. Try to use another acceleration method or disable hardware acceleration. (that's very common with embedded GPU on old Intel CPU)

- Disable anti-virus (including Windows Defender): they may try to analyse the stream and, on weak systems, that may just put too much extra load to play video even with low settings.