Can't Direct Play and Transcode the Same Channel (HDHomerun)?!?!?!

[troyhough 57]

This issue also persists after reporting it over 2.5 years ago. If someone in my home for example is Direct Playing any channel on my HdHomerun tuner, it will also Direct Play when trying to tune the same channel on a different device even when the device is calling for a lower quality 3Mb transcoded stream AND 3 of 4 tuners are sitting idle!

This is a big problem because most people either pay for more data on their mobile/broadband plans, have a Data Cap, or simply don't have the bandwidth available to smoothly Direct Play a 15Mb HDHomerun MPEGTS stream.

Please fix this so when a device calls for a 3Mb stream for example, it gets a 3Mb transcoded stream instead of a 15Mb Direct Play stream just because someone else is Direct Playing on a different device at the same time.

[rbjtech 4266]

So interestingly, mine does not do this.

If I direct play say BBC ONE via ET, and then attempt to play the BBC ONE channel via say a FireTV and force it to 1Mbit, then it transcodes to 1Mbit.  If I do it the other way around, and force ET to 1Mbit, then it transcodes that stream.  Checking HDHR, only one tuner is being used for both.  This is internal (LAN) - I can test via VPN to simulate external if that would be useful ?

edit - just turned off wifi on my phone and used that - it appeared to work fine.  I forced it down to 500k and it transcoded to that just fine while direct playing the same channel via ET on my LAN.

Edited July 30, 2021 by rbjtech

[Carlo 4330]

I just checked this as well and do not have this issue either.  I can have multiple streams which are direct playing, direct streaming and also different transcodes all playing the same channel with only 1 tuner in use.

Tested on 4.7.0.3 and HDHomeRun Prime.

[troyhough 57]

44 minutes ago, cayars said:

I just checked this as well and do not have this issue either.  I can have multiple streams which are direct playing, direct streaming and also different transcodes all playing the same channel with only 1 tuner in use.

Tested on 4.7.0.3 and HDHomeRun Prime.

I just checked again and still no change here. Wrench shows Quality 720 / 3Mbps like I have in settings but Stats for Nerds shows Direct Play when I am playing the same channel on a different device (Direct Play). When I am not playing the same channel on a different device, it properly transcodes at 3Mb like it's supposed to.

Edit: Is there a setting somewhere to "limit number of tuners used" or something similar? Or possibly a server change from 4.6 to 4.7 to correct this???

Edited July 30, 2021 by troyhough

[Carlo 4330]

When playing back in the ODS click on the cog icon, then choose Quality setting and try lowering it there.

Does that work?

[troyhough 57]

7 hours ago, cayars said:

When playing back in the ODS click on the cog icon, then choose Quality setting and try lowering it there.

Does that work?

Nvidia Shield is Direct Playing NBC in the living room.

On my phone, the Android app's settings is set to 3 Mb for Internet. I set phone to LTE and tune NBC. It direct plays. Hit cog wheel, it says Quality: 3 Mb but it's Direct Playing. Still in Cog wheel I change from 3 Mb to 1 MB, it gives me a black screen and hangs for a long time. Then starts Direct Playing again. No change.

[ebr 14913]

9 hours ago, troyhough said:

Nvidia Shield is Direct Playing NBC in the living room.

On my phone, the Android app's settings is set to 3 Mb for Internet. I set phone to LTE and tune NBC. It direct plays. Hit cog wheel, it says Quality: 3 Mb but it's Direct Playing. Still in Cog wheel I change from 3 Mb to 1 MB, it gives me a black screen and hangs for a long time. Then starts Direct Playing again. No change.

Hi.  Can we please see the log from that and also indicate the time that it occurred?  Thanks.

[troyhough 57]

2 hours ago, ebr said:

Hi.  Can we please see the log from that and also indicate the time that it occurred?  Thanks.

Ok so I just ran another test. Had 2 devices Direct Playing CBS. I grabbed my phone, set to LTE, Internet quality to 1Mbps. Tuned CBS. It Direct Played instead.

Hit the Cog wheel and changed quality from there to 360p. Screen went black for a long time and never started playing again.

Attached are the logs (there were 3 transcode logs during that test time).

Thanks

embyserver.txt ffmpeg-transcode-5d711bb1-086e-47d9-8ca6-bec8c483e7f8_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-a2024d54-0f03-4597-91c8-d84489364089_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-b09a5a28-7745-411d-b4f6-8a01af11127f_1.txt

[Luke 37068]

Are you still running into this?

[troyhough 57]

6 hours ago, Luke said:

Are you still running into this?

Just tested it. Yes still running into it and not fixed. Server 4.6.4.0 and Emby Android app 3.2.05

[drando 2]

I have the same setup as the OP.  I just wanted to show my findings. 

When starting the stream via local lan (Direct Stream).  Then launching the same channel on IOS mobile device using cellular it will only direct stream.

If I start the stream on the mobile device first on cellular,  then open it on the local lan.  The mobile device will transcode and the local lan will direct stream.

I checked the HDHomerun tuner status after doing the second test and both streams are coming off the same tuner.  Which is good as I would not want to tie up 2 tuners on the HDhomerun.

Using latest Emby Theater for Local Lan and latest Emby version for IOS on cellular,  with Emby server Server 4.6.4.0.

Its really not an issue for me,  but it would be cool,  if it can be figured out.

[troyhough 57]

****Make sure you test multiple channels if you are testing this out! For example, I have 7 HDHR channels. 2 of the 7 channels will not Direct Play on my Pixel 4 XL when playback quality is set to max. They transcode no matter what. The other 5 all Direct Play.

So you may think it's working properly if you tune a 2nd device and it shows transcoding, but it COULD be transcoding even if there isn't a device also tuned into the same channel.

[troyhough 57]

@Luke

I am moving away from the Chrome Web player for all of my devices and to the Android official app so it's pretty important for this to be fixed. Is it still being worked on? Anything I can do the help/test?

Thanks

[troyhough 57]

I am still running into this issue. If a device is Direct Playing a channel on the HDHR, my other devices will not "follow the rules" and transcode even though there are 3 free tuners available. This is very problematic or me and I'm sure many, many others!

[Carlo 4330]

On 7/31/2021 at 11:50 AM, troyhough said:

Ok so I just ran another test. Had 2 devices Direct Playing CBS. I grabbed my phone, set to LTE, Internet quality to 1Mbps. Tuned CBS. It Direct Played instead.

Hit the Cog wheel and changed quality from there to 360p. Screen went black for a long time and never started playing again.

Attached are the logs (there were 3 transcode logs during that test time).

Thanks

embyserver.txt 1005.2 kB · 0 downloads ffmpeg-transcode-5d711bb1-086e-47d9-8ca6-bec8c483e7f8_1.txt 52.19 kB · 1 download ffmpeg-transcode-a2024d54-0f03-4597-91c8-d84489364089_1.txt 52.05 kB · 0 downloads ffmpeg-transcode-b09a5a28-7745-411d-b4f6-8a01af11127f_1.txt 52.11 kB · 0 downloads

Going back reading the thread again.  I'm confused by this.  You said you had 2 direct plays going then used your phone and it direct played which would be 3 direct plays. But the files posted above show 3 transcodes.

Can you test this again being careful to compare what SFN is show and what type of ffmpeg log is generated for each playback. 
Also check your tuner for each new stream and let us know if it's using the same tuner or if it uses a different tuner.

[troyhough 57]

@cayars

Just tested yet again. Ch7 is Direct Playing on Shield. Grab Pixel 4 XL phone and set to LTE, 3Mb. Dashboard says Direct Playing, Stats for Nerds says DirectPlay, and my HDHR tuner is showing Ch7 being used on 1 of 4 tuners.

Do you want me to attach server log or Android log or both????????

Edited September 21, 2021 by troyhough

[Carlo 4330]

Did you see any ffmpeg logs generated by the server for these playbacks?
So these two playbacks regardless of type of playback did in fact share the tuner correct?

[troyhough 57]

14 minutes ago, cayars said:

Did you see any ffmpeg logs generated by the server for these playbacks? No ffmpeg logs were generated.

So these two playbacks regardless of type of playback did in fact share the tuner correct? They shared the single tuner, yes. There were 3 unused tuners available.

 

[Carlo 4330]

So for channel 7 everything worked as designed.

[ebr 14913]

1 hour ago, cayars said:

So for channel 7 everything worked as designed.

No... one stream should have been transcoded down to 3Mb/s....

[Carlo 4330]

12 minutes ago, ebr said:

No... one stream should have been transcoded down to 3Mb/s....

Yes you're probably correct on that ebr.

@troyhough can you do a quick check in SFN and/or HDHR web page to see what the bitrate of Channel 7 is?

Yes please upload the server log for those playbacks of channel 7.

Appreciated.

[troyhough 57]

1 hour ago, ebr said:

No... one stream should have been transcoded down to 3Mb/s....

This is correct.

[troyhough 57]

59 minutes ago, cayars said:

@troyhough can you do a quick check in SFN and/or HDHR web page to see what the bitrate of Channel 7 is?

HDHR web page shows bitrate of 15Mbps for Ch7.

Yes please upload the server log for those playbacks of channel 7.

I restarted the server, played Ch7 on my Shield (Direct Play) and grabbed my Pixel 4 XL, set it to LTE which is set to 3Mb. It Direct Played. Then downloaded server log. See attached.

 

embyserver.txt

[Carlo 4330]

There is something strange going on here. For the Pixel/second stream it knows the media exceeded the bitrate limit.

2021-09-21 17:15:59.559 Info Server: http/1.1 POST https://emby.troyhough.com/Items/141788/PlaybackInfo?UserId=37ea57c3ff41419b91c7df1e1b837e6b&StartTimeTicks=0&IsPlayback=true&AutoOpenLiveStream=true&MaxStreamingBitrate=3000000&X-Emby-Client=Emby for Android&X-Emby-Device-Name=Pixel 4 XL&X-Emby-Device-Id=17b3377456e6d8a9&X-Emby-Client-Version=3.2.11. UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 11; Pixel 4 XL Build/RQ3A.210905.001; wv) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Chrome/93.0.4577.82 Mobile Safari/537.36
2021-09-21 17:15:59.562 Info App: User policy for Troy. EnablePlaybackRemuxing: True EnableVideoPlaybackTranscoding: True EnableAudioPlaybackTranscoding: True
2021-09-21 17:15:59.562 Info App: Bitrate exceeds DirectPlay limit: media bitrate: 15448000, max bitrate: 3000000
2021-09-21 17:15:59.562 Info App: Bitrate exceeds DirectStream limit: media bitrate: 15448000, max bitrate: 3000000
2021-09-21 17:15:59.564 Info LiveTvManager: Opening channel stream from Emby, external channel Id: hdhr_7.1
2021-09-21 17:15:59.564 Info LiveTV: Streaming Channel hdhr_7.1
2021-09-21 17:15:59.564 Info LiveTV: Live stream native_9098a73d5f0a41a094a99f31435d5a51_e7ecd8e777fe1ae03ee194f59309bcac consumer count is now 2

I see something kind of strange so I'd like for you to do a test for me.

Reproduce this same test with the same devices in the same order but this time make sure both devices are set to login to the server directly by local IP:port and avoid your domain or Cloudflare.

If this works correctly, then I've got another test you can do with the exact setup you did before this using Cloudflare. Login to Cloudflare and turn on Development Mode on the Overview page. 

Any difference?

[troyhough 57]

1 hour ago, cayars said:

There is something strange going on here. For the Pixel/second stream it knows the media exceeded the bitrate limit.

2021-09-21 17:15:59.559 Info Server: http/1.1 POST https://emby.troyhough.com/Items/141788/PlaybackInfo?UserId=37ea57c3ff41419b91c7df1e1b837e6b&StartTimeTicks=0&IsPlayback=true&AutoOpenLiveStream=true&MaxStreamingBitrate=3000000&X-Emby-Client=Emby for Android&X-Emby-Device-Name=Pixel 4 XL&X-Emby-Device-Id=17b3377456e6d8a9&X-Emby-Client-Version=3.2.11. UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 11; Pixel 4 XL Build/RQ3A.210905.001; wv) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Chrome/93.0.4577.82 Mobile Safari/537.36
2021-09-21 17:15:59.562 Info App: User policy for Troy. EnablePlaybackRemuxing: True EnableVideoPlaybackTranscoding: True EnableAudioPlaybackTranscoding: True
2021-09-21 17:15:59.562 Info App: Bitrate exceeds DirectPlay limit: media bitrate: 15448000, max bitrate: 3000000
2021-09-21 17:15:59.562 Info App: Bitrate exceeds DirectStream limit: media bitrate: 15448000, max bitrate: 3000000
2021-09-21 17:15:59.564 Info LiveTvManager: Opening channel stream from Emby, external channel Id: hdhr_7.1
2021-09-21 17:15:59.564 Info LiveTV: Streaming Channel hdhr_7.1
2021-09-21 17:15:59.564 Info LiveTV: Live stream native_9098a73d5f0a41a094a99f31435d5a51_e7ecd8e777fe1ae03ee194f59309bcac consumer count is now 2

I see something kind of strange so I'd like for you to do a test for me.

Reproduce this same test with the same devices in the same order but this time make sure both devices are set to login to the server directly by local IP:port and avoid your domain or Cloudflare.

If this works correctly, then I've got another test you can do with the exact setup you did before this using Cloudflare. Login to Cloudflare and turn on Development Mode on the Overview page. 

Any difference?

Before I do this, can I tell you this exact issue was happening prior to switching to the Cloudflare way of connecting. I've been having this problem with the IP/Emby Connect method of connecting to the server for a LONG time and it still continues with Cloudflare...