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QNAP, Roku Ultra, MPEG2 Woes


diego.rivera

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diego.rivera

Hi, all!

 

I want to set up Emby on my QNAP NAS where I keep my media files.  Currently it's running Plex without a hitch, but I just want to replace it with Emby because of the integration with TVHeadEnd. The reason for that is I want to turn my Roku Ultra into my "de-facto HTPC" (sort of).

 

I got it all working, but have one problem: Emby insists on transcoding everything coming from TVHeadEnd from its source MPEG2 format to H.264.  The problem with that that my QNAP doesn't have that much horsepower to begin with and thus starts to suffer from the extra transcoding effort. Since both the Roku and the TV support MPEG2 (a.k.a. H.262), keeping the stream in this format shouldn't be an issue, right?

 

Perhaps this is something that TVHeadEnd configuration can be tweaked for? (i.e. spit out an MKV instead of a TS stream?) Perhaps at the Emby (server or Roku app) level? I doubt something can be tweaked at the Roku level...

 

Unfortunately, I'm drawing somewhat of a blank here and need help from someone with more experience on the topic...perhaps someone has solved this before?

 

Thanks!

Edited by diego.rivera
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diego.rivera

It's a Roku Ultra. I've checked via the Roku Media Player that it supports H.262 (MPEG-2), which suggests that the hardware supports it as well.

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diego.rivera

I don't have that info, but I can collect it.  I removed Emby in frustration some time ago and I thought that this time around I'd research the issue beforehand.  Perhaps it's the Emby-TVHeadEnd plugin not requesting the correct stream format? Perhaps it's TVHeadEnd not spitting out the right stream format?

 

I was hoping to gather information *before* experimenting, but I get what you're saying...

 

Cheers.

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Use the Emby Beta Roku app. This has an added feature that can help out here the stats-for-nerds. You need to play your item like normal. When playing press down on the Roku remote to bring up the video player OSD. On the OSD on the bottom is a row of icons. One of these looks like a graphic-equalizer 3-sliders. Click that icon and bring up the Playback Menu. On this menu you can find the on/off switch for stats-for-nerds. Turn it on.

 

Now the stats-for-nerds shows exactly what is happening. It will remember if you close the video player. This means if you play anything again then you can watch the stats-for-nerds again. What does it list the reason is for transcoding? There has to be a reason for transcoding as the Roku ultra does support mpeg2 and we would pass it if we could. Something is happening to cause the transcoding and the "Transcode reason" shown on the stats for nerds will tell you. 

Edited by speechles
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diego.rivera

I shall get everything set up again, and try that. It'll be a while before I can answer, though... as I said: I removed Emby in frustration a few months back because I couldn't figure things out despite trying everything I could think of.

 

Cheers!

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I shall get everything set up again, and try that. It'll be a while before I can answer, though... as I said: I removed Emby in frustration a few months back because I couldn't figure things out despite trying everything I could think of.

 

Cheers!

 

We made it easier on you this time. You can see everything from the comfort of your couch on your Roku. The app will now show you exactly what is happening when playing any item. We want this to be as simple as possible with as much information a user could need to get past issues like these on their own. We want you to be able to use Emby your way. Your media, your way. Please try again and let us know if you still have a problem. Post again in this thread. If this is still an issue we will work to resolve it. Thanks. :)

Edited by speechles
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diego.rivera

Ok so this time it appears that there's no H.264 transcoding going on, which is EXCELLENT!!! I can go ahead with my evil plan of replacing Plex with Emby (assuming everything else works as expected ;) )!!

 

Any ideas when this Emby Beta app will graduate to full-release?

 

Thanks!!

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diego.rivera

I might have spoke too soon. I tried playing back a movie and saw two issues:

 

1) Playback took what I consider an inordinate amount of time to start playback (30+ seconds)

2) When I enable "stats for nerds", it causes the Roku Emby app to crash (not so for Live TV)

 

What info may I retrieve for your benefit?

 

Cheers!

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diego.rivera

Log was sent at about 2019-03-11T02:36:00+00:00 UTC (give or take a minute), from the Roku Ultra (obviously), logged in as admin to the Emby server (I probably should change that :D).  The server log is available here

 

The movie in question is Iron Man 2, the file is named "Iron Man 2 (2010).mkv", and is an H.264(1080p yuv420p 23.98fps)+AC3(48Khz, 224Kbps) MKV package.

 

Cheers!

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I apologize. This is the recent additions. I went through the stats for nerds section just now and made sure we are not having a condition where an invalid value might cause a crash.

 

Reference: Fix #279: Better protect against invalid in stats for nerds

 

This should make it to Beta as soon as @@ebr has a chance to review my changes. There are others reporting these same crashes but they have never identified the stats for nerds as the cause. We only suspected. I did go through and submit lots of changes to keep this from happening. Hopefully this fixes the issue and I caught the problem. Stay tuned. :)

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diego.rivera

As I said, it wasn't a TV channel - that bit worked just fine.

 

It was a movie file, and it's 100% reproducible. I believe @@speechles found a possible cause and mitigation, so I'll wait for the updated app and test again.

 

Cheers!

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diego.rivera

Hey, guys!! I have a question - I'm trying to watch TV via the browser on Emby.  As I mentioned, the Roku app is working fine, playing the media straight from TVHeadEnd without the need for transcoding (what I wanted!).

 

But now I can't accomplish the same on a web browser (Chrome v72.0.3626.121 64-bit on Ubuntu Linux 18.04) - inevitably, all streams are transcoded.  The stats-for-nerds say it's transcoding because "Container not supported" (mpegts). What containers does the web client's player support?  I tried setting the default profile to matroska but playback doesn't even start then... any ideas?

 

Thanks!

Edited by diego.rivera
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diego.rivera

Ok... fair enough. I suspected something along those lines but it's nice to have confirmation. It's a shame my QNAP doesn't support hardware transcoding (TS-451+), because that would be one solution.

 

Cheers!

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