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Raspberry Pi4 & NAS for Server


maeffjus

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Hi Guys,

actually I'm running my Emby on a Windows-Server 2012 R2 with a Core-i7 which is from the 3 or 4-Series.
But since this costs a ton of electricity, I'd like to change this to a more energy-efficient alternative.

While the new Raspberry Pi 4 seems to be very powerful, could I use this as an alternative for transcoding?
(If I'm abroad, I sometimes transcode FHD-content to my mobile devices, but I often use FHD to FHD)

Can anyone tell me if the RPi4 has enough power?
If not, what energy-efficient alternative do you recommend?

Regards,
Matthias

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Hi, it will not be as powerful as your i7, but should be able to handle light transcoding duties. You may just need to try it and see how it handles your current usage.

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The main question is, can it handle one FHD-stream? (1080p or whatever)
Actually I don't like to buy one to find out later it does not work...

I've just seen that previously in other posts it was mentioned that there have been issues with the RPI 4.

Actually I'd use also any other board, like the Tinker Board, the Nvida Jetson Nano etc. 
Just recommend something ;-)

Edited by maeffjus
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@@JaScoMa you've run an RPI4, right?

 

Sorry, I haven't bought a RPi4 yet to play around with.

 

But my server is running on the RockPro64 with DietPI and recently bought a nVidia Sheild Pro for the client player.  There is a MAJOR difference between the Shield and the Roku and I don't really see myself using Roku for Emby duties anytime soon; the Shield is much faster and more powerful.

 

I rip my movies to MKV using MakeMKV and then transcode them with Handbrake to H.264 with two audio channels; pass-through and AAC (Dolby Pro Logic II).  With my configuration settings (see below), my total bit rates for movies are anywhere from 4k on up to 8-9k with this configuration.  The RockPro doesn't have any issues playing these movies and have had four streams running different movies, at the same to two Rokus, a Xbox One and the Android App.

I don't encode my movies to H.265 mainly because the other server for my son at his mothers house, a RPi 3b+ can't handle this and causes major buffering issues.  But the RockPro64 doesn't have any issues at all with H.265.

 

Last time I tried, the RockrPro could not handle direct MKV transcoding, but this was also using the Roku as the client.  I may try again since movies which were buffering with the Roku play on the Shield without any issues.  For example: Smokie and the Bandit in testing, I upped the quality and the total bitrate is up to 22987kbps.  Roku would buffer every 10-15 seconds and the Shield played the whole movie without any issues.

 

I do plan at some point to get a RPi4 to update the server for my son and run it through some testing.  I'll let you know; specs wise the RockPro64 still beats the RPi4.

 

If you're interested in the RockPro64, this is my server configuration.  When playing movies, the CPU temp as shown in DietPI comes in at 100-115 degrees F depending on room temp, etc.

 

https://dietpi.com

 

 
ROCKPro64 4GB Single Board Computer - Price: $79.99
 
32GB eMMC Module - Price: $24.95
 
USB Adapter for eMMC Module - Price: $4.99
 
ROCKPro64 12V 5A US POWER SUPPLY - Price: $12.99
 
ROCKPro64 PREMIUM ALUMINUM CASING - Price: $14.99
 
Subtotal $137.91
 
Standard Flat Rate: $8.99
Total $146.90
 
Express Flat Rate: $18.00
Total $155.91
 
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
 
Handbrake configuration (found these online and they work very well for me; can take 8-10 hours to encode a movie (on an i5 laptop), but they're good quality):
Summary Tab:
Format - MP4
Everything Else Unchecked
 
Dimensions Tab:
Anamorphic - Automatic
Modulus - 2
Cropping - Automatic
 
Filters Tab:
Detelecine - Off
Interlace Detection - Off
Deinterlace - Off
Preset - Off
Denoise - Off
Shapen - Off
Deblock - Off
Greyscale - Unchecked
Rotate - 0
Flip - Unchecked
 
Video Tab:
Video Codec - H.264 (x264)
Constant Quality - 20 RF
Framerate (FPS) - Same as Source
Constant Framerate
Encoder Preset - VerySlow
Encoder Tune - Film
Fast Encode - Unchecked
Encoder Profile - High
Encode Level - 4.1
Extra Options: ref=5:bframes=5
 
Audio Tab (2 tracks):
DTS-HD Codec: Auto Passthru
DTS-HD Codec: AAC (avcodec) Bitrate: 192 Mixdown: Dolby Pro Logic II
 
Subtitles Tab:
If there are force subtitles, I use Subtitle Edit to grab them from the MVK then import the SRT and burn to video file.
 
Chapters Tab:
Can be turned off, but when left on, Emby will see them and show them in the player for quick jumps through the movie.
 
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This is a phone photo of Dark Phoenix; taken today.  The TV is just a Westinghouse 1080p LCD, but this is from a blu-ray MKV rip and encoded with Handbrake.

 

5d8f99d0db7d0_IMG_20190928_130052.jpg

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As a test, I uploaded both a DVD and Blu-Ray MKV rips for the server and tested.  Running the latest Emby beta; 4.3.10 and using the nVidia Shield Pro as the Emby player.

 

I'm happy to report that both played without any issues; except there were some issue with adding CC while playing the Blu-Ray rip.  It would display the sub-titles (PGSSUB) and play for 5-10 seconds, then pause to catch-up.  Play for a few more seconds, then pause.  Direct burn-in of subtitles doesn't work properly for blu-ray rips.  What's odd is that the Bitrate while doing this jumped down to somewhere in the Kbps with CC turned on; server not powerful enough?

 

There were no issues with the DVD subtitles though.

 

Below is the "Stats for Nerds" while playing both:

 

DVD MKV Rip
Playback Info:
Player: ExoPlayer
Display Mode: 1080/59.94
Play Method: Direct Play
Stream Type: mkv
 
Stream Information:
Video Resolution: 720x480
Video Codec: MPEG2VIDEO (direct)
Bitrate: 7.59 MBPS
Audio Codec: Dolby (direct)
 
Original Media Info:
Container: mkv
Video Codec: MPEG2Video
Video Bitrate: 7.59 MBPS
Audio Code: Dolby
Audio Bitrate: 448.00 Kbps
Audio Channels: 5.1
 
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
 
Blu-Ray MKV Rip
Playback Info:
Player: ExoPlayer
Display Mode: 1080/59.94
Play Method: Direct Play
Stream Type: HLS
 
Stream Info:
Video resolution: 1920x1080
Video codec: H264 (direct)
Audio codec: Dolby
Audio channels: 5.1
Bitrate: 5-25.63 Mbps (alternates up and down as the movie plays)
Max bitrate setting: 110 Mb/s
Transcode Speed: 139-157.00 fps  (alternates up and down as the movie plays)
Transcode Reason: Unsupported Audio
Transcode progress: 11.89-31.78% (went up as the movie went on)
 
Original Media Info
Container: mkv
Video codec: H264
Video bitrate: 29.87 Mbps
Audio codec: DTS
Audio bitrate: <Unknown>
Audio channels: 7.1
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Alright, guys this is some fairly extensive information!
Thanks a lot for them!

@JaScoMa: What I actually could not really understand: Do you also transcode live? (Not only with handbrake but also with emby to a Chromecast or whatever else.
Beside: Did anyone ever look into the NVIDIA Jetson Nano? I've seen that it has quite a nice price with integrated memory and I assume it is powerful...
Regards and thanks a lot!!

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Hello..  I use Handbrake to make the files smaller with the loss off quality the lowest.  Plus, with the smaller bitrate of the movies, servers like the RPi3 can handle serving the content to the clients.

 

I don't server anything outside of the home, so I can't say how that well the transcoding to smaller res clients works.  But serving at home at 1080p, it works wonderfully.

 

Looking at the nVidia Jetson Nano and the other boards, the main issue I see is that it only has development kits available for it.  Not sure how well this would work and the process needed to get something working properly.

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Looking at the nVidia Jetson Nano and the other boards, the main issue I see is that it only has development kits available for it.  Not sure how well this would work and the process needed to get something working properly.

I agree with you - but I found one thread where someone used it obviously. I'm only thinking of it, since it should have an extremely powerful GPU.

Beside, I just want to buy the board with the most power to make sure my streaming is as smooth as possible...

So at the end of the day I really don't care if it is NVIDIA, PINE64 or RPI. But I want the most bang for my buck ;-)

 

Here it is: https://www.reddit.com/r/emby/comments/bnu33v/jetson_nano_as_a_server/ 

Edited by maeffjus
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JaScoMa

Gotcha.  I haven't tried any streaming to external.  Id be interested in trying to see how things like full MKV and h.264 videos play.

 

What player do you use when not at home?

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maeffjus

Whatever I can...

I have used the android app, a Lenovo ThinkPad P50 and P52 and a Lenovo Miix 720, some Cromecasts and also my friends used Kodi and Emby for Samsung SmartTV...

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maeffjus

FYI: I have found out, the Jetson Nano does not use HW-acceleration with ffmpg. It only uses GStreamer. 
This should disqualify it - so I just added the pine64pro to my Amazon wishlist.
(Actually I'd buy it right now, but usually everybody complains when I do just before my B-day... :-D )

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JaScoMa

@@maeffjus (and FYI for @Luke) just discovered something with the transcoding temp folder which Emby uses.

 

I've started using MKV's for the movies which I really enjoy and want to watch in their full glory.  For example, had started watching Captain Marvel tonight (33.2gb MKV) and in the middle of the movie, Emby just stopped and crashed; even after rebooting the server, it still wouldn't start.  Ended up finding out that my RockPro had run out of "disk space".

 

Googled for a command online (du -a /var | sort -n -r | head -n 10) which lists the top 10 folder and files taking up the most disk space and found that "/var/lib/emby/transcoding-temp" was using up to 28gb in size leaving only 51kb of disk space left over.  Upon removing all the existing files in this directory and rebooting, the server started back up and I could continue watching the movie.

 

Seems like Emby is transcoding this MKV because in the "stats for nerds", it's transcoding the audio since it's in a format not supported.  In the mean time, this temp folder is growing as the transcoding buffer grows until the point where transcoding is complete and then the movie is just direct streaming.  Since the full MKV file is 33.2gb in size, it makes sense that the transcode temp folder would grow to that size as the buffer grows.  Since I only have a 32gb eMMC, it filled up prior to transcode buffer finishing.

If you go this route with streaming MKV's, you may want to purchase the 64GB or even the 128GB eMMC drive so this swap folder doesn't eat up all the drive space on your SBC.

Thanks..

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maeffjus

Thanks @@JaScoMa!
But the good thing is - I do neither have a 4k TV nor doe I have MKV's of this size, the biggest might range around 10gb. Also initially I'll do some testing with a SD-card only and later purchase a eMMC.
But thanks anyway, but at the end of the day, this totally makes sense, because otherwise the transcoding needs to slow down a lot in order to match the movie-progress.

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  • 1 month later...
maeffjus

@JaScoMa: I need your help!
I've got the Rock64Pro and actually nothing really works.

I've installed Armbian Buster (Server) and then Debian Arm64 (aarch64)(emby-server-deb_4.3.0.30_arm64.deb).
When I the try to start any movie / TV-show, it will crash after 2 sec and also there is no playback-bar in the movie.

What did you install? Anything beyond the OS and EMBY?

I'd be glad if you could help me!
Regards,
Matthias

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@JaScoMa: I need your help!

I've got the Rock64Pro and actually nothing really works.

 

I've installed Armbian Buster (Server) and then Debian Arm64 (aarch64)(emby-server-deb_4.3.0.30_arm64.deb).

When I the try to start any movie / TV-show, it will crash after 2 sec and also there is no playback-bar in the movie.

 

What did you install? Anything beyond the OS and EMBY?

 

I'd be glad if you could help me!

Regards,

Matthias

 

Please follow along here:

https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/79739-43030-docker-arm64v8-transcoding-crashes-emby-server-direct-play-works-fine

Thanks.

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maeffjus

Thanks Luke!
It works now... I've seen this issue in the forum  - but since the version-number for the beta was lower, I guessed it was outdated.
There is another issue:

My Videos are located on a Windows 2012R2 Server and shared via SMB, I also mounted this share into the /mnt folder.
Now the weird thing, not a single movie is recognized, but ALL the TV-shows are perfectly found and working.

Inside there is a folder "videos", which has a folder for TV-shows (Serien in German) and Movies (Filme). Under each folder there are subfolders.

Here is how movies look (I translate the naming into english) /mnt/Videos/Movies/Action/ActionmovieABC.mkv

This is how TV-shows look (I translate the naming into english) /mnt/Videos/TV-shows/Friends/Season 01/S01E01.avi

 

The files are avi, mp4 and mkv's - mixed between movies and tv-shows.

I've tried to remove and add the movies, also marked as "mixed content", but there is not a single movie recognized.
And I've tested, the movie-folders are readable, so it should be found by EMBY.
Further I wonder, the same folders are used on a EMBY-installation in Server 2012 R2, which are perfectly recognized and also listed in this emby-installation.

Any help is - again - highly appreciated ;-)
Regards,
Matthias

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Usually that points to a permissions problem of Emby Server not having access to read the contents of the folders.

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maeffjus

I've tried - I can copy / access files inside the movies as well.
The previous message is correct.
Do I maybe need to install any decoder or codecs?!

I've even added a folder level lower (movies/action) but even the action-folder is not recognized.

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maeffjus

Alright, I've now changed the movie-folder to my NAS with NFS & SMB (running on the SMB-share).
It does recognize the movies - BUT:

It does not show the subfolders and does not show the pictures of each folder (action, drama, thriller etc.).
I can only change the sorting to "folders" - but this is not the standard but a huge list of movies.
On my windows-installation, this is working fine.
Any idea?

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