atrpm 3 Posted December 15, 2019 Share Posted December 15, 2019 I’m back home for the holidays in Dominican Republic so I’m using my server out of the home network extensively for the first time. Internet here can be very good but not so great in some places, specially WiFi since most construction here is concrete. I usually use the internet quality settings in auto but like I said I never really use it outside the home network. What I have notice here is that emby doesn’t select the appropriate quality, it usually goes too high. For example I’m currently getting 5Mbps and emby selects the auto quality to be 720 - 10Mbps, obviously the stream buffers and is unwatchable. I then manually set the quality to 720 - 2Mbps and I can watch without problems. More than anything I’m looking for some insights on how this works and if we can improve it, I’m having to constantly find out my internet speed, and manually select the quality. I don’t mind doing that but some of my family members that I share my server with that live down here are not so tech savvy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atrpm 3 Posted December 15, 2019 Author Share Posted December 15, 2019 Here are some screenshots... Further more, could it be posible for the client to let emby know that is struggling to stream with does settings and adjust in the fly until is stable? Just some thoughts... maybe is already suppose to do this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ebr 14958 Posted December 15, 2019 Share Posted December 15, 2019 Hi. The app does a download speed test periodically before playback and uses the timing of that to determine the auto rate. So, if your speed is highly variable, it is possible for this test to come up with a wrong value. At this time, you would just need to manually set the quality in the app - or, you could limit the quality at the server (Internet streaming bitrate) so that any remote streams are capped at a certain value automatically. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atrpm 3 Posted December 15, 2019 Author Share Posted December 15, 2019 Thanks for the reply ebr, the speeds are stable per house so in this particular example the limit is 5Mbps and I consistently get that all the time here. I’m not sure how emby got to 10Mbps if the max is 5. That’s what I’m trying to understand. Maybe when the speed test starts the speed is higher and then gets throttled? Regardless it seems to be arriving at the wrong conclusion, is there a way that we can see the decision making process in the logs? Thanks again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luke 37238 Posted December 15, 2019 Share Posted December 15, 2019 what emby app are you playing with in this example? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atrpm 3 Posted December 15, 2019 Author Share Posted December 15, 2019 Hi Luke, using the iPhone app on this example... I get the same behavior on a fire tv as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
C.S. 64 Posted December 27, 2019 Share Posted December 27, 2019 Since the 4.3.1.0 update I have seen that number go as high as 120 Mbps, but normally it stays in the 10 - 15 range. That's with a 5mb limit and with hardware transcoding (intel uhd 630). I haven't tried software. But when I look at the actual traffic, it never goes past my single digit per user limit. So I'd guess something has just changed in how that number is calculated, since before the update it had a different problem - it seemed to take the entire file length into account when calculating the bitrate. So when when the user resumed from the middle, it would result in a reading of half the actual rate. And then when resuming from 3/4, it would report 1/4 the actual bitrate, and so on. Anyway it doesn't seem to cause any actual problems. I just ignore it and trust the server. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AndyXH 70 Posted January 13, 2022 Share Posted January 13, 2022 (edited) Hey everyone quick question so the network where the server is located is 980Mbps down & 45Mbps Up at my office the download speed is 230Mbps down & 25Mbps up so now when i play a 4K movie is plays at 1080P 6Mbps if it’s on Auto if I change it to Manuel 4K 40Mbps is works with no issue direct play. Anyway make this auto more active when play the movie it runs another test and if the speeds are better the quality changes ? Edited January 13, 2022 by andreaxheli Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neik 838 Posted January 14, 2022 Share Posted January 14, 2022 On 1/13/2022 at 4:30 AM, andreaxheli said: Hey everyone quick question so the network where the server is located is 980Mbps down & 45Mbps Up at my office the download speed is 230Mbps down & 25Mbps up so now when i play a 4K movie is plays at 1080P 6Mbps if it’s on Auto if I change it to Manuel 4K 40Mbps is works with no issue direct play. Anyway make this auto more active when play the movie it runs another test and if the speeds are better the quality changes ? This behavior has been like this for years, I can't remeber it being different since I've started using Emby. The workaround is as you already noticed to set the speed manually in the settings. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RanmaCanada 359 Posted January 17, 2022 Share Posted January 17, 2022 It's also possible the ISP is throttling the traffic. Any of my users that are on cable are throttled hard to 3mbs no matter what package they have. It's annoying to say the least. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neik 838 Posted January 17, 2022 Share Posted January 17, 2022 3 hours ago, RanmaCanada said: It's also possible the ISP is throttling the traffic. Any of my users that are on cable are throttled hard to 3mbs no matter what package they have. It's annoying to say the least. That cannot be the case for those where putting high bitrate manually solves the issue as they would be hard limit no matter if auto or manually set. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RanmaCanada 359 Posted January 17, 2022 Share Posted January 17, 2022 9 minutes ago, neik said: That cannot be the case for those where putting high bitrate manually solves the issue as they would be hard limit no matter if auto or manually set. Sorry but that is incorrect. Even if you manually tell the server "this is who fast I want the connection to be" your ISP can use deep packet inspection to see what the data is that you are moving, and if it is something they do not like they will throttle the ever loving crap out of it. I have gigabit service, my friends on cable have gigabit service, they can watch Netflix 4k and Amazon 4k no problem. They can't connect to me at anything higher than 3mbit. Those locally who had the issue switched to the same ISP I use and the problem "magically" went away as the ISP I am using does no traffic shaping at all. Heck my sister lives 3 blocks away from me and she has cable, and as soon as 8PM hits she can't watch anything at all because her ISP throttles the connection harder than a Prince Rupert's Drop. I've seen her get hit as hard as 1.5mb/s. Yes 1.5 megabits. It would be great if the dev team could somehow put a manual speed test on the client that goes to the server so we can actually see what is happening and then use that information to call out our crappy ISP's that are throttling the traffic. It would really help with troubleshooting connection issues. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neik 838 Posted January 17, 2022 Share Posted January 17, 2022 29 minutes ago, RanmaCanada said: Sorry but that is incorrect. Even if you manually tell the server "this is who fast I want the connection to be" your ISP can use deep packet inspection to see what the data is that you are moving, and if it is something they do not like they will throttle the ever loving crap out of it. But in my case this is not valid. The last time a tested auto was about two weeks ago on a LG TV. The auto-detected speed was something around 8Mbit (out of 50) and therefore my 4K encode was transcoding but as soon as I set it manually to 40 or 50Mbit it worked like a charm. This is what I meant with my last post. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AndyXH 70 Posted January 18, 2022 Share Posted January 18, 2022 I don't have ISP throttling my accounts are both business accounts with unlimited data and no throttling. Plus i dont have this issue when using plex i use both systems and no issues on the plex side 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hoonlight 11 Posted December 21, 2023 Share Posted December 21, 2023 I have the same problem. It plays at 1080p 6Mbps even when I have enough bandwidth. If I manually set it to 4K 160Mbps, it plays fine, no transcoding, no buffering. I don't have this problem in my local environment, but when I connect externally, I have a problem. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MSI2017 40 Posted December 21, 2023 Share Posted December 21, 2023 13 hours ago, hoonlight said: I have the same problem. It plays at 1080p 6Mbps even when I have enough bandwidth. If I manually set it to 4K 160Mbps, it plays fine, no transcoding, no buffering. I don't have this problem in my local environment, but when I connect externally, I have a problem. Yeah I've dedicated multiple posts to this broken behavior, but doesn't really seem like anything will be changed. At this rate of updates it'll be another few years. Starting to wonder where to 5 monthly $'s are going to. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ebr 14958 Posted December 21, 2023 Share Posted December 21, 2023 1 hour ago, MSI2017 said: Yeah I've dedicated multiple posts to this broken behavior, but doesn't really seem like anything will be changed. At this rate of updates it'll be another few years. Starting to wonder where to 5 monthly $'s are going to. Hi. This is why we give you the manual setting options. There is no way for an automatic determination to be optimal all the time in every instance and every environment and the most important thing is that playback works so we do take a conservative view of the reading we get back. In the future, we may be able to adapt to changes more dynamically, but that is a large-scale task that we have not undertaken yet. I know you'll say "so and so" does it but "so and so" is probably a very different example as they are most likely working with a common media set and not conversions on the fly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MSI2017 40 Posted December 22, 2023 Share Posted December 22, 2023 23 hours ago, ebr said: Hi. This is why we give you the manual setting options. There is no way for an automatic determination to be optimal all the time in every instance and every environment and the most important thing is that playback works so we do take a conservative view of the reading we get back. In the future, we may be able to adapt to changes more dynamically, but that is a large-scale task that we have not undertaken yet. I know you'll say "so and so" does it but "so and so" is probably a very different example as they are most likely working with a common media set and not conversions on the fly. The manual option still isnt't logical for most people, I've gone into detail about this before. About the on the fly stuff, Luke explained and I understood so I'm not saying that. I will say that I am getting a bit tired of the "in the future we might" all the time when in reality there has not even been any update in literal months. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hoonlight 11 Posted December 26, 2023 Share Posted December 26, 2023 I appreciate the efforts of the EMBY team. I think it would be nice to measure the connection speed periodically during playback to vary the quality. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
visproduction 125 Posted December 26, 2023 Share Posted December 26, 2023 MS, I'm on the outside and do not write any code here, but getting video encoding to "adapt to changes more dynamically" would be a major undertaking, costing, I would guess, hundreds of hours. And when video codecs update, browsers change and security on video is somehow updated for certain encoded copies, all the dynamic new code might need overhaul and udpates costing many more dev hours. I think you are assuming this update is like reserving a larger hotel room. It's way more complex. When you see some of these features working elsewhere, it is probable that this other service is completely setup differently. On 12/22/2023 at 2:19 PM, MSI2017 said: The manual option still isnt't logical for most people, I've gone into detail about this before. About the on the fly stuff, Luke explained and I understood so I'm not saying that. I will say that I am getting a bit tired of the "in the future we might" all the time when in reality there has not even been any update in literal months. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gilgamesh_48 947 Posted December 26, 2023 Share Posted December 26, 2023 On 12/22/2023 at 5:19 PM, MSI2017 said: The manual option still isnt't logical for most people, I've gone into detail about this before. About the on the fly stuff, Luke explained and I understood so I'm not saying that. I will say that I am getting a bit tired of the "in the future we might" all the time when in reality there has not even been any update in literal months. 1 hour ago, hoonlight said: I appreciate the efforts of the EMBY team. I think it would be nice to measure the connection speed periodically during playback to vary the quality. While the idea of testing the connection speed and changing speeds based on what is observed makes some sense it seems that it only makes sense on remote connections. Therefore, on local connections, it would be sensible if and only if the local connection is poor and the user wants it. I believe any "auto" option should be a user choice as it could/would be quite intrusive and irritating to have viewing interrupted, even briefly, when it is unneeded as it would be unneeded on local connection. I, and a lot of other people, go to a lot of trouble to make our local network as stable as possible and it would seem that, on that kind of network, adding extra overhead by testing speed periodically is unnecessary at best. So, if this is to be added, there should be an initial test that basically says, "If this connection is local never adjust speed during streaming." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hoonlight 11 Posted December 30, 2023 Share Posted December 30, 2023 On 12/22/2023 at 7:22 AM, ebr said: Hi. This is why we give you the manual setting options. There is no way for an automatic determination to be optimal all the time in every instance and every environment and the most important thing is that playback works so we do take a conservative view of the reading we get back. In the future, we may be able to adapt to changes more dynamically, but that is a large-scale task that we have not undertaken yet. I know you'll say "so and so" does it but "so and so" is probably a very different example as they are most likely working with a common media set and not conversions on the fly. I think because we're used to seeing streaming services like netflix and youtube do a good job of setting automatic quality in real time, we're under the impression that it's easy. What you're saying is that it's actually a very difficult task, I get it. thanks 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chillout 85 Posted December 30, 2023 Share Posted December 30, 2023 Plex has been using adaptive bit rate for years, something I wish Emby would adopt. The signal might start off in poor quality but eventually improves as it gains buffer or will automatically degrade if there is a network slow down. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neik 838 Posted December 30, 2023 Share Posted December 30, 2023 33 minutes ago, Chillout said: Plex has been using adaptive bit rate for years, something I wish Emby would adopt. Interesting, wasn't aware of that. It is available in the free version, right? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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