ieblj01 3 Posted January 20, 2021 Posted January 20, 2021 Hello Forum, I am wondering if anyone else is seeing this issue with AFTVs. I have noticed that when watching movies (or TV shows, etc., all different file types, i.e. MP4, MKV) the AFTV will be very pixilated at times (practically unwatchable) and always in the same places of the show/movie. This occurs for files that I have ripped myself at the highest quality which surprises me and this all happens on a local gig network with every device wired in (no wireless). If I watch the same file on a phone or use a Rasberry Pi with LibreElec/Kodi (EmbyCon) connected to the same TV as the AFTV, the picture quality is significantly better and I don't see the pixilation event at all or it is dramatically reduced. Is this just a major difference in how the two clients handle the files when displaying them? I am running the latest version of Emby server (4.5.4) on Ubuntu 20.04. AFTV clients are running Emby 1.8.54a. I attached an example comparison between AFTV and Kodi/EmbyCon at the same point in the same move on a halfway decent monitor (not as clear as my HD TVs) and you can clearly see a difference between them. The system connections are identical (same HDMI cable, monitor port, etc.) I simply switched out the AFTV for the Rasberry Pi.
ebr 15672 Posted January 20, 2021 Posted January 20, 2021 Hi. How is the item playing? That looks like the first one is at a significantly lower bitrate due possibly to transcoding.
ieblj01 3 Posted January 20, 2021 Author Posted January 20, 2021 (edited) You nailed that ebr. it is transcoding when playing off the AFTV and direct playing off the Pi. Seems the AFTV doesn't support the codec. Edited January 20, 2021 by ieblj01 added additional screenshots
ebr 15672 Posted January 20, 2021 Posted January 20, 2021 That actually says we tried to direct play it but there was an error so we fell back to transcoding. The subsequent conversion from mpeg4 to h264 is probably where the quality decrease is coming from. If you can play that item for just a few seconds and then send a log from the app, I can see what error caused the fallback. Thanks.
ieblj01 3 Posted January 20, 2021 Author Posted January 20, 2021 I will get that setup and send the log over shortly. Thanks!
ieblj01 3 Posted January 20, 2021 Author Posted January 20, 2021 (edited) OK. Logs sent at 4:22 Eastern Playback file Terminator Salvation (2009).mp4 TRAVEL AFTV (emby User) Edited January 20, 2021 by ieblj01 typo
ieblj01 3 Posted January 20, 2021 Author Posted January 20, 2021 (edited) Noticed my kids are watching a movie in the guest room on a different AFTV. Transcoding in effect! Edited January 20, 2021 by ieblj01
ebr 15672 Posted January 20, 2021 Posted January 20, 2021 Yeah, mpeg4 again. I believe the Fire should support that so we need to look into it. Any chance you can get me a sample of one of these items (you can PM me a dropbox link or similar)?
ieblj01 3 Posted January 20, 2021 Author Posted January 20, 2021 And my sister, this is an external internet connection to the server, just an FYI. All AFTVs seems to be transcoding everything.
ieblj01 3 Posted January 20, 2021 Author Posted January 20, 2021 Sure, let me get that setup and you can grab the file.
Luke 40116 Posted January 21, 2021 Posted January 21, 2021 5 hours ago, ieblj01 said: Sure, let me get that setup and you can grab the file. That would be great, thanks.
ieblj01 3 Posted January 21, 2021 Author Posted January 21, 2021 posted file in dropbox last night and PM'd ebr with the info
ebr 15672 Posted January 21, 2021 Posted January 21, 2021 Your sample will not direct play for me on Andriod TV. It throws an error and then falls back to transcoding. Not sure what the problem is as I even remuxed into an mkv and had the same problem. The Roku will play it fine. We'll have to look into this further but for your real issue, you may want to investigate some of the advanced transcoding options to see if you can improve the quality of your transcodes.
ieblj01 3 Posted January 21, 2021 Author Posted January 21, 2021 1 hour ago, ebr said: Your sample will not direct play for me on Andriod TV. It throws an error and then falls back to transcoding. Not sure what the problem is as I even remuxed into an mkv and had the same problem. The Roku will play it fine. We'll have to look into this further but for your real issue, you may want to investigate some of the advanced transcoding options to see if you can improve the quality of your transcodes. Glad to know it was reproducible for you and it is not just me! I will play around with it and see if I can improve the picture quality. I am phasing out the AFTVs and replacing them with Pi's...although IMHO, I think the AFTV UI is the best out of the Emby clients...but others may disagree
jrwalte 17 Posted January 21, 2021 Posted January 21, 2021 If you have a decent CPU/GPU running your Emby server, you definitely want to reduce the H264 encoding CRF option. I use 14, which keeps the file bitrate near original. 1
ieblj01 3 Posted January 21, 2021 Author Posted January 21, 2021 Thanks, I will give that a try. My server is definitely overpowered
ieblj01 3 Posted January 24, 2021 Author Posted January 24, 2021 I ended up downloading Kodi onto my AFTV and using Embycon and the Embuary skin as a stopgap for now. Still get that great Emby client UI (mostly) and all my files are direct playing as they should and the video quality is back to how it should be without the transcoding. So I am a happy camper again.
ebr 15672 Posted January 25, 2021 Posted January 25, 2021 Hi. Did you try adjusting any of the advanced transcoding settings?
ieblj01 3 Posted January 25, 2021 Author Posted January 25, 2021 1 hour ago, ebr said: Hi. Did you try adjusting any of the advanced transcoding settings? yes I did. in all honestly, it was still terrible picture quality regardless of how I adjusted those, even if I went to extreme values
jrwalte 17 Posted January 26, 2021 Posted January 26, 2021 Was the hardware acceleration on or off by chance? ON can cause poor results when you're attempting high compression. GPU encoding is better for originally high bitrate with low compression. CPU does better with heavy compression.
ieblj01 3 Posted January 26, 2021 Author Posted January 26, 2021 (edited) 17 hours ago, jrwalte said: Was the hardware acceleration on or off by chance? ON can cause poor results when you're attempting high compression. GPU encoding is better for originally high bitrate with low compression. CPU does better with heavy compression. yes, I believe it was on. I will turn it off and see if that helps at all. Edited January 26, 2021 by ieblj01
ieblj01 3 Posted January 26, 2021 Author Posted January 26, 2021 (edited) Turning off hardware acceleration made a huge difference in video quality with the more aggressive compression settings. This comes in handy as I have a couple of first gen AFTVs that don't support hevc (in addition to 2nd gen models that do). The Kodi/Embycon bandaid sidesteps the mpeg transcode issue, but then craps out on hevc files on the 1st models. Hopefully the coding gurus will figure out why the AFTV client is transcoding supported files and this problem will eventually go away Thanks for the insight on the HW acc setting. With the Premiere account it was on by default. Edited January 26, 2021 by ieblj01 Additonal info 1
Luke 40116 Posted January 28, 2021 Posted January 28, 2021 We are looking into improving it. Thanks for the feedback.
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