Transcoding settings have no effect

[mollat 2]

Hi,

I am using Emby Server (4.6.2) on a Raspberry Pi 4 (with 4GB memory and USB3 SSD) for mobile usage.

It performed fine for about a year now. However - as the resolution of some movies or series grow, there is arizing a problem: I get some lags when playing more than one hi-res movie (720p) now and then. If I stop them, wait a minute and start again - the problem will disappear for a minute or two but then starts again nagging.

When I look at the CPUs (htop) this looks reasonable: A CPU usage of 100%, a load over 10 and about 30 ffmpeg threads are simultaneously running.

So I started to tune the "Transcoding" Menu to get some performance instead of quality, switched 264-Coding to "very fast" limited threads to '1' and switched on "Throtteling" (don't know the exact translation from my German menu)

But nothing changed. Even after restarting the server. Looking at 'ps' does not show the '-threads' option in ffmpeg.

Did I miss something?

Thanks for reading!

[Luke 42077]

Hi there, I would suggest updating to Emby Server 4.6.4. Then if you still have an issue, let's look at an example:

Thanks.

[Luke 42077]

Quote

switched on "Throtteling"

This is already on by default, and in order for it to have any effect, your system needs to be fast enough such that the transcoding progress can get very far ahead of the user watching position. If your system isn't capable of this, which the RPI might not be, then you won't see any throttling.

[mollat 2]

(deleted - will do some more test)

Edited September 16, 2021 by mollat
I'll do some more tests...

[Luke 42077]

Let us know how you get on. Thanks.

[mollat 2]

Just for the records: My mistake. I did not need transcoding at all. The terminals have enough power to play all movies in "Direct" mode. I even think - these terminals (Amazon Fire HD) have each more CPU power than the Raspberry PI 4...

However - I still noticed that the "-threads 1" option did not show up in the logged (or in ps shown) ffmpeg command at all. Other to the "-preset veryfast" command. But I do not even know if this is wrong anyway...