Max simultaneous video streams...

[Super957 24]

I wanted to ask for clarification and advice ...

I have a 1000Mbps fiber line and I have about twenty friends who connect to my server. Currently all of them have 1 Max simultaneous video streams.

If everyone granted 2 or for example 4 ... what would it mean for the server, risks, slowdowns, etc.

That is to understand what it means to increase the number of Max simultaneous video streams, which I think means number of devices connected at the same time

 

Thank

Hispa

[Luke 42083]

Hi, it means they'll consume more resources on your server machine if they're streaming multiple videos at once.

[Super957 24]

4 hours ago, Luke said:

Hi, it means they'll consume more resources on your server machine if they're streaming multiple videos at once.

But resources you you mean resources of the NAS (since the server is on my QNap), but I wanted to know if the outgoing video streams being much more could suffer slowdowns on the video

 

Thank 

Hispa

[davedick 19]

By chance when your friends are streaming videos, what is the max number of people you have seen watching a video at the same time, and how many of those videos were transcoding?

I want to say the resource issue will be the hardware configuration of your NAS and (assuming it's transcoding), the number of videos it can transcode at the same time, before it starts having an issue.

If most videos that your users watch transcode, what do you have "Internet Streaming bitrate" set under network, and under each user account?

Since you mentioned you have a Gigabit line (I assume both up and down), I want to say that if you set the internet bitrate for each user to equal roughly what the bitrate for your videos, that instead of transcoding it might "direct play" or do a lite transcode.

 

 

[Super957 24]

2 hours ago, davedick said:

By chance when your friends are streaming videos, what is the max number of people you have seen watching a video at the same time, and how many of those videos were transcoding?

I want to say the resource issue will be the hardware configuration of your NAS and (assuming it's transcoding), the number of videos it can transcode at the same time, before it starts having an issue.

If most videos that your users watch transcode, what do you have "Internet Streaming bitrate" set under network, and under each user account?

Since you mentioned you have a Gigabit line (I assume both up and down), I want to say that if you set the internet bitrate for each user to equal roughly what the bitrate for your videos, that instead of transcoding it might "direct play" or do a lite transcode.

 

 

Thank davedick...

The majority of my video are 1080p and more ore less 100 movie in 4k, which Internet Streaming bitrate suggest for each user ?

 

Thank and good day

Hispa

[davedick 19]

On 5/10/2022 at 1:08 AM, Super957 said:

Thank davedick...

The majority of my video are 1080p and more ore less 100 movie in 4k, which Internet Streaming bitrate suggest for each user ?

 

Thank and good day

Hispa

Do you remux your videos or do you compress them ?  If you compress them, what bitrate do you have them set to, or what is the highest bitrate that you use?

Just curious if you have:

1) Looked at the Emby Server dashboard and seen how majority of the videos play for your users?  (direct play, transcode, audio transcode)?

2) Do you know how many max simultanious users you have?

3) What is the model number of your QNAP NAS and is there anything that you added to it (i.e. added more memory, SSD, etc)

4) Do you know what download speed your users have?  What is the speed of the "slowest" user?

5) Before you started this thread, did you have a max streaming bit rate set under network?  I assume nothing was set for each user ?

6) Does your NAS have a system resource monitor (like Windows has Task Manager) ?  If so, when multiple people are watching videos, does it show if a lot of CPU resources are being used (I don't have a dedicated NAS, so I don't know if it has one)

I want to say that if you had nothing set in Emby for max streaming bit rate and do not have a  user streaming bit rate set, Emby would be using the full upload speed.  If that is the case, I would want to say that majority of the video play back would be "direct play" (especially if you compress your videos down to a particular bit rate and the remote user has decent download speed)

Now to try and answer your question. I want to say that you want to set the user streaming bit rate to match the highest bitrate that you're using on the videos  However I can't guarantee if that would still cause videos to transcode.  Another words, if you don't have a speed set and majority direct plays, now you set a user speed and now everything transcodes. 

What I would try (if you compress your videos down to a particular bitrate):

1) If you don't already, set the max streaming speed under network to match your upload speed or set it to a smaller number, so Emby won't use all the upload (especially if you need some of it for other uses) under Network

2) Take a couple of users who's use your setup the most and videos (for the most part) direct play.  Bump up their concurrent videos to 2 and have them test to see if they have any issues. On your side, look to see if the NAS system resources have jumped up by a decent amount or if more videos are transcoding, etc.  Also notice if anybody mentions anything about a change (i.e. videos are buffering)

3)  If there doesn't seem to be any issues, continue #1 with a couple more users and repeat.

Now if there seems to be an issue that adding more concurrent streams causes videos to buffer or the NAS to have the "CPU pegged at 100% usage" (I'm referring to Windows task manager), then you might need to put together a dedicated system to run Emby on.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[cul8rmom1 5]

Ohh max video streams.

(I wrote a bunch of stuff before I understood what you were asking.)  (I left the original stuff below … some is redundant .. but some of it may be useful.)

So with that upload probably nothing.

If you are direct playing then your nas box wont have to do any of the heavy lifting.

Now if they are using some type of device that can’t decode the video they want to play then your machine will have to transcode the content.

Transcode means to re-encode the video/audio on the fly.  This usually takes quite a bit of CPU power depending on what they are doing.

If everyone direct plays things then its like you are just uploading the file directly to them.  Not really a big deal because uploading say 2GB over an hour or 2 doesn’t have to be that fast.

If you have a bunch of people direct streaming then your hard drives in your nas box might not be fast enough to keep up.

Transcoding will kill your CPU.  Hardware assisted transcoding is the way to go.  If you can put an old quadro card in the nas box do that.  It will lower your CPU use substantially.  Otherwise you could run emby on another machine and just use your qnap for a data source.

I myself run an ESX server with multiple VMs running quadro P620 and M2000 cards.  I posted a link below that has an index of what cards can do what.  You can get them for <100 dollars if you look around. 

 

Cheers!,

The higher end qnap boxes have some good hardware.  Typically you are going to be CPU constrained… more so than memory.

Look at resource manager and see how hard your CPU is getting hit when people play stuff.

Transcoding to much lower resolutions will kill you.  If you have say 4K or 1080p content and they are trying to transcode down to like 720p or lower it will kill you.

Audio codecs will do the same.   If you have ATMOS etc it usually has problems.  If you have a bunch of upload bandwidth you can go into each one of their user accounts and tell it not to allow transcoding etc.  Just let them direct play.

I think some of the qnap boxes will let you put a video card in a pci slot in them.

If you want to transcode simultaneous streams without it killing your CPU then do hardware transcoding.  You can get an older Nvidia quadro card to do it they have unlimited streams and can do quite a few at the same time.  I used to use PLEX but emby kills it when doing transcoding.  https://www.elpamsoft.com/?p=Plex-Hardware-Transcoding This page as a good table of what cards can do what.

I am running an ESX server with 2 quadro P620s and an M2000.  You can get those for <100bux if you look around.  I think I have had 16 simultaneous transcodes going on .. on a single M2000.

If you just do direct play then you may start getting limited by your hard drive speeds.  Look at the performance of the drives when everyone is hitting them at the same time.  I have a couple of Synology boxes but they can’t transcode well because they dont have the hardware to do so.

Good Luck!

Edited May 16, 2022 by cul8rmom1

[Luke 42083]

@Super957 has this helped?

[pwhodges 2012]

If trying to avoid transcoding, it bears mentioning that if a user wishes to view subtitles (whether for SDH reason or foreign media such as anime), then some combinations of subtitle type and client lead to transcoding being necessary as part of burning the subtitles in at the server.

Paul