Is this being transcoded? Why?

[horstepipe 422]

Hello

since the issue discussed here

I had to enable "allow conversion without reencode" for my users who use live tv.

Since then I'm seeing this kind of playback type from Emby Theater users (screenshot).

This is a little confusing, it says Video and Audio plays direct, but the "Stream" seems to be transcoded, although transcoding is not enabled for that user.

Could anybody please explain what exaclty is going on here?

Best regards

 

 

ffmpeg-directstream-cd3728ad-5d88-4bfc-ad46-ed764565ddd5_1.txt

Edited June 9, 2022 by horstepipe

[rodainas 191]

It is just converting container there is no transcoding happening there.

 

[horstepipe 422]

Okay thanks!

but this isn’t needed as if I disable the container conversion option for the user it completely direct plays…

[horstepipe 422]

And why does the status tell „media Bitrate is exceeding the limit“?

[rodainas 191]

Probably because auto is conservative and prefers to do a conversion.

[horstepipe 422]

30 minutes ago, rodainas said:

Probably because auto is conservative and prefers to do a conversion.

So you say basically the user just has to adjust his playback settings from „auto“ to the biggest setting?

[horstepipe 422]

53 minutes ago, rodainas said:

Probably because auto is conservative and prefers to do a conversion.

But I‘m still not happy with this. If media Bitrate is being lowered, then this is in fact a transcode and not just a conversion isn’t it? So why can it do that if I disabled transcoding for that user…?

[Luke 42078]

If you take away all transcoding permissions then it will direct play regardless of the quality setting, but of course that will also cause failures with some media sometimes.

[rodainas 191]

Sure if you want to avoid altogether disable conversion and transcoding on user level, but when the problem is about codec compatibility with the client then it would be impossible for the client to do the playback, if you dont want that outcome just tell the user to switch to maximum bitrate ok playback settings for that device app.

[horstepipe 422]

sorry guys I'm still having problems understanding that, see that screenshot again:

It says:

Video: 15,2 mbit

Stream: MKV 15,2 mbit to HLS 6,8 mbit

So from what I understand here happen two things:

- The container is switched from mkv to hls

- the bitrate has been lowered from 15,2 to 6,8 mbit, which is a transcode and no simple container swapping...?

 

Sorry I just want to understand what's going on here lol

Edited June 9, 2022 by horstepipe

[neik 873]

According to the reason the available bandwith being detected as not enough, in this case means below ~15Mbit.
Possible reasons:

1. Bandwith is set to Auto
=> Long known issue that Auto doesn't work quite well, I for example set all my TV clients at home manually to 50Mbit as that is enough for every file I have.
Letting it at Auto sometimes leads to transcoding due to "lack of bandwith" - well, at least according to what Emby measures.. whatever that is...
There are topics out there regarding this...

Edit: Here is one I just found quickly -> https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/104197-transcoding-when-playback-set-to-auto/#comment-1130850

2. Bandwith is set manually to below ~15Mbit
=> Amend according to the actual available bandwith (if that is known)

17 minutes ago, horstepipe said:

the bitrate has been lowered from 15,2 to 6,8 mbit,

I am not quite sure that is correct, the dashboard says so but the logs show clearly there is no transcoding happening - the user doesn't even have the permissions to do so.
Might just be some sort of display bug?! 

Edited June 9, 2022 by neik

[horstepipe 422]

13 minutes ago, neik said:

I am not quite sure that is correct, the dashboard says so but the logs show clearly there is no transcoding happening - the user doesn't even have the permissions to do so.

Might just be some sort of display bug?! 

That is what I was expecting to happen here, too yeah...

thanks

[pünktchen 1409]

Stream will show you the original media container and its bitrate (mkv 15,2 mbps), but also what the client is requesting from Emby (hls 6,8 mbps).
From your log file this is requested by the client: VideoBitrate=6022000&AudioBitrate=768000 => 6,8 mbps
But because you do not allow transcoding it falls back to remuxing and that is what you see for Video and Audio.
You can be very lucky that it works for you, because normally Emby even doesn't allow hevc for hls but only h264. So playback should have failed normally. 

[horstepipe 422]

11 minutes ago, pünktchen said:

Stream will show you the original media container and its bitrate (mkv 15,2 mbps), but also what the client is requesting from Emby (hls 6,8 mbps).
From your log file this is requested by the client: VideoBitrate=6022000&AudioBitrate=768000 => 6,8 mbps
But because you do not allow transcoding it falls back to remuxing and that is what you see for Video and Audio.
You can be very lucky that it works for you, because normally Emby even doesn't allow hevc for hls but only h264. So playback should have failed normally. 

so to be 100% clear:
client wants to transcode, server says NO -> this is what is basically being shown on the screenshot.

-> So there is just a remux happening.

[rodainas 191]

13 minutes ago, horstepipe said:

so to be 100% clear:
client wants to transcode, server says NO -> this is what is basically being shown on the screenshot.

-> So there is just a remux happening.

Yes, if you want to force a direct play because in your case the bitrate vs bandwidth is not a problem, then disable the conversion for the user.

[horstepipe 422]

2 hours ago, rodainas said:

Yes, if you want to force a direct play because in your case the bitrate vs bandwidth is not a problem, then disable the conversion for the user.

okay thank you guys, making enough sense now

I am not able to disable conversion for the user as I need it for live tv (link is attached in first post). So I just need to make sure that the users setup the maximum bitrate in their app settings.