Can I enable 4k h264 transcoding?

[shaglord 2]

Hi fellas

I tried to disable hevc in the advanced transcoding settings but I'm unable to get Emby to transcode 4k into h264. It always wants to Direct Play hevc 4k files. 

My android tablet (client) can playback 4k if it's h264. However I'm unable to initiate transcoding into 4k h264. Is there any way I can enable it?

I do not wish to transcode to 1080p. Thanks!

[Luke 42080]

Hi, what is the quality setting set to in the app?

[shaglord 2]

17 hours ago, Luke said:

Hi, what is the quality setting set to in the app?

Hi Luke! How are you? Thanks for the reply.

I tried all the 4k options and there isn't any difference that I can see between the highest 4k 200Mbps or 40Mbps. When I enable stats for nerds it says "Direct Play" regardless. 

When I switch to 1080p it starts to transcode as shown in the stats.

So even though I disabled Hevc in the transcoder options it has no effect because emby doesn't deem 4k videos as requiring transcoding it seems. 

I tried a ~10gb hevc file of about 2h meaning the bitrate ought to be ~11Mbps. No wonder 4k 40Mbps  won't trigger transcoding. Still I need it to transcode.

Have a good one. /Mike

Edited January 24, 2024 by shaglord

[RanmaCanada 496]

Well for starters 4k H264 is not a standard, so asking Emby to transcode to that is a rather tall order.  You would be better off to stop trying to play 4k files on your tablet, or convert them before you add them to your library.  It is why most of us keep 4k in a separate library to ensure clients that can't play them, can't access them.

[rbjtech 5284]

To add, on a tablet, are you really going to notice the 4K over a 1080p transcoded version ?  

Edited January 24, 2024 by rbjtech

[shaglord 2]

1 hour ago, RanmaCanada said:

Well for starters 4k H264 is not a standard, so asking Emby to transcode to that is a rather tall order.  You would be better off to stop trying to play 4k files on your tablet, or convert them before you add them to your library.  It is why most of us keep 4k in a separate library to ensure clients that can't play them, can't access them.

Aha. Pity because the 2.5k amoled display is fantastic. Yeah I tried to convert a movie into 4k h264 in Handbrake and it played perfectly fine on the tablet. It just won't do hevc.

Thanks for commenting! 

1 hour ago, rbjtech said:

To add, on a tablet, are you really going to notice the 4K over a 1080p transcoded version ?  

 

The tablet is like 40cm from my face. I can move it closer too. The amoled makes it really nice to watch in a dark room too with earphones. It's even bigger (perceptibly) than big screen tvs at a distance.

Also if you crop a 4k frame to fill a 16:10 display, then 4k makes even more sense to avoid detail loss. Which is also why transcoding makes more sense than say manually converting into 2.5k. (which is very time consuming by the way)

Thanks for commenting! 

[Luke 42080]

6 hours ago, shaglord said:

Hi Luke! How are you? Thanks for the reply.

I tried all the 4k options and there isn't any difference that I can see between the highest 4k 200Mbps or 40Mbps. When I enable stats for nerds it says "Direct Play" regardless. 

When I switch to 1080p it starts to transcode as shown in the stats.

So even though I disabled Hevc in the transcoder options it has no effect because emby doesn't deem 4k videos as requiring transcoding it seems. 

I tried a ~10gb hevc file of about 2h meaning the bitrate ought to be ~11Mbps. No wonder 4k 40Mbps  won't trigger transcoding. Still I need it to transcode.

Have a good one. /Mike

Why do you need it to transcode?

[justinrh 260]

8 hours ago, RanmaCanada said:

4k H264 is not a standard

@RanmaCanadaCan you elaborate?  I didn't know any conversion was really 'a standard'.  What would be a 'standard' 4k format?

[shaglord 2]

9 hours ago, Luke said:

Why do you need it to transcode?

The tablet doesn't support hevc hardware decoding. It's choppy. I know most people use transcoding to adjust bitrate and to watch 4k content on any device. 

Isn't it funny how this little use case slipped through the cracks? It's totally doable but it wasn't in the original streaming idea.

As computer hardware improves I'm pretty sure that these streaming platforms might even be used to upscale video. 1080p to 4k using AI algorithms and whatnot, watch on any (mobile) device. 

But for now, it seems that they all (Plex, Emby,...) have this in common and that is that transcoding is only used for downscaling video.

And before you say, just get a new tablet, I'd like to point out that the display is amazing and that one day hevc might not be used. We'll maybe have AV1 files and they won't decode properly. Your 4k hevc device can only playback 4K AV1 files if they're downscaled/transcoded to 1080p hevc first. You see the problem?

Edited January 25, 2024 by shaglord

[ebr 16185]

Yeah, we've run into this before where the tablet/device technically supports the format but it won't actually play well.  In those cases we may have no choice but to put in options.

[RanmaCanada 496]

21 hours ago, justinrh said:

@RanmaCanadaCan you elaborate?  I didn't know any conversion was really 'a standard'.  What would be a 'standard' 4k format?

4k H264 requires hardware that can decode level 5.2, (added in 2016) which is pretty rare.  Due to the amount of bitrate required for such a picture (minimum of 25mbit), it has basically been abandoned as HEVC became the standard.  Like Hi-10P, barely anyone has support for it in hardware and encoding it is "a waste of resources".  H264 is for HD, HEVC is for UHD and higher.  H264 does officially support DCI 4k and higher (support added in 2016), but again, finding hardware that supports this is difficult to impossible.

And @shaglordAV1 will be abandoned as well as it's starting to hit patent hell, and either AV2 or VVC will replace it.  You should just replace the tablet, seriously.  AV1 is a cluster $^T#$% of horrible documentation and fragmentation.  It seriously needs to get it's collective %#$#% together if it wants to have any future.  As it stands, it is not end user friendly at all, and it is basically only useful for large corporations.  We are almost full circle to propietary codecs again.

Edited January 25, 2024 by RanmaCanada

[shaglord 2]

Come to think of it, Plex does allow transcoding without downscaling at resolutions up to 1080p.

Is that a hard limit?

Maybe amd/nvidia/intel simply don't widely support 4k h264 hardware encoding. Is that the problem?

[shaglord 2]

Maybe they moved to Hevc support before they finshed 4k h264 hw acc .

[RanmaCanada 496]

1 hour ago, shaglord said:

Come to think of it, Plex does allow transcoding without downscaling at resolutions up to 1080p.

Is that a hard limit?

Maybe amd/nvidia/intel simply don't widely support 4k h264 hardware encoding. Is that the problem?

No, they do support it, as even NVENC will do h264 at 4096x4096, the problem is devices that can play it back.  Again, as the profile was only added in 2016, when h264 was created back in 2003!!, the profile is ignored as it's not part of the "standard".  HEVC is superior for high resolution.  AV1 is trying to compete, but encode times outside of using hardware are insane, and figuring out how to encode properly is impossible as the documentation is garbage and projects are fragmented.  Some are single threaded, others are multithreaded, and the more threads you add, the worse the quality of your encode will be.  It's why everyone is pushing for hardware AV1 encoding, as it doesn't have those drawbacks, but it's still inferior in quality to the super slow software encoding of AV1.  And anyone who tells you to "just use SVT-AV1" is an idiot.

[shaglord 2]

10 hours ago, RanmaCanada said:

No, they do support it, as even NVENC will do h264 at 4096x4096, the problem is devices that can play it back.  Again, as the profile was only added in 2016, when h264 was created back in 2003!!, the profile is ignored as it's not part of the "standard".  HEVC is superior for high resolution.  AV1 is trying to compete, but encode times outside of using hardware are insane, and figuring out how to encode properly is impossible as the documentation is garbage and projects are fragmented.  Some are single threaded, others are multithreaded, and the more threads you add, the worse the quality of your encode will be.  It's why everyone is pushing for hardware AV1 encoding, as it doesn't have those drawbacks, but it's still inferior in quality to the super slow software encoding of AV1.  And anyone who tells you to "just use SVT-AV1" is an idiot.

Hehe ok. Thanks for the explanation.

Fast forward 10 years. Do you think hevc 4k encoding support should be discontinued because there's stable AV-1 encoding already, even if it means that a gazillion devices will have to settle for 1080p?

[Luke 42080]

Emby does not have any set limits. You can do 4K to 4K transcoding if you really want to.

[shaglord 2]

9 hours ago, Luke said:

Emby does not have any set limits. You can do 4K to 4K transcoding if you really want to.

That's awesome. How can I initiate that on android?

I disabled hevc encoding in the transcoder. Also the movie I'm trying to transcode only has ~11Mbit bitrate. Maybe the server refuses to transcode because the first check is for bitrate and not codec. It passes and is sent out untouched. 

I thought maybe to "burn in" subtitles (even though I don't want them) to initiate transcoding. It was a few days ago and it seems they were still sent separately because they were in a player supported subtitle format.

Edited January 27, 2024 by shaglord

[RanmaCanada 496]

12 hours ago, shaglord said:

Hehe ok. Thanks for the explanation.

Fast forward 10 years. Do you think hevc 4k encoding support should be discontinued because there's stable AV-1 encoding already, even if it means that a gazillion devices will have to settle for 1080p?

4k support will still be included due to legacy devices, and hopefully the patent cluster$%#$ will be expired by then.  

[shaglord 2]

On 26/01/2024 at 23:01, Luke said:

Emby does not have any set limits. You can do 4K to 4K transcoding if you really want to.

To initiate such transcoding, do I need to pick a high bitrate source and then select a low bitrate in the player? What did you have in mind?

[Luke 42080]

14 hours ago, shaglord said:

To initiate such transcoding, do I need to pick a high bitrate source and then select a low bitrate in the player? What did you have in mind?

That will initiate transcoding, but if you pick a low bitrate then the output is unlikely to be 4K. Most of our apps will have a target resolution displayed next to the bitrate in the quality menu.

[shaglord 2]

On 30/01/2024 at 11:41, Luke said:

That will initiate transcoding, but if you pick a low bitrate then the output is unlikely to be 4K. Most of our apps will have a target resolution displayed next to the bitrate in the quality menu.

The problem is that I've got hevc 4k videos with low bitrate. I'll never be able to transcode those hmm.

Do you think there's a way to trick the transcoder by burning in empty subtitles?

[Luke 42080]

Are you playing with the Emby web app or the Emby android app?