Direct play of HEVC video no longer works

[vaise 340]

I only have two users on ATV.

These devices seem to be transcoding so much more that any others (andrtoid, shilks, GoogleTV, Roku).

Attached logs and transcode logs.

Why ?

ffmpeg-transcode-52a14bb2-c667-41dd-9f3a-297118bdd8b3_1.txt embyserver.txt

[Luke 42077]

HI, looks like it's converting to a video resolution that the device supports. Does this answer your question?

[vaise 340]

I thought Apple TV’s are supposed to be good though.  I seem to see them transcoding a load yet rarely if ever on other devices.  I don’t have a graphics card so I pay for the additional power to do this.  I forced all remote friends and family to upgrade to later stuff when I went h265 for all stuff a while back.

[vaise 340]

I just posted a thread of same issue.  May want to merge mine here.  ATV seems to transcode more now.

[vaise 340]

I see another thread of same issues reported with latest atv update. It’s not just me.

[Luke 42077]

Hi, is this a remote connection? If so, please try increasing the quality setting in the app and see if that helps.

[Luke 42077]

On 2/12/2024 at 1:38 PM, Qlan said:

That's just the thing. Direct play has been working perfectly for years now. But since a few weeks back something changed, likely something changed by apple. It looks like the server is not receiving the correct resolution from the Apple TV Emby client and is then forced to transcode. I performed a new test today with 4.8.1.0 and it is still the same, logs are attached.

It's not the same app, but for your information direct play is still working on the iPhone Emby app.

 

embyserver.txt 42.02 kB · 0 downloads ffmpeg-transcode-6a1fa779-0737-4216-99d3-c9c1338c4232_1.txt 36.56 kB · 2 downloads

Hi, is this a remote connection? If so, please try increasing the quality setting in the app and see if that helps.

[vaise 340]

1024p-5mbps.

remotes limited to 6

[vaise 340]

All my clients set the same.

only atv has the issue.

another thread like this one if you want to merge.

[GrimReaper 4739]

What kind of display (presumably TV) is that device connected to? Do you know the specs? 

[vaise 340]

They are modern 4K TV’s.

[Qlan 1]

Hey Luke,

No both Apple TVs are local LAN connected. Increasing the internet video quality in the app did however solve the problem. As soon as I increased it to or above the quality of the video being played it started playing it through direct play instead of transcoding.

This gave me the clues required to find the root cause for the issue.My Emby server runs as a Kubernetes pod behind a traefik loadbalancer, which results in the server having an internal cluster IP. This subnet was not being considered as a local network by Emby so remote polices where being applied for all connections.

Thank you so much for looking into this and great work on the 4.8 release!

[RandallC 3]

+1 - Just ripped a few blurays to H265 and cannot directplay on my appletv nor emby on ios.  Plays back fine on a browser.

 

[DamendOne 0]

I have tried the "solution", but this has not fixed anything for me. No matter what the quality is set to, the issues remian. Addiionally, when pausing, and then resuming playback, I get an audio/video loop. I'm assuming this is due to the transcoding. I have not experianced these issues previously with Apple TV, but perhaps this is because it was not transcoding previously. 

Do I need to start a new topic as the "solution" fixed the ops issue?

Also, how do I tell on Windows Emby Server, how it is identifying the connection type? Internet or LAN?

Thanks.

[Luke 42077]

Hi, can you try raising the quality setting in the Emby Apple TV app?

[vaise 340]

32 minutes ago, Luke said:

Hi, can you try raising the quality setting in the Emby Apple TV app?

I got one remote apple user to hard code 1080p-6mbps - as they were set to auto which is bad.

This may have fixed the issue for them - but they dont watch much - just that I have no seen transcoding when I have looked since.

[DamendOne 0]

I had previousl set the playback quality under settings to 4K-160Mbps.  And the video quality when playing the video was showing as 1080p 60Mbps, but was still transcoding.

However, I just noticed that my preferred video player was set to Native, as I had changed this earlier trying ot get things to work. Setting the player to Auto, and now it is direct playing again. 

So, the fix for me is to have the preferred video player set to auto, and the quality set to max / 4K-160Mbps.

Thank you!