Newbie needing advice for emby setup and viewing

[Beachhead 0]

Hello,

I've just discovered emby after finally deciding to get serious about archiving my films and making them easily viewable.
I have a Roku Ultra 2020 model (4660X2), which has served me well. It goes into a Yamaha RX-V485 receiver and then into a Sony X90CL TV. The Sony TV has a Android TV OS.

I did a very quick and simple setup with Emby, just installed it, told it where my files were and was instantly pretty impressed on how it handles things. If I view it on the Sony TV, it looks better, and can play the 4k files back (specifically large 4k high bitrate) much easier and cleaner than the Roku, which plays them back at a lower bitrate and starts to choke if I force it higher, despite the Roku being hardwired and the TV being on WiFi.

So my question is, should I be using the TV to view the files, my Roku, or is another device better? I had hoped to use my Roku since it's free to use Emby, but maybe it's too old at this point?
At the same time, since this is going over the network it's not playing back my files at their native bitrate, is there a preferred solution, direct usb connection with the hard drive?

As I mentioned i'm new to this, my prior solution to viewing digital media not on disc was just to put it on a usb drive and plug it into my Roku and watch it direct, which just isn't as convenient as what Emby provides. Thanks!

[Abobader 3464]

Hello Beachhead,

** This is an auto reply **

Please wait for someone from staff support or our members to reply to you.

It's recommended to provide more info, as it explain in this thread:

Thank you.

Emby Team

[GrimReaper 4741]

4 minutes ago, Beachhead said:

If I view it on the Sony TV, it looks better, and can play the 4k files back (specifically large 4k high bitrate) much easier and cleaner than the Roku, which plays them back at a lower bitrate and starts to choke if I force it higher, despite the Roku being hardwired and the TV being on WiFi.

Without specific example and server and/or ffpmpeg logs it'd be anyone's guess but it sounds like your Roku's transcoding for some reason (audio? subtitles?) and your server's lacking muscle. Did you check SFN during playback or server Dashboard whether those items are DirectPlaying or Transcoding?

You can also attach the information requested in how to report a media playback issue.

 

[Beachhead 0]

Ok so I have to ask about this term "transcoding".

I work on the video production side of things, and when we say transcode, we render a different version of a video file, for example Raw to Prores or something like that. Rendering takes a decent amount of time, how is this system doing live transcoding of video?

My emby server is my workstation so it has plenty of horsepower, both cpu and gpu.

[GrimReaper 4741]

29 minutes ago, Beachhead said:

Ok so I have to ask about this term "transcoding".

Direct Play vs Direct Streaming vs Transcoding

[arrbee99 1817]

Usually better to go for the option on the left if you can -