Emby Browser Stream Quality Much Worse Than Video Station

[JVTAZ 2]

Hi everyone,

First time poster here. I have done some searching, but couldn't find anything related to this topic, so I figured I would post.

I am considering moving to Emby from Video Station as Synology officially gave it the axe in 7.2.2. Honestly Video Station did all I needed, but I will need to eventually update my Synology so it is time to move on.

I mainly use browser playback from media PCs attached to the TVs in my house. Unfortunately, the Emby playback has a lot more artifacts than the Video Station, and I am not totally sure why. 

Here is a side-by-side screenshot, unedited. This is a DVD MKV file (made with MakeMKV). 

You can see the Emby playback has a lot more artifcating, especially around the text. If you lower the brightness, it becomes much more apparent.

It is really hard to capture via a screenshot, but it is extremely noticeable during video playback. I have tried raising the quality of the playback to the max, but it doesn't make a different. (This is only really noticeable on DVD quality video, but considering that is 90% of my collection, it is a concern.)

I want to pay for the lifetime license so I can use the apps, but I don't want to if it is going to have the same quality issues.

Has anyone else experienced this?

Thanks!

 

[Luke 42077]

 

Hi there, let's look at an example. Please attach the information requested in how to report a media playback issue. Thanks!

 

[JVTAZ 2]

@Luke If you need another example, here is another one from the same MKV.

 

And this isn't isolated. Here is another example:

Here is Apollo 13 in Emby:

Here is the same sequence in Video Station:

You can see the Emby playback is much lower quality.

Log files attached.

embyserver.txt ffmpeg-transcode-0c9b4474-bf70-4c3e-bb9d-75e8c335e889_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-b593f515-fc4f-4aa6-93d0-bb8f55ea3223_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-c97ac1ea-b609-4660-a1c2-71af1d386d3b_1.txt hardware_detection-63869195506.txt

 

Edited December 8, 2024 by JVTAZ

[JVTAZ 2]

@Luke Any thoughts on the logs? Is it merely a transcoding issue? I know it says it can't use hardware encoding because it isn't licensed, but with a Synology would that make a difference? 

Thanks 

[Carlo 4560]

Your media is 853x720 with an aspect ratio of 1.18:1.
Anormal US DVD would be 720x480 with an aspect ratio of 3:2

These files are being transcoded by Emby to 720x480 due to mpeg2video not being supported by the client app, in this case a web browser.

[Luke 42077]

@JVTAZdoes that answer your question on why it is transcoding?

[JVTAZ 2]

@Luke @CarloYes, that makes sense. My last question is if the premium version would transcode better with hardware acceleration, or would play the files natively in the app rather than the browser. 

Thanks, guys!

[Luke 42077]

It won't affect whether transcoding happens or not, only how it happens when it does. So yes it's possible in the web browser it could look better, but it's hard to guarantee. This is lower resolution, interlaced video which is always tricky.

[JVTAZ 2]

Sounds good. Thanks!