Stutter when playing back on new Xbox One App 2.201.70.0

[hemandk 12]

Hi,

So I got the new 2.201 emby app today and now i have crazy stutter when playing H264 and HEVC files.

Works fine on Android phone, Android TV, Apple Phone etc.

I'm running latest Emby server.

I can also add that it was fine yesterday 17th of december and today 18th of december I got the new emby app and it is not working.

Transcoding makes the stutter less, but they are still there.

Seems to be same issue as here:
https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/134027-stutter-when-playing-back/

 

Edited December 18, 2024 by hemandk

[hemandk 12]

Edit: properly not the reason after a bit of searching online.

 

Could this be something about hz in europe vs us? 
In Denmark we run 60hz, but it seems emby is streaming in 25hz and not 24hz or 60hz.

Edited December 18, 2024 by hemandk

[MBSki 1114]

@softworkzIs this the result of MS forcing you to remove HEVC playback? 

[oceanclub 12]

Same here. When I check Stats for Nerds,  I see something that played fine before is being transcoded and throttled. : / Has native HEVC playback been removed for good?

 

[Clackdor 109]

Yikes I was wondering why I started seeing the server converting files to a different container on this release compared to the previous beta where they were playing back directly without any issues. I'm definitely curious about this myself.

[Luke 42077]

Hi guys,

At the last minute when promoting our new windows app from beta to public, hevc support was denied by Microsoft. Here is their explanation:

Quote

Currently, requests for HEVC playback are being rejected due to bandwidth constraints. 

The owning team has confirmed that they currently do not accept HEVC playback requests. However, they are planning to revisit this subject early 2025, and your request has been added to the waitlist.

Thank you,

Anastasiia

Microsoft Store Team

Therefore the best way to get hevc supported as quickly as possible is to voice your feedback to Microsoft about this publicly. Thanks everyone.

[oceanclub 12]

Where's the best place to voice feedback?

(Ironic I bought an XBox One back in 2020 specifically for HEVC playback. When it comes to ordinary consumers the tech giants are increasingly regressive.)

 

[hemandk 12]

So as far as I know h264 is AVC and not HEVC? 

So why is h264 also stuttering?

[MBSki 1114]

@Luke Can't it at least be transcoded properly? I thought the way we had it was it was downgraded to 1080p anyways and HEVC stripped out. Is it possible to to do that and get it through MS approval?

[Luke 42077]

27 minutes ago, oceanclub said:

Where's the best place to voice feedback?

(Ironic I bought an XBox One back in 2020 specifically for HEVC playback. When it comes to ordinary consumers the tech giants are increasingly regressive.)

 

Any social platform to their support channel.

[hemandk 12]

1 hour ago, Luke said:

Hi guys,

At the last minute when promoting our new windows app from beta to public, hevc support was denied by Microsoft. Here is their explanation:

Therefore the best way to get hevc supported as quickly as possible is to voice your feedback to Microsoft about this publicly. Thanks everyone.

Ehm but H264 is not HEVC, so why is H264 also stuttering?

[oceanclub 12]

One side effect of this transcoding is that any movie being converted now looks green for a few seconds when started or resumed.....

P.

[AndyBak 17]

Majority of my content is HEVC and my server is not suitable for transcoding, can an older version of the app be reinstalled in any way?

Am I missing something, but why roll out a new app if it means loss in functionality?!?

 

[Happy2Play 9780]

3 hours ago, Luke said:

Hi guys,

At the last minute when promoting our new windows app from beta to public, hevc support was denied by Microsoft. Here is their explanation:

Therefore the best way to get hevc supported as quickly as possible is to voice your feedback to Microsoft about this publicly. Thanks everyone.

That will need to be in the Announcement/Blog.

[aVe2000 13]

But why the old app was working? Can you please remove the new with the old app? It really is unusuable now. Or do you have any suggestions get hevc movies working on the xbox?

Additionally, its displaying green at startup and while skipping.

Edited December 18, 2024 by aVe2000

[453411 0]

I would like to echo the sentiments posted here. I am having the same issue. 

[Clackdor 109]

All I have to say is Microsoft seriously screwed this up. Like @Lukesaid, we need to be reaching out there and voicing our opinion on the matter.

I've been beta testing the new app on Xbox for months and it was definitely an overall improvement over the old one until this happened. There were always going to be growing pains and bugs/issues that needed to be addressed after stable release, but the HEVC thing is 100% Microsoft's fault.

Considering all of the hoops the emby team had to jump through to get the new app published, I don't necessarily think we'll see a reversion to the old app, but the devs will have to chime in on that. As unhappy as we are on the matter, I can only imagine the emby team themselves are livid over this last minute rug pull.

[softworkz 5066]

Sorry for the confusion and the "silent" release. There's still a store update in progress to update the listing itself (text, screenshots, etc.). I took once again longer than expected, while I had hoped it would go through before anybody notices that the new binary is there already.  

I've posted an FAQ with some more answers now: 

 

[softworkz 5066]

Please note that it's pointless to complain at MS about this. Many are out of office already and absolutely nothing will happen before mid-January.

We are on the waitlist for HEVC approval and the ETA is "early next year". From what I read between the lines it appears that their budget has been exhausted for this year as there's probably a coupling to royalties they need to pay for patents on HEVC codec algorithms. 

[AndyBak 17]

Seems like such a strange time of year to have the app released, zero support to be able to address any issues.

Now got a media system that is totally useless for the next unknown months and over the holiday season.  

 

[softworkz 5066]

Please give us a day.

[Clackdor 109]

@softworkzJust wanted to say thank you for all the hard work you and the team have been putting into the new app. I know lot of people are frustrated over this and you guys are going to be catching flack for something out of your control until the approval actually goes through.

[softworkz 5066]

1 minute ago, softworkz said:

Please give us a day.

I don't want to say something that sounds like a promise.

[softworkz 5066]

I wanna pick up some of the question that have come up here.

A good question was about why the previous app could play HEVC. The reason for that is that the capability we are talking about is named "hevcPlayback" but often also described as "4k  video playback" or "4k hevc playback". In fact it does not disable hevc playback when it's absent, but instead, when it's absent, you can't smoothly play 4k video. What it does when enabled is that it grants 1 GB more memory and more CPU cores to the app. I have tested and confirmed this at a very early stage and also researched other players like vlc or kodi, which are using that capability as well on xbox, and without that you essentially cannot watch 4k videos. 
Doesn't that contradict to the codec licensing and budget explanation? At first I thought so, but then I remembered a price list from Dolby about DV license fees for TV manufacturers and the had different prices depending on whether it's a 4k tv or not (4k factor like 3, 4 or 5x). The Xbox needs to have the ability to play HEVC video of course for use in apps or in the browser and it had that for a long time. This is needed for every Xbox without exception. A console like Xbox is a product where fractions of a penny matter, so it's quite plausible that MS have negotiated to pay the extra for 4k playback only those devices where it is actually used, and they are controlling that amount by limiting apps to those how really need it (1.) and by available budget (2), where we obviously fall under the latter.

That leads to the question why the new Emby Xbox app doesn't play any HEVC at all, not even non-4k? 

Each certification cycle took about 2-3 days. We had 2 rejections about details, and then came the rejection of the hevcPlayback capability, which came as a shock and totally unexpected. Even though we reached out to the store  through multiple channels, the rejection message was very determined and different from other rejection messages in one important point: it said: please try early next year again, which indicated  that it's not a decision based on policies or personal assessment of the reviewer, but due to other circumstances and something that can hardly be turned. To keep things going, we had to remove that capability and resubmit.
But the problem is this: ever since that test from last year, we had  that capability declared for the app, all-time during development and throughout the beta. Which means in turn: we don't have the slightest idea what will happen when it's removed. Where to draw the line between direct play and transcoding? It's not as easy as going by resolution (4k or not). The tests had shown that the bandwidth of videos has a huge influence: even with that capabillity, many 4k videos don't play smoothly - i.,e. those with high bandwidths, and it looks like they have only tested 4k online streams like from Netflix&Co., but not any Bluray-to-mkv rips with 100Mbps. That's why we couldn't take it for granted that it can properly play all kinds of FHD videos. Or whether iit might tend to crash in such cases  - all this totally unknown, and hence something that you cannot publish without one or more beta cycles (and removing the capability from the beta as well, not knowing whether it might be rejected there as well when trying to re-add.

While quality is important and the way it plays is important, there are still some higher priorities than these two: 1. Does it play yes/no? 2 Does it play smoothly so that it's watchable ?
So, under the given constraints and situation, the only correct decision was to (temporarily!) disable HEVC playback entirely and let the server transcode it to H.264, instead. It's bitter having to do this after all the work, but there was no other choice in this moment, until we get to a plan how to proceed.

There's a range of options and ideas, but we need to get sorted, think about it, wait for response to another message from the store and also still waiting for the ongoing certification of the store listings update to complete. 

Thanks and sorry.

[softworkz 5066]

2 hours ago, AndyBak said:

Seems like such a strange time of year to have the app released, zero support to be able to address any issues.

Now got a media system that is totally useless for the next unknown months and over the holiday season.  

Open Edge browser on the Xbox and load the web app as fallback. This shouild be equal or better than the legacy xbox app.