Few Issues with 3D Movies in Emby

[Airbender 128]

Hello All,

I am having few different issues with 3D Movies and i will explain them here one by one and provide some supporting data.

Issue 1: Poster wont show 3D

I added 1.2TB of 3D movies in various formats, including complete Blu-ray disc ISOs and MKV SBS 3D files. After adding them to Emby and completing the scan, I noticed that Emby is recognizing them as regular HD movies instead of 3D. some show 4K sing and some show Blu-ray but none show 3D. In past this use to be different 3D movies use to get posters that show 3D tag on them.

Is there is a way to make Emby put Tag or get poster that says 3D?

Issue 2 Playback with buffer:

I'm experiencing an odd buffering issue. When playing a full 50GB Blu-ray, there’s no buffering at all. However, when playing any 3D format, it buffers so much that playback starts and stops repeatedly. The CPU spikes to 100%, and there’s no way to bypass this.

I logged into the Emby Dashboard, adjusted transcoding to "Slow," and experimented with the settings, but I couldn't find a way to fix the buffering issue.

My system is 13 years old:

• CPU: Intel Core i7-2600 @ 3.40GHz

• RAM: 20GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 665MHz (9-9-9-24)

• Motherboard: Hewlett-Packard 1587h (XU1 PROCESSOR)

I added a GPU to the system, but it seems Emby and Plex don’t support it—or I may be mistaken. To improve performance, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 (1GB) so i removed it and I bought a Sparkle Intel Arc A380 ELF (6GB GDDR6), but my power supply or motherboard didn’t support it. The PC kept rebooting, so I had to remove it as well. this is extremely old so i dont think anymore upgrade are possible.

I also took one of the pc's i have and installed the GPU in it Sparkle Intel Arc A380 ELF (6GB GDDR6). 

Intel Core i7 4790 @ 3.60GHz
16.0GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 798MHz
465GB Samsung SSD 860 EVO 500GB

I installed windows 10 x64bit clean and then i install Emby theater client and tested no luck with buffering even though i thought it will help with transcoding 

As i said for testing this i used Firestick, PC, Xbox X and no luck 

 

For this test I examine 2 title to narrow down troubleshoot the issue: let me provide the info on media:

Unique ID : 88572881451210865566456418132678099504 (0x42A2843708BF4E7DBA0081E1F70B4230)

Complete name \3D Movies\Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom (2018) [3D]\Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom (2018) [3D].mkv

Format : Matroska

Format version : Version 4

File size : 29.8 GiB

Duration : 2 h 8 min

Overall bit rate : 33.3 Mb/s

Frame rate : 89.911 FPS

Encoded date : 2024-09-27 06:19:45 UTC

Writing application : mkvmerge v87.0 ('Black as the Sky') 64-bit

Writing library : libebml v1.4.5 + libmatroska v1.7.1 / Lavf61.1.100

VIDEOAI : Enhanced using amq-13. Changed resolution to 3840x1600

Video

ID : 1

Format : HEVC

Format/Info : High Efficiency Video Coding

Format profile : Main 10@L5.2@Main

Codec ID : V_MPEGH/ISO/HEVC

Duration : 2 h 8 min

Bit rate : 31.1 Mb/s

Width : 3 840 pixels

Height : 1 600 pixels

Display aspect ratio : 2.40:1

Frame rate mode : Constant

Frame rate : 89.911 FPS

Color space : YUV

Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0

Bit depth : 10 bits

Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.056

Stream size : 27.9 GiB (94%)

Default : No

Forced : No

Color range : Limited

Matrix coefficients : BT.709

Audio #1

ID : 2

Format : DTS

Format/Info : Digital Theater Systems

Codec ID : A_DTS

Duration : 2 h 8 min

Bit rate mode : Constant

Bit rate : 1 509 kb/s

Channel(s) : 6 channels

Channel layout : C L R Ls Rs LFE

Sampling rate : 48.0 kHz

Frame rate : 93.750 FPS (512 SPF)

Bit depth : 24 bits

Compression mode : Lossy

Stream size : 1.35 GiB (5%)

Language : English

Default : Yes

Forced : No

Audio #2

ID : 3

Format : AC-3

Format/Info : Audio Coding 3

Commercial name : Dolby Digital

Codec ID : A_AC3

Duration : 2 h 8 min

Bit rate mode : Constant

Bit rate : 640 kb/s

Channel(s) : 6 channels

Channel layout : L R C LFE Ls Rs

Sampling rate : 48.0 kHz

Frame rate : 31.250 FPS (1536 SPF)

Compression mode : Lossy

Stream size : 587 MiB (2%)

Service kind : Complete Main

Default : Yes

Forced : No

Dialog Normalization : -31 dB

cmixlev : -4.5 dB

surmixlev : -6 dB

dialnorm_Average : -31 dB

dialnorm_Minimum : -31 dB

dialnorm_Maximum : -31 dB

Text

ID : 4

Format : UTF-8

Codec ID : S_TEXT/UTF8

Codec ID/Info : UTF-8 Plain Text

Duration : 2 h 7 min

Bit rate : 48 b/s

Frame rate : 0.232 FPS

Count of elements : 1771

Stream size : 45.5 KiB (0%)

Title : Sub. Eng. Not Hearing

Language : English

Default : Yes

Forced : No

Here is File 2:

Unique ID : 150853709524402534131192341019446195532 (0x717D5E1D9F33CB1865480D1757BFB54C)

Complete name \3D Movies\Ready Player One 3D (2018)\Ready Player One 3D (2018).mkv

Format : Matroska

Format version : Version 4

File size : 34.9 GiB

Duration : 2 h 19 min

Overall bit rate mode : Variable

Overall bit rate : 35.7 Mb/s

Frame rate : 89.911 FPS

Movie name : Ready Player One

Encoded date : 2024-09-25 15:27:06 UTC

Writing application : mkvmerge v87.0 ('Black as the Sky') 64-bit

Writing library : libebml v1.4.5 + libmatroska v1.7.1 / Lavf61.1.100

VIDEOAI : Enhanced using amq-13. Changed resolution to 3840x1600

Video

ID : 1

Format : HEVC

Format/Info : High Efficiency Video Coding

Format profile : Main 10@L5.2@Main

Codec ID : V_MPEGH/ISO/HEVC

Duration : 2 h 19 min

Bit rate : 31.8 Mb/s

Width : 3 840 pixels

Height : 1 600 pixels

Display aspect ratio : 2.40:1

Frame rate mode : Constant

Frame rate : 89.911 FPS

Color space : YUV

Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0

Bit depth : 10 bits

Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.058

Stream size : 31.1 GiB (89%)

Default : No

Forced : No

Color range : Limited

Matrix coefficients : BT.709

Is there is anyway possible to fix the buffering issue?

Please advise

Thank you very much

Edited February 4, 2025 by Airbender

[Luke 42078]

Quote

Is there is anyway possible to fix the buffering issue?

 

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

 

[Airbender 128]

Hello Luke,

Here are the logs : https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xRWL4ucT1kzpXBKWygnZXc3VUejjR85A/view?usp=sharing

Please let me know if you need anything else 

Thanks 

[Luke 42078]

Can you please attach them to this forum posting? Thanks !

[Lessaj 467]

Looking at Ready Player One your XBOX app can't play HEVC natively - try joining the holiday bonanza, maybe you'll get lucky. Otherwise your CPU is too old and slow to transcode 4K in real time, but you wouldn't want this to transcode anyway. Pretty sure using slower instead of veryfast also makes it work harder to improve quality so you should probably leave that at default. Jurassic World is the same story as well.

Quote

&TranscodeReasons=VideoCodecNotSupported

Warning EncoderParametersH264LibX.Preset: Original: veryfast Actual: slower

Looking at Kung Fu Panda 2, it's h264 already, this reason for the transcode is weird, but otherwise seems fine, chugging along at 2.25x or so. No problems playing this right? It is a pretty high bitrate for 1080p so maybe that's why but otherwise seems fine.

Quote

&TranscodeReasons=VideoBitrateNotSupported

Unfortunately I'm not otherwise familiar with 3D content to know how it would appear in mediainfo, but 3840x1600 looks like just non-letterbox 4k to me. If it was a 3D 1080p SBS I would imagine it would be 3840x800 or 3840x1080 since it's 2 1920x800 or 1920x1080 SBS. Without collecting my own 3D content to look at that it's all grain of salt, I don't have any 3D capable equipment that I would have tried to collect something by now.

[Airbender 128]

It is not about Xbox X , AS i said i tried playing it with Emby Theater on a PC with GPU that did not help. I tired almost every device i can think off and they all have same issue. That been said the transcoding is not happing at client level The server transcoding it nothing to do with the client or player. 

@LukeGive me few  i will try to figure out how to attach the logs based on URL you provided 

 

Thanks 

[Airbender 128]

Hello 

Logs from 4:15 PM PST , I tested with Windows PC , i run Emby theater and tested 3D playback same issue 

Windows 11 Pro 64-bit

Intel Core i3 9100 @ 3.60GHz

16.0GB Dual-Channel DDR4 @ 1200MHz (16-16-16-39)

8176MB ATI AMD Radeon RX 6600

465GB Samsung SSD 850 EVO 500GB (SATA (SSD))

ffmpeg-transcode-10662b97-7d02-4e0a-a2f4-6693d1f0f3f1_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-9ed3135b-8012-4539-9da5-de8d1db05859_1.txt embyserver.txt MB Logs 2-4-25.rar

[Lessaj 467]

The ffmpeg logs you attached were only for the xbox so that's what I was looking at. I see in your server log that the android device was direct playing everything but there's no mention here of Theater playback so I don't know if it was trying to transcode or direct play.

Yes the server handles the transcoding, and it's all being done on the CPU with a very old CPU in your case. The GTX 650 is also very old and would not really be suitable for transcoding. The intel cards are hit or miss on working, I saw a post within the last couple days of a driver that seems to be working properly. However you still probably don't want to be transcoding this content, so with the information provided I can tell you that the xbox cannot playback the HEVC directly (yet), and the server specs are too old to transcode it fast enough for real time playback. 

Now that you've provided a theater log I can see it's still transcoding the video. Try increasing your playback bitrate limit.

Quote

&TranscodeReasons=ContainerBitrateExceedsLimit

 

[Lessaj 467]

I was also looking at the server log a bit more and the response times for each of the TS chunks on playback is really high, looks like remote users are limited to 7 Mbps so each chunk isn't going to be that big maybe 1 MB at most but it's taking several seconds to up to 20 seconds to deliver chunks of that size which is bad, but if the system is too busy with transcoding that could be why it's slow to respond to the requests.

[RanmaCanada 495]

Well for starters 3D movies won't play properly if your hardware does not support it. Your server hardware is also ancient, and should seriously be replaced if you are going to attempt any transcoding as you've limited your users to such a low bitrate. 3D movies will only play properly on 3D tvs. If you don't have one, then the system doesn't know how to handle them properly and they will either direct play if your hardware can handle the video codec, or will transcode them if it can not and will leave the video as best as it can in the original format.

This is Toy Story in SBS 3D on my browser.

[Airbender 128]

Hello @RanmaCanadaNice nick name one of my favorite cartoons ever. Thank you for taking the time to write the post and include a screenshot. Regarding your question about transcoding, how did you achieve that? Is it a built-in feature of Firefox that I may not be aware of?

Regarding your response, why would you assume that I don’t have a 3D TV? If a user has 1.5TB worth of 3D movies, wouldn’t it be logical to assume they own a 3D TV? That wouldn’t make much sense otherwise, would it? I have two different models of 3D TVs, which is why I'm trying to get 3D to work properly. I've been testing different setups and came here for further assistance. I stated from start in my post if someone read it properly MY PC IS 13 YEARS OLD. sorry for the caps, so i am aware of it shortcoming but i do believe there must be a setting that i can set up and mybe get this working until  i have MONEY to buy new hardware. it is all comes down to $$$. that why i am using 13 years old hardware currently.

Regarding the comments about user access and limiting users to a lower bitrate—I have no idea where that setting is. I looked around but couldn’t find it. That’s the default Emby setting; I haven’t touched it.

Everyone keeps saying, "3D movies won't play properly if your hardware doesn't support it." I understand that, but currently, none of my client devices are encoding. Please refer to my earlier test on a PC with an AMD Radeon RX 6600 GPU. Are you saying that the AMD Radeon RX 6600 on a Windows PC isn't capable of playing 3D movies? I don’t think that’s correct. In fact, Emby Server is handling the heavy lifting, so I’m not sure why the Radeon RX 6600 wouldn’t encode. I’m trying to figure that out.

I Tested it with AMD Radeon RX 6600 and Tested it with Xbox X which is far more powerful the RX 6600. regardless we all know my media center pc is old and it does not have CPU or GPU for transcoding therefore it is buffering. 

I took the liberty of conducting further tests using a different system I borrowed from a friend. I installed both Emby Server and Plex Server for testing, and as I suspected, Emby still buffers while Plex does not. i was able to play with encoding setting and bring cpu usage down but buffering did not get fix. 

Here is a new system, this is bit older pc as well but for this test it should be good 

CPU
Intel Core i7 4790 @ 3.60GHz
RAM
16.0GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 798MHz (11-11-11-28)
Motherboard
LENOVO SHARKBAY (SOCKET 0)
Graphics
Intel Arc A380 ELF Graphics (Unknown)
Storage
465GB Samsung SSD 860 EVO 500GB (SATA (SSD) 

Here are the logs and screenshots for everyone review. 
 

 

 

embyserver.txt embyserver-63874303735.txt ffmpeg-transcode-29f1be26-275e-46c1-bff3-af091c0deddd_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-351c12e1-a57b-4b15-b120-206c7354195e_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-805e0544-621e-4388-add6-08eb1182da6e_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-93468897-e436-4681-a324-9e20b98d2555_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-b1bf7732-2dc7-44bf-995c-d86188ab3306_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-d6b6e34c-a97f-414a-90f1-a1c4f65515f0_1.txt hardware_detection-63874303808.txt

[Airbender 128]

 

6 hours ago, Lessaj said:

I was also looking at the server log a bit more and the response times for each of the TS chunks on playback is really high, looks like remote users are limited to 7 Mbps so each chunk isn't going to be that big maybe 1 MB at most but it's taking several seconds to up to 20 seconds to deliver chunks of that size which is bad, but if the system is too busy with transcoding that could be why it's slow to respond to the requests.

where are the setting for that since my setting are bit default emby setting i did not mess around with it thanks 

[Airbender 128]

8 hours ago, Luke said:

Can you please attach them to this forum posting? Thanks !

Here you go @Luke from my Media server that is in question i provided server logs, player logs and movie folder info since 3d poster is not showing up thanks sir 

embyserver (1).txt embyserver.txt ffmpeg-transcode-4f7a0107-03ef-45c4-884f-768894dba6ee_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-7d1b4a4a-9f44-4a70-8b45-5dd77d5e2277_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-9a62f5d0-799d-45cf-9f55-a5eb0eb3cedf_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-0858a17e-dfaf-495e-a9bd-78400508320c_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-b31e0105-0770-4bca-b075-ac35274fde37_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-dcb363d2-f1e0-4098-a6c2-0fd5e161c8cb_1.txt hardware_detection-63874232528.txt Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom (2018) [3D].mkv.MediaInfo.txt Ready Player One 3D (2018).mkv.MediaInfo.txt Valerian.and.the.City.of.a.Thousand.Planets.2017.BD3D.REMUX.nfo

[Airbender 128]

Just did one more test with my Test server pc if we can call it and this time i added AMD Radeon RX 6600. The AMD Radeon™ RX 6600 graphics card has 28 compute units, 32 MB of new AMD Infinity Cache, 8GB GDDR6, and a game clock upto 2044 MHz. Emby will buffer but plex no issue. 

So the question which GPU does Emby like for encodings? 

Thanks 

embyserver.txt ffmpeg-transcode-1bc53cc8-0408-4634-9fa6-1562c0770d35_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-7fa0dd9c-1d54-4482-8b69-eb5bb334654c_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-37979d8f-1b83-4b73-a363-a0573a2e5253_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-d19c46c2-dbb0-41f5-baf1-1c76d85b1d0a_1.txt hardware_detection-63874312379.txt

[Lessaj 467]

9 hours ago, Airbender said:

 

where are the setting for that since my setting are bit default emby setting i did not mess around with it thanks 

Either from the cog wheel during playback or in your app settings under playback.

[Airbender 128]

4 minutes ago, Lessaj said:

Either from the cog wheel during playback or in your app settings under playback.

so that client setting i have no control on that. these setting are default i can play with them but i did not set them up. i looked in emby server and this what is setup in the server under user account. attached are 2 different users. thanks 

[Lessaj 467]

Not within the user configuration, from within app settings after you're logged in.

[Airbender 128]

3 minutes ago, Lessaj said:

Not within the user configuration, from within app settings after you're logged in.

Yes i got that part so that setting is not setup by me i have no control over it except when i am the user who uses the device. but in emby server there is no limitations setup by me 

I will play with client setting and report back.

 

[Lessaj 467]

Remote users default to 7 Mbps now, so they would need to adjust the quality on their side too - depending on the speed of their network and yours. You would need to treat their remote network like a home network in order for auto to even attempt to direct play at full quality, though I don't know why the XBOX is limited to 40, either that's the default there or it was set at some point for some reason. You'll have to check on the device.

[Airbender 128]

14 minutes ago, Lessaj said:

Remote users default to 7 Mbps now, so they would need to adjust the quality on their side too - depending on the speed of their network and yours. You would need to treat their remote network like a home network in order for auto to even attempt to direct play at full quality, though I don't know why the XBOX is limited to 40, either that's the default there or it was set at some point for some reason. You'll have to check on the device.

Roger that i learn few new things since i posted here so thank you for teaching me. so in your opinion Which GPU do you use exclusively recommend Emby server? amd is there is a 3rd party tool that can examine the GPU usage with emby server? 

I brrowed computer from a friend and tested Sparkle Intel Arc A380 ELF, 6GB GDDR6, Single Fan, SA380E-6G and AMD Radeon RX 6600 8GB Dual Fan Sapphire Graphics Card but so far no luck buffering still happing. I did post the logs and screenshot in this post but i wonder if there are tested GPU that one should consider for feature upgrades 

Thanks 

[Airbender 128]

21 minutes ago, Lessaj said:

Remote users default to 7 Mbps now, so they would need to adjust the quality on their side too - depending on the speed of their network and yours. You would need to treat their remote network like a home network in order for auto to even attempt to direct play at full quality, though I don't know why the XBOX is limited to 40, either that's the default there or it was set at some point for some reason. You'll have to check on the device.

Looking into Xbox and default speed is 200 MBs 

[Lessaj 467]

No that's the internet quality setting, or remote, you're in your home network so you need to set home one to the highest. I don't know why it would be 40 otherwise.

Personally I think Nvidia GPUs are the best for transcoding. I used to use a Quadro P2000 and currently I'm using a 1080 Ti. I actually really liked the Quadro, it wasn't that expensive buying it used and it doesn't require any PCI E power connectors and is only 1 slot. I've used it to transcode 4k before just fine. The 1000 series if you can get a 1070 or higher they have 2 encoders which wasn't seen again on the consumer cards until the 4070 Ti but really anything from the 1000 series or higher (as long as it's not a 1030 those are e waste) should work well. I mention the number of encoders because I find it so funny that my 1080 Ti transcodes faster than my 3090... The 3090 output may be slightly higher quality due to a newer encoder but it's not as fast.

Edited February 5, 2025 by Lessaj

[Luke 42078]

I would try setting all of the qualities back to auto and then see how things compare.

[Airbender 128]

On 2/5/2025 at 10:22 AM, Luke said:

I would try setting all of the qualities back to auto and then see how things compare.

IT was as default and i changed then changed back to auto and still no luck same issue. so i guess there is nothing can be done due to old hardware which expected at this point. by chance any luck on why my poster not showing 3D tag ? please advise thanks 

[Luke 42078]

8 hours ago, Airbender said:

IT was as default and i changed then changed back to auto and still no luck same issue. so i guess there is nothing can be done due to old hardware which expected at this point. by chance any luck on why my poster not showing 3D tag ? please advise thanks 

Hi, can we please see an example of that?

How to Report a Problem

Thanks.