Remote connection quality

[booboos 5]

Hi. I have someone connecting to my Emby server remotely and the quality of the connection is both poor and confusing. My Emby server is on ethernet with a speed test showing 800 MB. The person remotely connecting has a speed of 400 MB. And yet when she remotely connects to my server, Emby uses transcoding on 1080p files which are 8mbps. If I disable transcoding for her it then off course plays direct play but is lagging and stutters. I can't understand how two high-speed internet connections cannot smoothly play a 1080p 8mbps file. She has tried changing her remote play connection from auto to 1080p 60 mbps, 1080p 20 Mbps but direct play is still really bad. So the only option is to allow transcoding where Emby produces a lag free but low quality stream of 4 megabytes per second. Is it simply because my server is in Texas and she is in the UK? I really don't know how to improve this. 

[Luke 42078]

Quote

I can't understand how two high-speed internet connections cannot smoothly play a 1080p 8mbps file

Hi, ISP throttling is likely the reason. It could be happening on either side of the connection.

[booboos 5]

2 minutes ago, Luke said:

Hi, ISP throttling is likely the reason. It could be happening on either side of the connection.

That's true, but when I've seen screenshots of other people having the same problem, on the transcoding info it has 'throttling' in brackets. Which I don't have. Also why would an ISP throttle an Emby connection?

[pwhodges 2012]

4 minutes ago, booboos said:

on the transcoding info it has 'throttling' in brackets. Which I don't have.

Throttling within Emby is a different thing, which you can enable in the transcoding settings.  It's not relevant here.

5 minutes ago, booboos said:

Also why would an ISP throttle an Emby connection?

Cheap - to reduce the bandwidth they require.

Paul

[maegibbons 1287]

Which provider is she using in the UK?

Also is your 800mbps connection symetric.  I.e.  the same in both directions or is your upload capped at a lower speed?

To find out the true bandwidth between the two points you need to use a tool like iperf3.  It is then possible to advise on maximising the connection.

However, even a 4mbps connection should give reasonable quality video stream.

Krs

Mark

 

[booboos 5]

14 minutes ago, maegibbons said:

Which provider is she using in the UK?

Also is your 800mbps connection symetric.  I.e.  the same in both directions or is your upload capped at a lower speed?

To find out the true bandwidth between the two points you need to use a tool like iperf3.  It is then possible to advise on maximising the connection.

However, even a 4mbps connection should give reasonable quality video stream.

Krs

Mark

 

She's using the 3 broadband network. I know I don't have symmetric broadband. The 4 MB connection does give a reasonable stream (she's not that bothered about high quality) it's more the fact that transcoding is using about 85% of my CPU power on the PC that the server is on. That's the main reason I want it to play on direct play. Direct play reports that it's doing 8 MB streaming when transcoding is disabled. That's still really low considering how high both of our broadband connections are

[booboos 5]

5 hours ago, Luke said:

Hi, ISP throttling is likely the reason. It could be happening on either side of the connection.

I've just realized that this is the 'official' Emby response. Is there really no other advice you can give? ISP throttling seems an unlikely reason to me. And is there any way I can ascertain if it's isp throttling?

[Jdiesel 1431]

Do you have any other remote users that are having this issue or is it just this one user? Can you test from a remote connections yourself? Cell phone on your mobile network and not wifi perhaps. If other remote connections are fine then it would indicate it is an issue with this one users internet connections or potentially even wifi. It could be bad peering between your server and her client but there isn't much you can do about that.

I personally host my own speedtest for troubleshooting purposes. It is more apples to apples then some of the public speedtests because it is using the exact connection that emby would be using.

https://openspeedtest.com/selfhosted-speedtest 

Edited May 24, 2025 by Jdiesel

[booboos 5]

I only have one of the user on the server which is her. And yes it does look like it's a problem on her end. And I agree that's probably not much to be done about it. My main worry is the extremely high CPU caused by transcoding. I've read elsewhere that getting the official latest ffmpeg online rather than the one Emby uses can significantly lower the CPU usage, so I might try that

[GrimReaper 4740]

9 minutes ago, booboos said:

And yes it does look like it's a problem on her end.

I've read elsewhere that getting the official latest ffmpeg online rather than the one Emby uses can significantly lower the CPU usage, so I might try that

I would refrain from doing that at the moment. Rather, have her connect to your server through a VPN, so her ISP won't be able to sniff/determine what kind of traffic she's receiving and would not throttle her connection consequently, see how does that compare. You could also setup SSL on your server, therefore encrypting end-to-end connection. 

Edited May 24, 2025 by GrimReaper

[booboos 5]

2 minutes ago, GrimReaper said:

I would refrain from doing that at the moment. Rather, have her connect to your server through a VPN, so her ISP won't be able to sniff/determine what kind of traffic she's receiving and would not throttle her connection consequently, see how does that compare. You could also setup SSL on your server, therefore encrypting end-to-end connection. 

Yes I did think of that too. The trouble is that Nord VPN reduces her internet connection from 400 MB to about 60 MB. So then there's the suspicion that her ISP is also throttling VPN connections. 

[GrimReaper 4740]

4 minutes ago, booboos said:

Nord VPN reduces her internet connection from 400 MB to about 60 MB.

Which should still give her more than enough bandwidth to stream/direct play media from your server. And she doesn't have to be continuously connected to a VPN (i.e. when not streaming).

4 minutes ago, booboos said:

So then there's the suspicion that her ISP is also throttling VPN connections. 

I would think that's NordVPN itself, not her ISP. She can also test other VPN provider(s). 

Edited May 24, 2025 by GrimReaper

[Jdiesel 1431]

How are you connecting? http or https? I believe https traffic using port 443 would be more difficult to throttle because the traffic is indistinguishable from other traffic.

[booboos 5]

Just now, Jdiesel said:

How are you connecting? http or https? I believe https traffic using port 443 would be more difficult to throttle because the traffic is indistinguishable from other traffic.

Yes it's just http. I seem to remember trying https a while ago and it was a bit of a nightmare, but I could try it again

[Luke 42078]

Let us know how things go. Thanks.

[booboos 5]

On 25/05/2025 at 13:35, Luke said:

Let us know how things go. Thanks.

My solution which works very well is to use jelly fin instead. Jellyfin plays the exact same files as direct play with no transcoding needed. When it does occasionally need transcoding it does it using hardware acceleration which is free on Jellyfin. You should consider the possibility of allowing hardware acceleration as a separate paid add-on in Emby. I don't want to pay for Emby Premiere when I only need that one feature. But ISP throttling was not the issue. 

[Jdiesel 1431]

Make sense. I have premier and Hwa transcoding enabled so when the auto quality setting doesn't work as expected it will transcode but other than it being an annoyance, it works. I could see how the auto quality setting would be a pain for those on low powered hardware without Hwa on those fringe cases when it is incorrectly selecting a conservative bitrate and thus unnecessary transcoding.

 

IMO Jellyfin is the better choice over Emby w/o Premier. Emby with Premier is the better choice over Jellyfin. If you don't want to pay Jellyfin is the way to go, if you want the best experience and support Emby Premier is the way to go.

[rbjtech 5284]

Just seen this thread - and my immediate thought was network latency - as the server is in texas, the client in the uk.   Typically thats about 100-120 ms depending on the route taken.

The fact JF plays it back without issues - using the exact same http transport - suggests an issue with the emby client not liking the latency aspect for some reason.   Maybe the JF client has a larger playback buffer to accomodate..

[Luke 42078]

On 5/24/2025 at 8:12 PM, booboos said:

Yes it's just http. I seem to remember trying https a while ago and it was a bit of a nightmare, but I could try it again

 

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

 

[booboos 5]

2 minutes ago, Luke said:

 

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

 

Thanks for the offer, but as jellyfin works perfectly for my niece in the UK with free hardware acceleration why would I want to use Emby? If for some reason I have to return to Emby I'll take you up on the offer. Thanks very much

[Luke 42078]

Hi, we're happy to help you resolve your issue. Can you give it another try?

[booboos 5]

21 minutes ago, Luke said:

Hi, we're happy to help you resolve your issue. Can you give it another try?

I understand that and I appreciate the offer. But even if you get the streams to play the same way the jelly fin does I've still got the problem that you charge (quite a lot) for hardware acceleration transcoding. I still use Emby myself on my local network because it's a lot easier to maintain and to troubleshoot, but as far as remote connections go I don't think I'd ever use Emby