Performance issues on SFF PC

[navyrazorback 3]

For the past few years I have been running Emby Server on a Synology 920+.  Recently I started to have playback issues (videos stopping on playback on AppleTV when playing normal and especially 4k files).  In addition I reached the end of my current storage capacity which led to me acquiring a DS 1821+ and a HP 400 G9 (12700t, Intel UHD 770, 64GB DDR4, 500GB SSD).  

My intended setup was to use both the 920+ (tv) and 1821+ (movies) for storage and ARR/sabnzb duties and the HP 400 running Windows 11 Pro for Emby server and VMWare Home Assistant.

After getting this setup this way my Emby performance is significantly worse on the HP400 than it is on the 920+.  Playing the same video file Emby on the HP would transcode with fps of below 15 with playback errors and the 920+ would direct play video with 500+ fps according to the dashboard.

Below I have included the log from the HP400 if anyone could assist me in playback improvement.  I am not opposed to switching to Proxmox or something different, I went with windows client as it seemed easier to get hardware decoding accomplished and the 12700T should easily handle 4k transcoding is my understanding.

 

Thank you

ffmpeg-transcode-f4141cac-4d5c-4196-8563-9dd2cde57576_1.txt

embyserver.txt

Edited June 11, 2025 by navyrazorback

[Luke 42078]

Hi, please attach the main emby server log as well. thanks.

[navyrazorback 3]

Done.

[navyrazorback 3]

So I spent some time running other tests and have the same results - DS920+ is playing 4k videos without any issues, on the same devices from the same NAS storage while the HP400 is struggling and the steam pauses every few seconds.  I have attached the following logs for comparison

1- DS920+ Server Log and Transcode Log on Chrome

2- HP400+ Server Log and Transcode Log on Chrome - appeared to play direct and then switched to transcode
 

DS920 - Chrome - embyserver.txt DS920 - Chrome - ffmpeg-remux-6d32deec-d747-450a-a730-fd1c8d206f90_1.txt HP400 - Chrome - embyserver.txt HP400 - Chrome - ffmpeg-transcode-2bb4027e-ba6e-4d8c-a007-c0dfd9da531f_1.txt HP400 - Chrome - ffmpeg-remux-156dcec2-5ded-45ac-ad8e-a6a4a2aecec4_1.txt

[navyrazorback 3]

3- DS920+ Server Log and Transcode Log on AppleTV

4- HP400 Server Log and Transcode Log on AppleTV

 

Any help in this would be greatly appreciated.  I just cannot understand why the HP with more processing power and memory is not able to play anything.

DS920 - AppleTV - ffmpeg-remux-98e708c8-6885-4e7e-90b3-5b62965e49c2_1.txt DS920 - AppleTV - embyserver.txt HP400 - AppleTV - embyserver.txt HP400 - AppleTV - ffmpeg-remux-1411774b-b2b5-40e1-8178-54aeb958786c_1.txt

[rbjtech 5284]

If you create a local test library on the HP400 (local disk), and put a few test files on that and try playback - do they play direct ?

[Neminem 1518]

Can you turn off omdb for now, and restart server.

Its filling your logs with failed requests, your logs are massive, and my log prog. was 30 min to load your logs.

Edit : log program crashed can't see logs.

Edited June 12, 2025 by Neminem

[rbjtech 5284]

Do you have emby premier enabled on the Windows machine ?   Hardware acceleration (GPU) is only available for Premier - ie may be trying to use CPU ?

An intel 12700/UHD770 is more than capble of multiple 4K transcodes - so it is not a GPU hardware limitation.

[navyrazorback 3]

Ok, so I found the issue.  It appears to be a problem with my network connection.  When going over the physical connections I discovered that I had the DS1821+ connected on two LAN ports.  Originally I had planned to use port aggregation on both Diskstations, but decided to wait and forgot to unplug the LAN cable.  After doing this and restarting the HP400, DS1821+, and DS920+  I was able to get better results.  I ran openspeedtest installed on each NAS from the HP400 and got just under the 1000 Mbps connection expected between the devices.  I also created a test folder on the HP400 and added it to the library.

Emby on DS920+ with files on DS920+ - Test file played at ~250-260 fps

Emby on DS920+ with files on DS1821+ - Test file played at ~235-250 fps (NAS LAN Tx 55-70 MB/s)

Emby on HP400 with files on HP400 - Test file played at ~540-580 fps 

Emby on HP400 with files on DS1821+ - Test file played at ~235-260 fps (NAS LAN Tx 55-70 MB/s)

[rbjtech 5284]

2 minutes ago, navyrazorback said:

Ok, so I found the issue.  It appears to be a problem with my network connection.  When going over the physical connections I discovered that I had the DS1821+ connected on two LAN ports.  Originally I had planned to use port aggregation on both Diskstations, but decided to wait and forgot to unplug the LAN cable.  After doing this and restarting the HP400, DS1821+, and DS920+  I was able to get better results.  I ran openspeedtest installed on each NAS from the HP400 and got just under the 1000 Mbps connection expected between the devices.  I also created a test folder on the HP400 and added it to the library.

Emby on DS920+ with files on DS920+ - Test file played at ~250-260 fps

Emby on DS920+ with files on DS1821+ - Test file played at ~235-250 fps (NAS LAN Tx 55-70 MB/s)

Emby on HP400 with files on HP400 - Test file played at ~540-580 fps 

Emby on HP400 with files on DS1821+ - Test file played at ~235-260 fps (NAS LAN Tx 55-70 MB/s)

This is exactly where I was going with my question - to rule out the hardware vs network.   You've figured it out yourself

 

[navyrazorback 3]

Thank you for your help.  It was your request for the test file on the SSD that showed me the issue.  When I went to copy the file from the NAS it was only transferring at 6 kbps and going to take 2 days.  I was more focused on the server setup and did not think to check the speed between the devices.

Thank you for taking time to help.