Best formats for Emby

[stuarta 8]

Hi all,

What's the best format for a Roku Premiere device or settings?  I've just got hold of one of these and noticed some lag while playing a h264 file with the percentage bar spinning while another h265 played instantly that was reported as 1080p hevc.  

Gemini told me to use h265 so i redownload the first one but I still get the same and now Gemini is telling me to use h264.

Anyone got any advise for either the best file format or settings to try and help prevent the spinny percentage wheel please.

[Luke 42605]

Hi, either of those should be fine. I would suggest getting to the bottom of why that was happening before making changes to your files. It might not be as simple as just the format.

[stuarta 8]

Yeah thanks, that's why I was wondering if there was any known settings I should make to improve performance

[tedfroop21 98]

The best format?  Look for one ALL your devices are compatible with.

-Remember that all compression removes data which in some way lessens quality.

-Be aware too of the ongoing issues with H265, and that many devices that offered hardware decoding have disabled it. 

-There are compression formats that can improve performance but the best way to improve performance, is to build a solid network to carry your data.

-Ensure you understand the actual real world capacity of wireless networks if you use them.

[stuarta 8]

Fortunately 264 and 265 are supported by my Roku and new TCL device, it was more about which is the preferred, if there is a preferred for the best performance and any settings I should be making as standard practise in the server

[stuarta 8]

Just further to this, I have noticed quite a lot of performance problems since upgrading to the latest version.  Trying to watch something this afternoon via Chrome and it wouldn't play, I've tried stopping the package but the memory on my Synology kept climbing up to 380Mb so I've restarted the NAS

[MangoMC 52]

Hey

It doesnt depends on the emby Software at All. Its the Player and your Server hardware. 

Some players work fine with hevc, Some not. 

If your Player cant play the file direct your Server Hardware needs to transcode Video or Audio or both. 

If you dont have a gpu for transcoding your CPU needs to Do the Job. And CPUs are not Designed to decode and encode Video files. 

Transcoding hevc needs more Power. Transcoding only Audio is very simple. 

So you See. The choice of the Player is the most important Part of choosing which files are working great and which not 

Browsers are always a Bad idea. They often dont have the needed Codecs. Use the native app on Windows or Mac or whatever. 

Watching on a TV. Buy a shield and you are fine 

 

Edited 6 hours ago by MangoMC

[stuarta 8]

Fortunately bounced my NAS at lunch and it seemed to sort itself and limited to the browser unfortunately while I'm work.  On my new TCL TV the app seems to work well, just trying to tune the performance the best I can for the Roku Premiere in the bedroom and finding the happy medium between devices for formats and any if needed changes to the server to help improve performance

[MangoMC 52]

I dont know the specs of the roku. 

But i guess h264 and hevc are not a Problem. You just need to take a Look at the Bitrate and Level. Higher Level means more Compression and the roku needs to handle the Compression. Around Level 150 and under that is fine. 

High Bitrate Begins at around 30mbit/s. So dont watch remux files. Use webdl or "normal" bluray files 

On your Server. If you own a gpu in the nas buy the emby Premiere subscription to enable Hardware transcoding 

[stuarta 8]

yeah don't have a GPU, Synology DS224+

I need to check again at some point as I noticed that some HEVC files played instantly while another I got the progress bar and AI was telling me to make changes in the server web side and app side so that's why I thought I would check here what the optimum settings are.  AI lies 

[MangoMC 52]

Yeah. AI is not always the solution

Yeah. If some are working. Some not. Check Bitrate. Check Level. Check Audio of the file. 

Anywhere there is the Difference why some work fine and some not. 

As an example. Some of my friends dont have a Dolby vision TV. So its using the fallback hdr. But when the Audio is eac3 7.1 the file doesnt work. Its always a few parameters that can be the issue 

[stuarta 8]

yep I think the difference might have been AC5.1 and some were EAC5.1.  Not sure of the difference

[yocker 1665]

If you are afraid your device doesn't support what ever you have then I can recommend just getting a Nvidia Shield.

It supports pretty much everything plus audio pass through.

[speechles 2095]

Gemini is good when it is things that require looking at a large consensus. Where you need input from lots of sources combined to tell something. So AI can tell you is A better than B. It can look at sentiment. It is good at that. But when it comes to rationalize whether the information it sees its hyperbolic, sarcasm, just plain wrong, etc. It cannot. People also put up inaccurate information, lies, other things. The AI is at best a regurgitation machine. When it can replicate the nuances of being human to a point. But after awhile it comes across as cookie-cutter, cardboard, always flattering and sycophant behavior. The AI isn't going to give honest unbiased opinion. It is just an AI afterall, and it reminds you of this if you step too close to "the men behind the curtain" so to speak. If you try to break out of its training model to expose the language used to create its behaviors. So it is a good conversationalist. It can keep you entertained and give out copies of other information with slight modifications from melding many things together into one. 

Would I trust it for catering media codecs to any certain device? No. Just because it isn't real. It can only learn from reading text from forums and web pages. It doesn't have a device like you and are testing many different media things against it. But we are. I am. We have entire libraries filled with samples collected. From users, from random places on websites where people give the sample they have issues with, etc.

If you encode the media yourself stick to following a guide. Don't just wily-nily try to do things or it turns out like P2P torrents. That is why when you source files from others you can never know what you are getting. Unless it is a consistent source. The same release group every single time. But even then, notice they have repacks and propers? That is because even they can fudge it up encoding. 

https://forum.doom9.org/forumdisplay.php?f=17

Look at this website and see which have active posts recently. Those would be the codecs people are using today. This forum is a good resource for what to do and what not to do.

Edited 4 hours ago by speechles

[stuarta 8]

Ok so just noticed the one that I have that gives me a progress wheel is EAC3 5.1, the one that doesn't is AC3 5.1 so maybe that's it. Looks like EAC3 might need decoding so maybe it's the auto track causing the slight delay

[speechles 2095]

2 hours ago, stuarta said:

Ok so just noticed the one that I have that gives me a progress wheel is EAC3 5.1, the one that doesn't is AC3 5.1 so maybe that's it. Looks like EAC3 might need decoding so maybe it's the auto track causing the slight delay

That is likely because the Roku is set to "Auto" in the Roku Audio settings. When using Auto the Roku will determine via HDMI which codecs are supported or not from the connected hardware along the HDMI chain. Sometimes it gets this wrong. Sometimes it isn't aware your TV does support EAC3, which is Dolby Digital+, rather than just Dolby Digital. 

You can set your Roku to Dolby instead of Auto for the Preferred streaming codec. Then for Digital output format choose Custom. Then inside the custom settings, enable Dolby Digital and Dolby Digital Plus. If you know your TV that Roku is connected to also supports DTS enable that too.

Then restart/reboot the Roku. Change audio settings requires you reboot the Roku to reset the HDMI chain. Then test it with the Emby Roku app. Try to play something with EAC3. Do you hear sound? Or is it just silence? If you do not hear sound and you just hear silence you may need to disable the Dolby Digital Plus in the Preferred streaming codec. But if it does have sound it proves the Roku couldn't properly detect EAC3 support on your TV using the HDMI chain.  The Roku cannot detect EAC3 properly on the Samsung TV I have even though it works perfectly.

The Emby Roku app reads the audio capabilities directly from your Roku. As you make changes to the Roku system audio settings it does affect how Emby will play. Fixing this on the Roku audio settings will fix the Emby Roku app.

Edited 1 hour ago by speechles

[stuarta 8]

Ok thanks will give that a go when I get chance. At the moment trying to see if I can force to download AC3 as I'm not bothered by Dolby in the bedroom