Video Transcoding

[bigjme 1]

Hi Everyone,

 

So i am relatively new to EMBY and so far am loving it (enough to become a supporter). But recently i have been unable to do any playback via directplay.

My EMBY server is on my main server machine which has a monitor attached and is used for movies. As its easier to watch using EMBY then finding the files i often load the videos using the browser (always on either 127.0.0.1 or localhost).

 

When i initially installed EMBY around 2 months ago i was able to play any movie out of my collection using direct play and have no transcoding, as after all, i am playing the movie on the same machine it is located.

 

Recently i noticed that i can now only stream the videos which is causing trouble as it starts to encode using server power when playing it direct uses hardly any CPU at all (this machine has a very strong GPU so no cpu video encoding)

 

Is there a setting or something i am missing that would explain why this option is all of a sudden not there? it has been this way a few weeks and now i am rolling out access to more machines on my network the CPU encoding is causing problems.

 

I have enabled beta releases (currently version 3.0.5607.0) to see if this would help but it has not. And i am testing the same files as i used to play direct so it isn't a codec problem. The machine has full codec support for the movie as i can play the files in other media players, and the file being used to transcode currently is ffmpeg which uses 50% of my intel e3-1230v2 to stream a single 1080p video (on the same machine!)

 

If i could get this issue fixed it would be greatly appreciated as all my machines could run the files directly rather then transcoded as bandwidth is really not an issue on my lan.

 

Sorry if this topic has been covered before but i am unsure if it may be a machine issue or a change in EMBY.

 

Thanks in advance for any help.

 

Regards,

Jamie

Edited May 10, 2015 by bigjme

[Angelblue05 4132]

What are you using to playback your content?

[bigjme 1]

Currently i am using the normal browser to play back the content using the media browser as i would prefer to stay within this as it is how i navigate my library.

 

I do have VLC installed to play the files directly but i don't use this with EMBY, and i have the full K-Lite Mega Codec Pack installed

 

Regards,

Jamie

Edited May 10, 2015 by bigjme

[drashna 47]

Direct Play needs to have MP4/AAC files. 

 

However, I think Luke has said that there was an issue recently that broke it and it should be fixed soon (I could be wrong here).

The codecs installed locally doesn't matter, as it transcodes the files to a webm compatible format for the browser that you're using. This way, nothing is needed client side. (unless you're using a the VLC player, and I think that still reads from the transcoded stream, but I'm not sure).

 

 

However, it seems that the FFMPEG transcoding is using a profile that is ... well a CPU hog. I have a Xeon E3-1245v3 and experience similar extremely high CPU usage (more than 50% usually, even with throttling enabled).

http://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/21006-transcoding-causing-video-to-freeze/&do=findComment&comment=204476

 

I can't even stream two videos at the same time, without massive lag. 

Though, the latest beta seems to have reduced the issues.. somewhat.

[bigjme 1]

Is there a way to set it to gpu encode using Cuda? The machine has a gtx 780 in it so encoding is nothing if I can get my card to do the work rather than having a bad effect on my cpu

Edited May 10, 2015 by bigjme

[JeremyFr79 228]

Direct Play needs to have MP4/AAC files. 

 

However, I think Luke has said that there was an issue recently that broke it and it should be fixed soon (I could be wrong here).

The codecs installed locally doesn't matter, as it transcodes the files to a webm compatible format for the browser that you're using. This way, nothing is needed client side. (unless you're using a the VLC player, and I think that still reads from the transcoded stream, but I'm not sure).

 

 

However, it seems that the FFMPEG transcoding is using a profile that is ... well a CPU hog. I have a Xeon E3-1245v3 and experience similar extremely high CPU usage (more than 50% usually, even with throttling enabled).

http://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/21006-transcoding-causing-video-to-freeze/&do=findComment&comment=204476

 

I can't even stream two videos at the same time, without massive lag. 

Though, the latest beta seems to have reduced the issues.. somewhat.

There's gotta be something more to your problem, I'm running 2 X5570's and can transcode quite a few streams without issue.

[Deathsquirrel 745]

If you want direct play of anything but pretty simple video structures, h264 with 2 channel aac sound for example, you should not be playing in a browser.  Use emby theater, the win 8.1 app, or emby classic for example.

Edited May 11, 2015 by Deathsquirrel

[JeremyFr79 228]

If you wat direct play of anything but pretty simple vedeo structures, hẅ64 with 2 channel aac sound for exampke, you should not be playing in a browser.  Use emby theater, the win 8.1 app, or emby classic for example.

Drunk? or responded from phone? hehe

[drashna 47]

There's gotta be something more to your problem, I'm running 2 X5570's and can transcode quite a few streams without issue.

Absolutely agree.

Especially as Plex and Subsonic have NO issues on the system, and Subsonic also uses FFMPEG to transcode. And plex seems to use less CPU to encode to higher quality.

And it's very sensitive. Another process uses "a lot of CPU" at the same time, and it starts stuttering/buffering. And by  this, I mean 10-20%... Such as somebody using Subsonic. Changing priorities helps, a bit. But that's not a solution.

 

So yes, I know it shouldn't be having a problem, at all. It should be able to do this without missing a frame, so to speak.

 

The only thing I can think of is maybe that I only have the on-die GPU, so no dedicated graphics card to use CUDA or AMD's equivalent. 

 

 

And I'm using Chrome as the client, for several reasons. Partially, for workflow, as I'm a heavy multitasker. And the other apps don't work well with a mouse.

Edited May 10, 2015 by drashna

[Schimi 26]

it´s possible to direct stream (direct play) mkv?

Or i have to remux all of my mkv´s to mp4?

[Deathsquirrel 745]

it´s possible to direct stream (direct play) mkv?

Or i have to remux all of my mkv´s to mp4?

 

I don't think any of the browsers natively support MKV or most common audio formats used in movie files other than AAC.  Again, really recommend using a client app rather than a browser if you want direct play.  that's a separate question from the resource impact of transcoding of course.

[Luke 42079]

chrome can play some mkv