Force Higher Bitrates

[Jonathan1683 29]

Hello,

 

I noticed sometimes one of my users streams at really low bitrates I haven't figured out why, but on the apple TV client I don't think you can specify what bitrates to use and it doesn't seem to adjust quality if the bandwidth is available. The thing is these clients live in the same apartment complex and use the same isp. I have a gigabit connection and they have 100mbit. There shouldn't really be bandwidth issues, but sometimes they are streaming at such a low bitrates the video is terrible. Is there a way to force this to buffer or check later while playing if it can increase the quality like hulu or netflix would do?

[ebr 16169]

Hi.  The Apple TV app does have a quality setting.  Have you checked that on the device in question?

[Jonathan1683 29]

Thank you I didnt realize it was there !

[Jonathan1683 29]

hello I noticed everyone is defaulting to lower bitrates and it kind of hard to manage everyone and tell them how to keep changing it. I dont think the automatic setting are working correctly. Everyone is always streaming at 1.5 mb/s I even tried today on my laptop and it's 1.5 on lan lol whats the deal? Both of these were via browser connection.

Edited December 7, 2019 by Jonathan1683

[Luke 42077]

hello I noticed everyone is defaulting to lower bitrates and it kind of hard to manage everyone and tell them how to keep changing it. I dont think the automatic setting are working correctly. Everyone is always streaming at 1.5 mb/s I even tried today on my laptop and it's 1.5 on lan lol whats the deal? Both of these were via browser connection.

 

@@Jonathan1683 have you tried adjusting the in-app quality setting?

[cptlores 40]

That's not the point. The auto setting is (and has been for long time) selecting very low bit-rates, for users that have plenty of bandwidth to play much higher quality.

This is also causing a lot of strain on servers, with most users transcoding even when not needed. I would suggest a auto system that is much more aggressive at selecting higher bandwidth, and if the selected quality causes buffer under-run, you fallback to a lower bitrate.

Edited December 8, 2019 by cptlores

[Jonathan1683 29]

one of the users i logged in and i checked his account and it’s set to 10mbit in his settings which i told him to change it to and it was still streaming at 1.5 , I agree with cpt i don’t think it’s trying at all to use higher bitrates and literally no one understands bitrates anyways every one i ask just says “yea it looks bad i just thought that’s how it is”. Not sure how this setting works, but why doesn’t it try to increase the bitrate over time or attempt to buffer it or maybe do a speed test, but have some kind of loading screen or buffering screen.

[Jonathan1683 29]

does the options in profile not work when i set it to 10mbit in the playback settings but people still get 1.5 mb/s very frustrating bug

[Luke 42077]

does the options in profile not work when i set it to 10mbit in the playback settings but people still get 1.5 mb/s very frustrating bug

 

Hi, they work just fine, but they don't increase the bitrate of the source if the source is 1.5 mb/s. Does that answer your question?

[Jonathan1683 29]

Well my sources are 1080p well over 1.5 mbit/s not sure why they still stream at such low bitrates

[Luke 42077]

Let's look at an example. Please attach the information requested in how to report a media playback issue. thanks.

[softworkz 5066]

@@Jonathan1683

 

Please note that with default settings, the H.264 software encoder usually produces results at significantly lower bitrates than what the client is requesting (according to the quality you have chosen in the client). In case of software-encoding, the client-requested bitrate is effectively just an upper hard limit.

 

You can try to change the CRF value in the transcoding settings to increase the quality (and get closer to that limit).

 

 

With most of the hardware accelerated encoders it's different: These will typically produce results having a bitrate close to the requested bitrate.

Also, the CRF value doesn't have any effect for hw encoders.

Edited January 4, 2020 by softworkz

[Jonathan1683 29]

I looked in transcoding and it says hardware  is set to yes, Last night I saw the stream I think it said it was using quick sync I have no GPU installed so its just using the CPU.

transcoding thread count auto

encoding preset to auto

CRF is 23 so i guess its not on auto but i changed it to 35 anyways to see how that works.

 

Thank you,

[FrostByte 5392]

I looked in transcoding and it says hardware  is set to yes, Last night I saw the stream I think it said it was using quick sync I have no GPU installed so its just using the CPU.

transcoding thread count auto

encoding preset to auto

CRF is 23 so i guess its not on auto but i changed it to 35 anyways to see how that works.

 

Thank you,

 

 

I think you went the wrong way.  If you want a higher bitrate /quality file then you need to use a lower CRF #

[Jonathan1683 29]

You are right thanks for pointing that out. Seemed to cut my FPS from 200 to 70 as well so glad to change it back lol.

[Jonathan1683 29]

Looks like it didn’t work @@softworkz i have it on slow encoding and crf 18 , two users at 1.5 mb/s i will have to do what Luke said and see if i can report this better.

[softworkz 5066]

Yes, please report including ffmpeg log files.

 

Some hints:

• Create one logfile replicating the original situation that made you start this conversation
  (all settings at default)
  .
• Then, apply the suggestions I made, and repeat/replicate the exact same situation like above with the previous log file:
  • Play the same video
  • Use the same client
  • Play video from beginning (in both cases)
• Avoid any other differences and distractions 
  (e.g. don't suddenly have two users)

[cptlores 40]

I understand that the actual transcode might not hit the requested bitrate, depending on encoder settings.

But the problem is that Auto is starting transcodes much more often that what is necessary. One of the more extreme examples I have seen is a client on a good fiber connection (100mbit+) transcoding (h264->h264) to something like ~1.5mbit on a 5mbit source file when selecting Auto. Server is also on fiber with plenty of bandwidth.

[BAlGaInTl 288]

I understand that the actual transcode might not hit the requested bitrate, depending on encoder settings.

But the problem is that Auto is starting transcodes much more often that what is necessary. One of the more extreme examples I have seen is a client on a good fiber connection (100mbit+) transcoding (h264->h264) to something like ~1.5mbit on a 5mbit source file when selecting Auto. Server is also on fiber with plenty of bandwidth.

 

It could still be a network issue.

 

Just because two systems have good connections, doesn't always mean they have a good connection to each other.  I'm not saying that's the issue... just that it's a possibility you can investigate.

[cptlores 40]

The same client did a >35Mbit Bluray direct stream as a test with no problem what so ever using manual quality settings, just moments after Auto selected a ~1.5Mbit transcode.

And this is a trend I see on all clients when they use Auto, and when they go manual they usually stream much higher bit rates then auto without problems. So it is unlikely that it is a congestion problem. I also run QoS on my firewall (IPFire) that prioritize and reserve bandwidth for the Emby server to minimize potential congestion problems.

 

And having a dedicated Xeon based Emby server with 16/32 cores, I have enough resources to do the needed transcoding. But I find it frustrating that my clients end up getting subpar video quality when they use the default Auto setting. In my mind Auto should be adaptive streaming that adapts to the available bandwidth on the fly. Something like RTCP used in RTSP streaming for video conference calls etc. Or at least a connection that would start of aggressive (with the goal of having a direct stream as often as possible), and then gracefully degrade the quality in steps if there is a problem.

Edited January 9, 2020 by cptlores

[kikinjo 281]

Auto is broken for long time now, there are many threads talking about Auto issue. We need this prioritized and fixed finally so clients who have the bandwidth don't put pressure on server to transcode when there is no need for it.

[Jonathan1683 29]

I noticed this too my blu-ray’s usually have 11 mb/s so i upped the cap to 15 mb/s on the client but it still transcodes @ 1.5 server just seems to want to put out 1.5 instead of direct stream or high quality stream. i thought if i put the bandwidth cap over the source files bitrate i could work around the low quality encodes but didn’t matter. Sometimes clients do direct stream but it’s rare. I have started to wonder if the hard drive spin up time is causing the server to think the connection is slow or something.

[softworkz 5066]

Let's look at an example. Please attach the information requested in how to report a media playback issue. thanks.

[Happy2Play 9780]

Doesn't the majority of this come back to this?

 

https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/71791-auto-quality-always-low-bitrates/?p=776790

[Jonathan1683 29]

I have been reluctant to post logs here because I figured they would have my personal info in them. I did notice that they do IP address ports etc, should I PM them or something?