Issues With Media Playback Not Transcoding on Local Network

[crunchprank 2]

Hello,

 

I feel overall that I have determined the cause of the problem, as it is only happening on a single device, and that is the fact that the signal strength may not be the best. This of course could be an incorrect assumption of mine, but that is my theory.

 

The issue I'm experiencing is when streaming media on my local network, the media file will simply stop for X amount of seconds, sometimes upwards of 30-40 seconds, and then continue playing. Again, going off of the above assumption, I feel as though the weak signal makes the video essentially buffer (though there's no indication of this, it's just a freeze) until it has downloaded enough to play more.

 

What I'm interested in knowing is, how exactly does the transcoding work when streaming media on a local network? I have it enabled on the Emby server as well as the application of the device (in this particular case, a Fire TV Stick 4K). I haven't adjusted the settings aside from what they were when they were default, so I believe everything is default and set to auto.

 

That said, my assumption of how this should work, is when I'm streaming a media file, instead of it freezing for X amount of seconds, it simply starts to degrade the quality, i.e. transcode the file, so that less bandwidth is needed to continue streaming the media file until it's caught up. Much like YouTube or Twitch.

 

I've searched the forums and to my surprise, there are more threads about "Why is my media not direct playing" as opposed to "Why is my media not being transcoded".

 

In reviewing the logs on the server, I'm not an expert at what I'm looking at, but I noticed that the file name of the logs is "ffmpeg-directstream-XXXX" which indicates to me that the file is not being transcoded when it's hitting a situation where it needs to be transcoded. I can provide those logs, but would prefer to PM them to an administrator as I'm not sure what all information needs to be sanitized.

 

Again to reiterate, this is on a local network. Not sure if that makes any differences when it comes to the transcoding process. Another important note is that the storage devices are local to the HTPC.

 

So a TL;DR would be, I don't think my media files are being transcoded when what I believe is happening is a bandwidth issue on my local network - which if that is the case, I would expect the media file to be transcoded to prevent it from stopping for seconds at a time.

[Happy2Play 9783]

It sounds like the server is not detecting a signal issue and delivering the media at what the device says it is capable of.  You may have to limit the quality in the app for that device.  There is currently no only the fly quality changing to accommodate bandwidth changes.

Edited November 24, 2019 by Happy2Play

[Luke 42085]

Hi, yes that's correct, you can see that we've been hammered over the years by users about transcoding, and that's why by default on the local network we don't try to detect bandwidth and we just direct play whenever possible.

 

What I would suggest doing is adjusting the in-app quality setting, change it from Auto to a small value. For example, start at 1 mbps, then work your way up as you see success. Please let us know if this helps. Thanks.

[crunchprank 2]

Awesome, thank you both. I will attempt to set the bitrate manually within the application itself and see if that makes a difference.