Transcoding unnecessarily?

[easperhe 4]

All,

 

I'm new to Emby and still learning. So, sorry if this is a dump question. But my girlfriend has a remote connection watching a show and I see that Emby is transcoding and I don't understand why it's transcoding. You can see from the 2 images below that it's transcoding from H.264 AVC to H.264 AVC (so why transcode). It says that it's doing this since the media bitrate exceeds limit. But, the direct play bitrate is ~3.5 Mb/s. The transcoding bitrate is ~7.0 Mb/s. So, this transcoding and 2x bitrate makes no sense to me. Of course the higher bitrate makes it more likely she'll get glitches.

 

Q1: Why is this transcode happeing?

Q2: Can I force direct play?

 

 

 

 

 

 

thanks!

[Luke 42082]

Hi, what do you mean by direct play limit is 3.5? Where did you set that?

[easperhe 4]

Hi, what do you mean by direct play limit is 3.5? Where did you set that?

 

I didn't set any direct play limit - I was just pointing out that direct play bitrate on my home machine was ~3.5 Mb/s. So both confuse me: why transcode but format isn't changing (both H.264) and transcoded bit rate is higher than direct play bitrate. 

 

Not sure if this matters. but my monitor I was playing on is 3840x2160 and my girlfriend's TV is 1920x1080

Edited April 20, 2020 by easperhe

[rbjtech 5284]

There are many reasons why it may transcode (subs, audio, container etc), but I agree it does seem very odd why it did not direct play in the first place, as it obviously has the bandwidth to do so.

 

You can try and force direct play by removing the transcoding options for that user in user settings.

[Q-Droid 989]

If she's streaming from a browser it has been noted before that Auto bandwidth detection is VERY unreliable and often wrong.

 

Also the streaming bitrates reported on the dashboard while transcoding are wrong and in my testing it displays nearly twice the actual average bitrates as measured on the server.

[Luke 42082]

Can you please attach the emby server and ffmpeg log? thanks.

[easperhe 4]

Can you please attach the emby server and ffmpeg log? thanks.

 

Luke,

 

See attached log files. And I'm getting exactly the same behavior. When I play CNN at home, I'm seeing ~3.3 Mbps bitrate during DirectPlay of h264 file. My girlfriend is watching the same program remotely at her apartment at the same time and emby server is transcoding from H.264 (AVC) -> H.264 (AVC) at a bitrate ~6.4 Mbps. Note, my watching or not watching (probably as expected) has no impact on the transcoding done for the remote connection.

 

Also - I disabled transcoding for Susan just now. And that works as expected. She gets the directPlay at bitrate of ~3.3 Mbps. So, this works when she is at home. I'm just wondering if I have something setup wrong.

 

 

Thanks!

embyserver.txt

ffmpeg.txt

Edited April 25, 2020 by easperhe

[Luke 42082]

 

Luke,

 

See attached log files. And I'm getting exactly the same behavior. When I play CNN at home, I'm seeing ~3.3 Mbps bitrate during DirectPlay of h264 file. My girlfriend is watching the same program remotely at her apartment at the same time and emby server is transcoding from H.264 (AVC) -> H.264 (AVC) at a bitrate ~6.4 Mbps. Note, my watching or not watching (probably as expected) has no impact on the transcoding done for the remote connection.

 

Also - I disabled transcoding for Susan just now. And that works as expected. She gets the directPlay at bitrate of ~3.3 Mbps. So, this works when she is at home. I'm just wondering if I have something setup wrong.

 

 

Thanks!

 

The app is requesting a video bitrate of 6.6 mbps so it looks like everything is doing what it's supposed to do. If you want 3.3, then you need to have her configure her in-app quality setting for that.

[easperhe 4]

The app is requesting a video bitrate of 6.6 mbps so it looks like everything is doing what it's supposed to do. If you want 3.3, then you need to have her configure her in-app quality setting for that.

 

OK, I'll look into that. But I think her in app setting is set to "Auto". Would "Auto" not give directplay if both sides could keep up with directplay bitrate?

[Luke 42082]

No, auto will select a value based on what the device reports as available bandwidth. It has nothing to do with the bitrate of what you're currently playing.