Movie version selection algorithm

[G4n0nD0rf 6]

I'm trying to set up Emby to share home videos with my family. My library includes both old VHS rips as new high quality 4K videos. I already used to make different versions of my new videos:

• 4K HEVC 60 Mbps
• 1080p AVC 30 Mbps (for compatibility)
• 1080p AVC 8 Mbps (for sharing)

I want to avoid transcoding because I have found the automatic speed selection is always way to low. I never had a movie transcode of more than 3 Mbps unless I manually change the speed settings, wich I don't expect my aunts and uncles to do. My server can easily upload 16+ Mbps. Also, I like to minimize server load.

I find 1080p HEVC 6 Mbps to be a good compromise between quality and speed and decided to make versions of my videos in this quality as well. However now I have a few problems and questions with the automatic version selection.

First of all when accessing my server remotely with a web browser the 6 Mbps HEVC version is chosen by default, even though HEVC is not compatible with most browsers. When playing the video you get a 'no compatible streams' error message. Why is the HEVC version selected when it's not compatible? How can I fix this?

When playing with the speed settings a bit in different apps wich support all versions, I have found that Emby prefers the 8 Mbps AVC version over the 6 Mbps HEVC version when enough bandwith is available. I would expect the 6 Mbps HEVC version to not only have better quality than the 8 Mbps AVC version, but definitely be more efficient. Is the decision here purily based on bitrate? Or are there other factors in play here?

The ideal solution for me would be to have the 6 Mbps HEVC version selected by default when the device is compatible, and the 8 Mbps AVC version only when the device is not capable of playing HEVC. How can I achieve this? I can avoid the higher quality versions to be selected by setting the 'Internet streaming bitrate limit' to 15 Mbps, but I can't get a good automatic selection of the other versions because it 1) seems to ignore HEVC being compatible or not and 2) makes it's decision purily on bitrate and not codec efficiency.

[bakes82 167]

When you go to play a video, it does some magic with a mini speed test, based on those results and prob the results of the player you selected.  On my Shield I just set the player to max quality and it will play whatever the best available is.  The auto stuff, yeah no idea how it decides, ideally on setup it would be nice to be able to say I want this device to play xyz.  But its better than the plex way which for the longeset time was defaulted to like 4mbps, I think now they have an "auto" also.

[Luke 42090]

It depends on a combination of factors - the in-app quality setting, supported media by the device, any applicable server settings that may affect transcoding decisions. It will always prefer the version that can direct play, if possible based on those options.

[G4n0nD0rf 6]

48 minutes ago, Luke said:

It depends on a combination of factors - the in-app quality setting, supported media by the device, any applicable server settings that may affect transcoding decisions. It will always prefer the version that can direct play, if possible based on those options.

That is how I would expect it to work but there seem to be some problems with the selection algorithm, like selecting the hevc version in incompatible web browsers. Also the quality setting seems to be purily based on bitrate and does not take in account the codec efficienty.

Can you confirm this or is there something wrong with my setup?

[Luke 42090]

We'd have to go over an example in detail to answer that. Thanks.