Forcing transcoding

[pwhodges 2014]

To force transcoding we are regularly told to "lower the in-app quality setting", or to set "playback correction", which few clients seem to have available.

Last night I hit a situation in which this is very far from optimal.

I was trying to play a file encoded tightly in 1080p VP1, with a bit rate a little under 1Mbps.  It plays fine on my desktop, and the server is transcoding it for the browser at a good high frame-rate.

The file direct plays on both my iPad and my Android tablet (current betas).  However, on both it plays jerkily throughout, and there is a complex section of video which both of them pause and glitch in.  Neither client offers "playback correction", so the only way to force transcoding is to specify a very low quality - which is visually poor.  There is no need for this, because there is no bandwidth problem.  If I could force transcoding at a higher rate, then I'd be able to watch in decent quality.

As it is, I'm having to reencode the series to HEVC which direct plays fine on both devices, but takes more storage...

Paul

[Guest]

Have you tried to turn of hardware acceleration for both.

[pwhodges 2014]

I don't see that setting in either client...

Paul

[Carlo 4561]

2 hours ago, pwhodges said:

I was trying to play a file encoded tightly in 1080p VP1

What is VP1?

AV1 perhaps???

[Sammy 790]

Logs?

[pwhodges 2014]

1 hour ago, cayars said:

What is VP1?

AV1 perhaps???

Oops - brain fart...    Yes, AV1.

Paul

[pwhodges 2014]

56 minutes ago, Sammy said:

Logs?

Here are server and Android logs for an attempt to play this file with AV1 video.  I can't find how to get logs out of iOS.

I played the section of the file which causes the worst problem on Android, then on iOS.  Playback of the video was jerky from the start on both devices.  At about 0:50 the Android shows severe blockiness and pixellation (the iPad, which is more modern, just gets jumpier), and then at 1:05 or so the video hangs for several seconds a couple of times - on the Android the audio keeps playing with just one glitch, but on iOS the audio stops as well several times.

Both devices are direct playing; an HEVC re-encode plays perfectly on both; the AV1 plays perfectly in all my desktop players.

Paul

Playback of AV1 file on Android.log embyserver.txt

[Carlo 4561]

AV1 files are tough to decode in software if you don't have a dedicated HW decoder which is likely your issue.
How many AV1 files do you have?

Personally I avoid them like the plague and convert them to HEVC before adding to my libs.

[pwhodges 2014]

Not a lot, I think, so it's not a big issue for me.  I've lots of VP9, which I believe AV1 is based on, but I dare say the developments are what give the problem as VP9 plays fine.

The devices are not entirely pathetic.  The Android is a Huawei MediaPad M5 (a couple of years old now, but not superseded) and an iPod Gen8 (bottom end, but the latest of the line).  I suppose I could try to work out how to modify the device profiles so that AV1 doesn't get direct played...

Paul