Quality selection confusing, DTS, ...

[trinected 7]

Hi together,

After some annoying months with jellyfin, I tried the emby premium. It looks like there's still no real 4K support, or do I miss anything?

Have a movie in 4K HDR10 (Bitrate 71,4 Mbps)

Quality-Selection	result
4K - 60 Mbps	streams the video in 1080p instead of 4K
Auto	(labels 1080p - 6 Mbps) streams the video in 720p instead of 1080p
4K - 160 Mbits	crashes the complete device => television (Philipps 65OLED903/12) and fire-tv 4k shut down instantly or freeze devices. Shouldn't it just direct stream?
4K - 100 Mbits	direct streams the movie, everything is cool
switching the quality in a 4K movie	can freeze the app

Is there any mismatch in the selections?

Additionally, how is "Auto" calculated? It is always too low, no matter which device (Television, fire-tv, computer, ...). I'm behind 400Mbps internet connection.

Is there anything I'm missing to configure?

Background:
Amd 3600, enough power to de-/encode 4K
64 GB Ram
Nvme storage
emby is running within docker

Thank you for any help.

Edited July 7, 2021 by trinected
title

[Abobader 3464]

Hello trinected,

** This is an auto reply **

Please wait for someone from staff support or our members to reply to you.

It's recommended to provide more info, as it explain in this thread:

Thank you.

Emby Team

[rbjtech 5284]

emby has full 4K support - the issue is your end user device is simply not capable of playing a 4K remux (original high bandwidth UHD).

There are a few devices that can handle the bitrate and HD Audio via Ethernet - the Nvidia Shield Pro being the recommended device.

 

Edited July 6, 2021 by rbjtech

[Carlo 4561]

Tagging along on @rbjtech's answer.

If you don't have a device that can direct play the 4K HDR media or you need to transcode it down to something smaller for a remote client you would want to enable Tone Mapping in Emby Transcoding menu down at the bottom of the setting screen.

[trinected 7]

Hmmm. Looks like there is a misunderstanding. All tested devices are supporting 4K.

Please see my notes on initial posting:
"4K - 160 Mbits" crashes the complete device => television (Philipps 65OLED903/12) and fire-tv 4k shut down instantly or freeze devices. Shouldn't it just direct stream?
"4K - 100 Mbits" direct streams the movie  [edit]: which works

Additionally, everything works great with jellyfin at 4K 

And why I get 720p when setting Auto (which results in label of "1080p 6mbps")?
And why is "auto" far away from real environment?
 

[Carlo 4561]

Hi, not sure why the device crashed on 4K -160 setting. We likely need to investigate this further looking at some logs to see if we can discover why that crashed but 100 didn't.
Likely it to high a bitrate for the client but you would think it would happen with both the 100 and 160 setting.

That setting of 1080-6 is just a rough guide. Typically with transcoded 1080 material it would have stayed 1080 but with 4K media you have many more pixels and will need more bitrate to hold the quality.  The server sees the 6Mb and knows it can't produce a good 1080-6 version so instead creates a 720-6Mb version to hold the quality for the given resolution.

That setting as a whole is more about the bandwidth limit then the resolution.

Auto by default tries to use a low bandwidth setting most of the time if it can't direct play. IMHO this could use a bit of love to better adjust so for now I'd say you are best off tweaking this setting once for each client to get the bandwidth usage that fits the environment.

Hope that helps.

[rbjtech 5284]

Hi,

Just because 'it works' does not mean it is supposed to or will be reliable .. 

From the link below - the FireTV Stick 4K has a supported bandwidth of 35Mbit/sec - you are trying to use 70Mbits+

H.265 (HEVC). Hardware accelerated up to 3840x2160p (4K) @ 60fps, 35 Mbps, Main 10 Profile Level 5.1, Color space 8-bit and 10-bit input with HDR10, HDR10+, and HLG.

https://developer.amazon.com/docs/fire-tv/device-specifications-fire-tv-streaming-media-player.html?v=ftvstick4k

Emby will read the device and try and figure out how best to play this - based on the device, available bandwidth (wifi/ethernet etc).  

If you decide to force this by removing Auto - then that is fine and you may be able to play it, but the peak bandwidth (lots of screen action) will hit 70Mbit/sec and are bound to kill the FireTV stick at some point.  If it worked all the way though, I would be surprised.

I hope this makes a bit more sense ?

 

 

[trinected 7]

4 minutes ago, cayars said:

Hi, not sure why the device crashed on 4K -160 setting. We likely need to investigate this further looking at some logs to see if we can discover why that crashed but 100 didn't.
Likely it to high a bitrate for the client but you would think it would happen with both the 100 and 160 setting.

That setting of 1080-6 is just a rough guide. Typically with transcoded 1080 material it would have stayed 1080 but with 4K media you have many more pixels and will need more bitrate to hold the quality.  The server sees the 6Mb and knows it can't produce a good 1080-6 version so instead creates a 720-6Mb version to hold the quality for the given resolution.

That setting as a whole is more about the bandwidth limit then the resolution.

Ahhh, thank you! This makes it much more clearer!
 

4 minutes ago, cayars said:

Auto by default tries to use a low bandwidth setting most of the time if it can't direct play. IMHO this could use a bit of love to better adjust so for now I'd say you are best off tweaking this setting once for each client to get the bandwidth usage that fits the environment.

So, there is no automatically connection speed check in background?

 

4 minutes ago, rbjtech said:

H.265 (HEVC). Hardware accelerated up to 3840x2160p (4K) @ 60fps, 35 Mbps, Main 10 Profile Level 5.1, Color space 8-bit and 10-bit input with HDR10, HDR10+, and HLG.

Damn! Didn't notice it! Many Thanks! This explains crashing the fireTv. But not the same crash on "Philipps 65OLED903/12". Can't find the maximum support. But jellyfin casts the movie without any problem on that device.

[rbjtech 5284]

Not sure on the TV - it looks to be a high end Android TV.   Is there a 120Mbit/sec setting ? - as tbh, that is more than enough for even the highest bitrate 4K Remux's.

https://www.displayspecifications.com/en/model/6a2f145c

The only real limitation you are likely to hit is DV (Dolby Vision) profiles - as the 'built in' Android for TV's does not support the Blu-Ray disk standard.

[trinected 7]

Will start clean test on the television this evening and try to come back with logs if necessary.

And I'll set the fireTV to 30-40mbps.

Thank you all!

[trinected 7]

Just tested it on television. Having crashes again. i activated the debug and sent them after one more crash: around 12:15 utc-5, user: koenigs.

Just got the message the tv has an update. But maybe you could check the log? 

Thank you guys! 

Edited July 6, 2021 by trinected
Correct user

[trinected 7]

I'm back after update. Device is not craahing, but the app reproducable. Playing on jellyfin also direct stream everything is fine

Edited July 6, 2021 by trinected

[trinected 7]

It looks like that I've got the main issue noted by @rbjtech.
It's the damn DTS! It always shows "software decode" in info. Is this mean that the TV is converting it - or the app?  It looks like the TV cannot handle it? Btw.. jellyfin plays it, but stocks every several minutes. So no really better support on that side.

Is there any setting I can trigger that movies with DTS-Sound (maybe above one specific bitrate) always be transcoded?

Edited July 6, 2021 by trinected

[rbjtech 5284]

lets wait for @ebr to look at the app log - but if your system is showing software decode for a DTS track, then it should be converting that DTS track on the fly to something your TV can play - likely AC3/Dolby Digital.  Unfortunately your TV does not support DTS directly, so needs to transcode the AUDIO only, but this should not tax your system at all (vs a Video Transcode).

 

[Happy2Play 9780]

Not entirely true since HEVC and HLS do not play well together on most devices, if audio need converting it will more then likely require a full transcode.  

[rbjtech 5284]

Thanks Happy, yes I forgot about that anomaly - I'm spoilt as all my devices play DTS directly or I have inserted an AAC track to make them compatible .. 

If it were me, personally I would just insert an AC3 track and make it default (offline) and play that instead because any video transcoding is going to reduce quality, lose HDR, need tonemapping etc 

Edited July 7, 2021 by rbjtech

[trinected 7]

I don't know any the few viewers to be able to play DTS so I'm really thinking to convert all dts audio tracks and keep video track. Looks like, this works fine with the included converter in emby. 

[trinected 7]

Solution for summary relating DTS: convert all to

aac, mp3, ac3

OR use a capable device

Correct? 

 

Edited July 7, 2021 by trinected

[rbjtech 5284]

Yes - but having never used the emby converter, I'm not 100% on it's usage.  I presume 'keep original quality for hevc video' will simply copy the contents as is (good) but I didn't see an 'AC3' audio option - only AAC - which I presume is 5.1 ?

Worth a try - and see what happens - just don't opt to replace the original file - just yet..  

 

[trinected 7]

I'm terrible to quote by heart.... "ac3/aac/mp3" should be "aac, mp3, ac3". 
You can select "aac", which is selected on default, "mp3", "aac, mp3" and "aac, mp3, ac3".

This checks if there is a track by language in one of these formats and keeps it. Otherwise, it will convert to "aac". Looks really great and is really fast.
The video stays the original, just the audio changed. AAC is 320kbit/s at 5.1 which is really enough (for me) xD

No matter how annoying the entry was for me, I will order lifetime premium this evening. Thank you all for enlightening and teaching me!
Hints are always welcome. Maybe anyone can see any inconsistencies in the sent logs.

[ebr 16184]

19 hours ago, trinected said:

I'm back after update. Device is not craahing, but the app reproducable.

Hi.  What does "the app reproduceable" mean?  In the log you sent, the entire device crashed so we don't really see much.

There is a setting in the app playback settings to convert unsupported audio to DD on the server.

[trinected 7]

3 minutes ago, ebr said:

What does "the app reproduceable" mean?  In the log you sent, the entire device crashed so we don't really see much.

Hi @ebr,
the device doesn't crash while the debug was enabled  just the app has restarted/crashed. "the app reproducable" means that I can reproduce crashing the app with this format all the time.

5 minutes ago, ebr said:

There is a setting in the app playback settings to convert unsupported audio to DD on the server.

I'll have a look at it this evening again. Didn't find such setting last days

Thank you for checking!

[Luke 42079]

@trinected has this helped?

[trinected 7]

On 7/18/2021 at 8:09 AM, Luke said:

@trinected has this helped?

Ah, damn! Missed answering. Yes, found the setting and they work good

Thank you.

[Luke 42079]

Thanks for the feedback.