Howto play correctly my movies from my NAS ?

[Niklos]

Hello everyone,

 

First of all, I was not sure where to put this thread so, feel free to move it somewhere else if needing.

 

I am using a Synology NAS DS1819+ to store all of my movies (mostly 4k H.265). I installed an emby server in a docker container. Then I installed the Emby app on my TV.

I wanted to do such a "streaming" stuff for years, now it's finally done ! Well, almost... Sometimes, I play some movies that don't have the right codecs on them. So Emby is transcoding them before streaming them to the TV... And... well, my NAS is not powerfull enough to do this on the fly.

 

So, I am searching for the best option to be able to play all my movies without any problem like those. 

 

Here are the solution I thought about :

 - Transcoding the movies prior playing it... It takes times and, so far, I have not find any soft that can do it properly (or at least I don't konw how to do it correctly with any soft)

 - Buy a new NAS with hardware 4k transcoding. This could work unfortunatly, I don't know if I can trust Synology about their NAS being able to transcode this on the fly. And, it is kind of expensive... So if it does not work...

 - Buy a streamer such as an NVidia Shield... Unfortunatly, that mean that I will yet another stuff... And I bought my TV to get rid of everything else around it (BD player, computer etc...). So, that would be kind of a step back.

 

I like the idea of buying a new NAS... It would be very expensive (around 1k€) but it would also be a good way to backup all of my medias instead of only my personnal photos and videos. But, well, I don't really want to spend that much money for something if I dont REALLY need it.

 

Any idea on how I could this properly ?

 

nb : my TV is an LG 55OLEDC9.

I tryed to use PLEX but, same thing...

My NAS has only 4gb of ram and my emby docker container has 2gb but it seams not to use all of it.

 

Thanks !

[AbsoluteFool]

3 minutes ago, Niklos said:

Hello everyone,

 

First of all, I was not sure where to put this thread so, feel free to move it somewhere else if needing.

 

I am using a Synology NAS DS1819+ to store all of my movies (mostly 4k H.265). I installed an emby server in a docker container. Then I installed the Emby app on my TV.

I wanted to do such a "streaming" stuff for years, now it's finally done ! Well, almost... Sometimes, I play some movies that don't have the right codecs on them. So Emby is transcoding them before streaming them to the TV... And... well, my NAS is not powerfull enough to do this on the fly.

 

So, I am searching for the best option to be able to play all my movies without any problem like those. 

 

Here are the solution I thought about :

 - Transcoding the movies prior playing it... It takes times and, so far, I have not find any soft that can do it properly (or at least I don't konw how to do it correctly with any soft)

 - Buy a new NAS with hardware 4k transcoding. This could work unfortunatly, I don't know if I can trust Synology about their NAS being able to transcode this on the fly. And, it is kind of expensive... So if it does not work...

 - Buy a streamer such as an NVidia Shield... Unfortunatly, that mean that I will yet another stuff... And I bought my TV to get rid of everything else around it (BD player, computer etc...). So, that would be kind of a step back.

 

I like the idea of buying a new NAS... It would be very expensive (around 1k€) but it would also be a good way to backup all of my medias instead of only my personnal photos and videos. But, well, I don't really want to spend that much money for something if I dont REALLY need it.

 

Any idea on how I could this properly ?

 

nb : my TV is an LG 55OLEDC9.

I tryed to use PLEX but, same thing...

My NAS has only 4gb of ram and my emby docker container has 2gb but it seams not to use all of it.

 

Thanks !

Use HandBrake or FFmpeg and transcode your video files to a supported format..

[Dedayog]

6 minutes ago, Niklos said:

Hello everyone,

 

First of all, I was not sure where to put this thread so, feel free to move it somewhere else if needing.

 

...

Interesting, not that I have an answer but I am curious what formats won't work with Plex since mine hasn't encountered an issue yet.

[Niklos]

Well, for PLEX, it is actually not "the same thing". That was not true. Actually I can't managed to get PLEX workingat all for some reason...

[Niklos]

5 minutes ago, AbsoluteFool said:

Use HandBrake or FFmpeg and transcode your video files to a supported format.

OK thanks, I will look at those 2.

[Dedayog]

1 minute ago, Niklos said:

Well, for PLEX, it is actually not "the same thing". That was not true. Actually I can't managed to get PLEX workingat all for some reason...

Okay, that changes things... slightly

 

What are the specs of your NAS?  My Plex server is in my sig, might be component issue?

[Niklos]

1 minute ago, jstudrawa said:

might be component issue?

Maybe.

My NAS is a Synology DS1819+ which has an Intel Atom C3538 with 4 Gb of ram

[Dedayog]

Just now, Niklos said:

Maybe.

My NAS is a Synology DS1819+ which has an Intel Atom C3538 with 4 Gb of ram

Not sure if that CPU can transcode properly?

 

Someone asked this on Reddit...

 

 

[Niklos]

Oh it definitly does NOT supports hardware transcoding. I know that. That's why I thought about solution n°2 (buy a new NAS that does have HW transcoding)

[Dedayog]

Just now, Niklos said:

Oh it definitly does NOT supports hardware transcoding. I know that. That's why I thought about solution n°2 (buy a new NAS that does have HW transcoding)

If you have a Microcenter near you, I'd just build a 2nd box and run W10 and be done.  The Ryzen 2600X is $99 (less $20 with bundle), full machine would cost you less than $300?

 

Not sure how much a new NAS would run.

[Niklos]

Well, I live in France so... We don't have Microcenter. Anyways. A new NAS that does hardware transcode is pretty much 500€. So it is a bit more than a computer but also would be much more convinient to me.

[Alex Atkin UK]

I've found what needs least transcoding is nVidia ShieldTV as a client, but that's with Plex as I had issues with Emby.

 

That said I do have a very powerful NAS so I've never really noticed what kind of resources it needs, but generally everything direct plays with no transcoding at all.

[jj9987]

You can try and see, why Emby is transcoding if you turn on "Stats for nerds".

 

I'm gonna try and offer a cheaper alternative, but I can not guarantee I am correct from the top of my heart.

 

Can you enable DLNA on your NAS and use your TV (maybe with Kodi..?) to browse the files and then try play directly?

[Niklos]

On 2/26/2020 at 4:35 PM, jj9987 said:

You can try and see, why Emby is transcoding if you turn on "Stats for nerds".

I tried to and it's telling me it need to transcode audio (from 6.1 ch to 2.0ch) and video (H.265 to H.264)... I don't understand why it wants to transcode to H.264 while some movies in H.265 are playing without any transcoding...

 

On 2/26/2020 at 4:35 PM, jj9987 said:

Can you enable DLNA on your NAS and use your TV (maybe with Kodi..?) to browse the files and then try play directly?

 

Yes, I can, but I don't want to... It does not look good at all !

[Mihle]

If it transcodes some h265 but not others when streaming to the same device, maybe it's because the bitrate is different? Some devices have a max bitrate they can receive no matter what codec it is. And maybe transcoding to h264 is just the standard option in some way.

 

Or it's just doing it because audio but I don't know...

[Niklos]

OK, I am going to try to find some logs about why it transcodes it to h264

[Niklos]

So, here is what I found : 

The player is telling me :

 

"Video codec not supported"

"Audio codec not supported" (it is transcoding to H265 to H264 and DTS 6.1ch to 2.0 MP3 according to the logs attached.)

So it seams like the TV does not support DTS 6.1ch for some reason. (as I know for sure it supports H.265)

 

logs.zip

[Mihle]

1 hour ago, Niklos said:

So, here is what I found : 

The player is telling me :

 

"Video codec not supported"

"Audio codec not supported" (it is transcoding to H265 to H264 and DTS 6.1ch to 2.0 MP3 according to the logs attached.)

So it seams like the TV does not support DTS 6.1ch for some reason. (as I know for sure it supports H.265)

Isn't it possible to transcode audio without touching the video?

 

A question to everyone and not OP.

[Alex Atkin UK]

3 hours ago, Mihle said:

Isn't it possible to transcode audio without touching the video?

 

A question to everyone and not OP.

Yes, its clearly having an issue with the video codec (likely bitrate as mentioned) too.

This is why I ended up using an NVIDIA ShieldTV, its the only device I've found that NEVER has needed transcoding.  Every TV and other media device I've used has been hit and miss.

[Donut417]

On 2/26/2020 at 9:06 AM, Niklos said:

ell, my NAS is not powerfull enough to do this on the fly.

The 4K thread for Plex has some advice here. You DONT transcode 4K content. Theres the advice. At least not on the fly. What you need to do is use like someone suggested above Handbreak and get that content in to a format your streaming devices understand. The fact is 4K transcoding requires a lot of power and NAS's in general have very low performing hardware. If you absolutly need to transcode 4K content then your going to need to build a transcode box with some nice hardware. Transcoding is the reason I choose to run a Plex transcode box and use a NAS for the media storage. 

[Niklos]

I tried to install Emby on my PC and... The video is still lagging while being transcode by the 3800X .

So, here is the solution I am going to stick to : transcode my movies with handbrake or something so it can be played by Emby without having the NAS transcoding. (I still need to find how to do this as my first trys are not successfull).

While I am trying to find the good solution, I'll play those video directly from VLC on the computer and I'll use a 30 feet long HDMI cable to connect the computer to the TV.

So it costs me only 21€ for that cable and I am pretty sure it is gonna work.