mp4 Playback Quality

[mik_s]

Have you tried it on 13.0.1 yet as that should have fixed one bug that may have been causing it to transcode at a low quality.

If it is still doing it then could you post some more logs using v13.0.1.

What are you using to play this on?

[DHK]

@mik_s: Updated to 13.0.1 No change. This was done playing in web browser: Firefox on iMac-M1 macOS Ventura 13.1. Safari won't play any video, Chrome has the same degraded video as Firefox.
Thanks...

[mik_s]

Ah I missed you were playing in the browser. I think almost everything is transcoded to a standard format now for the webplayer but I don't know much about that.

Maybe there is something that can be improved with the transcoding command that is being used, or that the settings used were chosen as a balance between speed and quality.

I have nothing to compare this to but for reference the transcode command is

Code: Select all

Starting "/Applications/Universal Media Server.app/Contents/Resources/osx/ffmpeg" -y -loglevel info -ss 1026 -t 6.0 -sn -i "/Volumes/Video 2/Swing U/3 A Closer Listen/Brian Blade S20E13.mp4" -sn -dn -copyts -s:v 842x480 -c:v libx264 -keyint_min 25 -preset ultrafast -profile:v high -level 30 -pix_fmt yuv420p -c:a aac -ac 2 -ab 160000 -f mpegts -skip_estimate_duration_from_pts 1 -use_wallclock_as_timestamps 1 -movflags frag_keyframe /var/folders/0y/mnh4jdj548s21k24r40sxph00000gn/T/UMS-imac-m1/ffmpeghlsvideo_233_1672934620844

See if you can find what Plex uses.

At least I can confirm that those errors were not the cause as they are now gone.

[DHK]

@mik_s I was given commands to put in renderer.conf in this forum, but no one has ever told me where that is located...

[mik_s]

You can use CustomFFmpegOptions in your conf but I don't think this will be used for the web player any more.

If you want to try it on other devices then this is the instructions on how to use from the defaultrenderer.conf

Code: Select all

# Overrides the FFmpeg custom options in UMS for this renderer. Default is
# empty, which means the UMS settings will be used.
# All setting for output formats, codecs, bitrate e.g. can be used except video,
# audio and subs mapping (-map).
# Do not use it to override -vf; use OverrideFFmpegVideoFilter instead.
# Default: ""
CustomFFmpegOptions = 

but on those the no transcoding option will probably work so is not needed.

The renderer confs are in the renderer folder in the installation directory. For windows this is "C:\Program Files (x86)\Universal Media Server\renderers"

[DHK]

I thought I had replied, but I don't see it here... I have no other TV playback at home other than my Macs... Is there any way I can get a browser to direct stream without any processing?

[mik_s]

For the current web player everything is being converted to the same format so is guaranteed to be playable, and makes it easier for the Devs to focus on that one format instead of supporting loads across multiple devices and browsers. I don't know the technical details though but it is a trade off between speed and quality. Some types of video that has text like your screenshots may suffer.

If you want those to be streamed then you can try playing them in dedicated media players like VLC if you have no other renderers to play on as they will support most if not all formats.

[DHK]

VLC seems to be ok, how do I default UMS to play mp4 in VLC? Or can I have it send to QuickTime? Thanks.

[mik_s]

I don't understand your question.

VLC should play whatever file you want whether it is MP4, MKV, QT etc and these will be streamed unaltered instead of transcoded.

[DHK]

Sorry I wasn't clear. Of course I can play each file directly in VLC or Quicktime, but then I lose the wrapping of the files in UMS. How do I tell UMS to play an mp4 or mov file in VLC or Quicktime, rather than whatever it is doing?