In pretty much every instance, I'm able to use the original stream (at home or away from home) so I don't do a lot of transcoding. But I was at a friend's house last night and didn't have the bandwidth for original, so we dropped it to 4 Mbps - and it would not run smoothly. I got home, changed my iPad to cellular (5G UW Network) and set quality to 4 Mbps - same thing. On the server settings, switched it to Software transcoding, and everything ran smoothly.
My server is a 2018 Mac Mini (i7) and I've used it as my Channels server for years.
Everything in my hardware transcoder probe looks ok. (See below)
But when I use the web browser with hardware transcoding turned on, this is what shows up in status:
Watching ch550 from Brian's Mac Studio (Transcoder Running at 9mbps: 4s @ 0.16x (8.64fps)): strength=100% quality=100% symbol=100% rate=17.8Mb/sec buf=0% drop=0%
Switching to software:
Watching ch550 from Brian's Mac Studio (Transcoder Running at 9mbps: 13s @ 1.03x (61.55fps)): strength=100% quality=100% symbol=100% rate=14.4Mb/sec buf=0% drop=0%
Thoughts?
Hardware Transcoder Probe
×Close
h264_videotoolbox
[Parsed_color_0 @ 0x7fdde3a05440] size:640x480 rate:25/1 duration:-1.000000 sar:1/1 Input #0, lavfi, from 'color=black:640x480': Duration: N/A, start: 0.000000, bitrate: N/A Stream #0:0: Video: rawvideo, 1 reference frame (I420 / 0x30323449), yuv420p, 640x480 [SAR 1:1 DAR 4:3], 25 tbr, 25 tbn Stream mapping: Stream #0:0 -> #0:0 (rawvideo (native) -> h264 (h264_videotoolbox)) Press [q] to stop, [?] for help [graph 0 input from stream 0:0 @ 0x7fdde3a0a540] w:640 h:480 pixfmt:yuv420p tb:1/25 fr:25/1 sar:1/1 Output #0, null, to '/dev/null': Metadata: encoder : Lavf59.16.100 Stream #0:0: Video: h264, 1 reference frame, yuv420p(progressive), 640x480 (0x0) [SAR 1:1 DAR 4:3], q=2-31, 200 kb/s, 25 fps, 25 tbn Metadata: encoder : Lavc59.18.100 h264_videotoolbox [h264_videotoolbox @ 0x7fdde3a08540] Color range not set for yuv420p. Using MPEG range. No more output streams to write to, finishing. frame= 3 fps=0.0 q=-0.0 Lsize=N/A time=00:00:00.12 bitrate=N/A speed=0.44x video:0kB audio:0kB subtitle:0kB other streams:0kB global headers:0kB muxing overhead: unknown Input file #0 (color=black:640x480): Input stream #0:0 (video): 4 packets read (1843200 bytes); 4 frames decoded; Total: 4 packets (1843200 bytes) demuxed Output file #0 (/dev/null): Output stream #0:0 (video): 3 frames encoded; 3 packets muxed (216 bytes); Total: 3 packets (216 bytes) muxed
success!
h264_videotoolbox+deint
[Parsed_color_0 @ 0x7fe044a04080] size:640x480 rate:25/1 duration:-1.000000 sar:1/1 Input #0, lavfi, from 'color=black:640x480': Duration: N/A, start: 0.000000, bitrate: N/A Stream #0:0: Video: rawvideo, 1 reference frame (I420 / 0x30323449), yuv420p, 640x480 [SAR 1:1 DAR 4:3], 25 tbr, 25 tbn Stream mapping: Stream #0:0 -> #0:0 (rawvideo (native) -> h264 (h264_videotoolbox)) Press [q] to stop, [?] for help [Parsed_deinterlace_metal_2 @ 0x7fe044a07280] Using Metal device: Intel(R) UHD Graphics 630 [graph 0 input from stream 0:0 @ 0x7fe044a08d80] w:640 h:480 pixfmt:yuv420p tb:1/25 fr:25/1 sar:1/1 [auto_scale_0 @ 0x7fe044a0aa40] w:iw h:ih flags:'' interl:0 [trim_in_0_0 @ 0x7fe044a09780] auto-inserting filter 'auto_scale_0' between the filter 'graph 0 input from stream 0:0' and the filter 'trim_in_0_0' [auto_scale_0 @ 0x7fe044a0aa40] w:640 h:480 fmt:yuv420p sar:1/1 -> w:640 h:480 fmt:nv12 sar:1/1 flags:0x0 Output #0, null, to '/dev/null': Metadata: encoder : Lavf59.16.100 Stream #0:0: Video: h264, 1 reference frame, videotoolbox_vld(tv, progressive), 640x480 (0x0) [SAR 1:1 DAR 4:3], q=2-31, 200 kb/s, 50 fps, 50 tbn Metadata: encoder : Lavc59.18.100 h264_videotoolbox No more output streams to write to, finishing. frame= 3 fps=0.0 q=-0.0 Lsize=N/A time=00:00:00.10 bitrate=N/A speed=0.297x video:0kB audio:0kB subtitle:0kB other streams:0kB global headers:0kB muxing overhead: unknown Input file #0 (color=black:640x480): Input stream #0:0 (video): 4 packets read (1843200 bytes); 4 frames decoded; Total: 4 packets (1843200 bytes) demuxed Output file #0 (/dev/null): Output stream #0:0 (video): 3 frames encoded; 3 packets muxed (216 bytes); Total: 3 packets (216 bytes) muxed
success!