[help] TS453Pro on-the-fly transcoding video stuttering

[JoePGM]

here is a quick demo about how stuttering on my NAS. The CPU usage during realtime transcoding stay around 50%, seems like the stuttering is caused by something else rather than bottlenecking in CPU power....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7j2WJ8T6KE

[dorko20]

Hi all,
sorry for late response,
here is the ticket reference: OZA-132-78812

Thank you Joe for the video you did - this is the problem I have too
I have to confess I didn't expect from this CPU miracles and I knew it won't be without problems to transcode the fullhd video in real time, but the problem is present even with smallest video resolution files, such as 640x272 etc. So not even HD
And I always use the "original size" option in the transcoding. When I want to transcode a video into some other resolution, e.g. 480p it gets even worse. Yes, there are some video files watchable, but not too much.
I think this is only question of better codecs support.

I did a few tests more and seems like there are some files better supported than the others, I found mp4 the best playable files so far. But most of my videos are .avi.
When I play some MP4 samples of 1080p and 720p, my CPU went up to 25% - I was shocked. Video file was quite watchable, really good in this case.
When I play some AVI samples of 640x272, my CPU went up to 80%. Video files were stuttering - it is like you are playing some game with 20fps - it is possible, but really not enjoyable.
When I play some MKV samples of 720x396, my CPU went up to 91% !!! - well it was too much for this CPU and video was stuttering. Most consuming processes: ffmpeg - 52%, gst_bin2: 36%.

Michal.

[Richdog]

I think it just comes down to these CPUs are still not powerful enough to do everything that is claimed without any issues. Most of my video files are MKV, and I don't think I will ever use transcoding so for me it's not an issue. What matter more to me is streaming large MKV files across my network to my Samsung TV's.

As far as transcoding goes, I think it will be a couple of hardware generations before this really works smoothly as intended.

[JoePGM]

Just a quick update:

After update to firmware 4.2, and updated the HybridStation and CodexPack to latest version, the real-time transcoding performance get improved alots. The transcoding performance and video smoothness is much more "watchable and acceptable" than 4.1.2. A highly recommend update for anyone who need a better transcoding performance.

The CPU usage will pump to over 90% all the time during transcoding progress

[understrecket]

I'm interested in trying out command line VLC server/daemon for transcoding (primarily SD MPEG2 streams in my case). Initiating the transcode of a stream/file from a third party app.
Any experiences from this?
I'm having trouble even getting it set up, not being part of QKPG anymore if I understand it correctly.

What would be the best/easiest way of achieving this?

Cheers
//Understrecket

[chaanbeard]

I bought a TS-563 from Amazon last week and have been playing with digital copies of my videos in mp4 format and had the same problem you described.

Last night i tried to get kodi for my NAS station and found it missing for my platform so tried Twonky instead.

I was amazed, as I was struggling with Plex which I installed on both my NAS and a Macbook Pro equipped with Quad core i7 and 16 GB of RAM and a fast 512 GB SSD.

The Mac version of Plex found my content on my Mac quickly but also displayed this stutter problem and its all on 1 GB ethernet with dedicated Cisco switches.

The TS version of plex could not find nothing on my NAS,asking me for directions to a file structure that I walked without finding any of my Multimedia directories or content so in desperation I loaded Twonky to see what the results were.

It was dramatic, not only did it find my content in a heartbeat, it also allowed me to choose either my Aquos or my new Apple TV as the streaming target and even more amazing played all of my content sans stutter.

So my conclusion is Plex is crap and noted that all my content switches to transcoding on the fly with Plex.

Not sure what its doing with Twonky but Plex is useless to me on the NAS due to the not finding my content (minor detail) and the stutter behavior makes it completely unusable in any event (major issue).

At first I thought it was the "light" config of the TS-563 but my powerful Macbook Pro 15" is not a light configuration machine and has the same issues with Plex.

My NAS has a 4 core AMD G series x64 CPU, 16 GB RAM, 1 x SSD for cache and 4 x NV000 3 TB Seagate drives in RAID 5 format.

I Tried all sorts of configs and even SSD cache for the video volume and was concerned when selecting my entire 108 GB drop box file structure on my Server and dumping it on the NAS when the transfer rate was 92 bytes/s.

I just moved my Microsoft ISO directory from my server to my NAS and it did those huge files at 107 MB/s so there is some other issue with a mass dump going on that overwhelms something that I still have to solve and I am only using one of the GB ports on my switch.

However, based on my observations for video stutter resolution try Twonky, its much better software by a long shot in my opinion.

I heard kodi is even better but is there a Kodi for the TS-563?

Any thoughts on the 92 mb/s transfer when selecting my drop box set would also be welcome (7000 odd files btw).

Good luck!

[Trexx]

The TS-563 doesn't have a GPU so no HDMI, hence no KODI which is for local viewing, not streaming.

HW assisted Transcoding (on applicable QNAP models) is available through the native QNAP applications such as KODI/HD Player, Video Station, etc.

Plex Media Server (PMS) does NOT support currently HW assisted transcoding and is 100% dependent on CPU horsepower. You can find more information regarding Plex trancoding on NAS's HERE

[chaanbeard]

My brochure on the TS-563 states two HDMI ports and a GPU, but alas on receipt of said platform it indeed has no HDMI capability at all. It also does not have the Intel 3000 and VGA port shown in my brochure as you state so now I understand the reason why Plex s*cks on my 563.

Problem solved with Twonky for me regardless, so now I have to try various clients on my iPad and Android kit to determine solution viability there as Qvideo s*cks.

in fact, compared with Synology Apps most QNAP apps s*ck.

Also the G series Quad core CPU is much better than a celeron, so the performance should be better, but is not in this case.

I have noted the performance getting much better today. I only set it up Sunday so maybe some background RAID stuff was going on..

Thanks for your comments...

[chaanbeard]

Mixed results with Twonky for Mobile folks. Works great on my Android with various UPnP clients but the Apple stuff is pretty horrendous.

Also noted that re m4v format that my Apple Macbook pros are fine, but for windows machines you need iTunes to play the thing.

Quicktime for Windows does not play m4v files on any of my Windows 10 machines....