Administration
Transcoding dashboard
Watch every active stream live, see why each one is or isn't being transcoded, and step in if you need to.
Where it is#
Settings > Video activity, the third entry of the System section in the admin sidebar. It polls for updates every 5 seconds while the page is open; nothing to refresh by hand. Live TV viewers show up here too.
What each stream card shows#
One card per active playback session, with:
- Who and what: poster, title (and episode, for a show), username, and the device it's playing on, with the client app's version when the client reports one.
- Progress: position and duration, and a bar showing playback position (green) and, for an active transcode, how far ahead the encoder has gotten (red). A Live TV stream shows how long it has been watched instead.
- Stream, video and audio, each broken down independently: what the source is (container and bitrate, video format, audio language, codec and channels), and what's sent to the client instead: Direct Play, an audio copy, or a real transcode. HDR content that the client tone-maps itself is flagged separately from server-side tone-mapping.
- Why: whenever a line isn't Direct Play, a short reason in italics explains what forced the decision (an incompatible codec, a bitrate over the device's cap, a subtitle burned in, and so on). A Direct Play stream shows none.
- Hardware path: on a transcoded video line, which of CPU, QSV, VAAPI, NVENC, AMF or VideoToolbox (shown as "Apple VT") is doing the encoding. See Hardware acceleration for what each of those means.
Stepping in#
Three buttons at the bottom of each card, all sent to the playing client:
| Action | Effect |
|---|---|
| Pause / Resume | Toggles playback on that client. |
| Message | Sends a short text message that appears in the client's player (useful for "wrapping up in 5 minutes" without walking to the TV). |
| Stop | Ends the session after you confirm; the client's playback is interrupted immediately. |
See also#
- Streaming and transcoding for the full Direct Play, Direct Stream or Transcode decision this dashboard is showing you the result of.
- Hardware acceleration for the GPU paths shown on each card.
- Settings for the Streaming page that controls the cache budget and concurrency these sessions share.