Transcoding on serverside is always a bad experience for me, because my server is slow and multiple transcodes at the same time are impossible.
Transcoding on on the Client like with Infuse is nice, but it bring’s the disadvantage of an own player which makes the UI inconstancy and is a lot of work for the plex developers.
I want to ask if it would be possible of the Apple TV client cloud transcode local, but use still the original player.
Basically the Apple TV Plex client would act like a local transcoding server which streams the video from the Plex Media Server. After transcoding the Apple TV would stream the video file to the native Apple TV Player.
Plex Media Server ------- Streams original video (eg a mkv file with bitmap subtitles) —> Apple TV (transcodes the mkv file to mp4 and burns in the subtitles) ---- Stream the transcoded video —> Apple TV original player shows the transcoded video
step 1) decode the whatever format (plex new bit of software to be written)
step 2) encode to a ATV compatible stream (plex new bit of software to be written)
step 3) decode in the ATV player.
there is no point, you’d just stop at step 1 and display that output.
infuse doesnt transcode, it just decodes and displays (aka it does Step 1 + a wee bit)
Infuse doesn’t do any transcoding, they decode and display using their own player just like Channels, MrMC, VLC, etc etc. Their UI is that way because they want it to be that way, and the UI has no bearing on using their own player.
They use their own player because they can decode most videos since the CPU is pretty powerful (either hardware with VideoToolbox or AVFoundation for H264 or H265 or software for thinks like VC1 or MPEG2). The only reason you would want to be able to transcode would if you wanted the Apple TV to be a Plex Server, and that won’t happen with the way tvOS works right now.
