Hey cayers, just checking in, any luck? How big is the file?? I’m happy to help in any way I can.
I’m just looking to reformat all my videos, so Plex stops re-encoding them on every play.
Is the mdhiggins the same one as Cayars?
These days it mostly is.
In the beginning it was buggy so I gutted substantial portions of it to only use the conversion part. I also made a lot custom changes that found their way into higgins version.
I’m testing a freshly pulled down version of it right now to see what might still be different and offer fixes/adjustments to it. I’d like to just have everyone move over to using his scripts at this point as there is no reason to have two versions that are essentially the same for 95% of what they do.
Then all we need to do is post a working config which is a text file and everyone is in business!
That would be fantastic.
I have been an issue that drives me bananas.
Some files I have been pulling down have some wacky 2 track audio that my very old script converts to AAC LTP which doesn’t play. I wind up having to re-download and remux it in xmedia.
The second issue is h265 files in my script try to get transcoded into h264. Is there a way to just copy that over instead of transcoding?
I would also like a second script that does exactly what this script does but allow me to throw some h264 files in the process directory and have it transcode it over to h265.
I have the script setup in two separate folders so I can use two separate configs.
One is set to convert to H.264 and the other is to H.265.
So what I do now is only use the H.264 folder for stuff already in that format and use the H.265 for everything else which includes TS recordings with mpeg2video.
If my H.265 folder is “cought up” I copy over large H.264 files already present on my system to reconvert them and save me space.
@cayars Using your modified Script for Months now - works great.
But 1 Question:
I only need the conversion part.
Put into MP4 Container
Convert Video only if its noch h264 4.1
Add additional aac Track if there is no one in the File.
Optimize for Web (move ATOM)
Any Idea if I could do this also with Handbreak? So what presets would I have to choose?
Not possible.
These scripts are intelligent and look at the video before touching it to determine what should be done (or not).
Why switch if what you have works?
Thank you for the Quick response.
Wanted to use this Project
But only if it would have been easy to switch
So I will stay with your Scripts - or better switch to the “new” ones from mdhiggins?
Unless there is something wrong with current functionality just keep using what you have.
There really isn’t any known bugs that I’m aware with my version so…
I have only been making a new version if I add some new functionality or higgins has improved something I haven’t already.
What you can do however is replace the ffmpeg executable in the script folder from time to time. Backup the 3 there now and test after replacing. I’d do this for speed improvements and internal fixes in ffmpeg.
Can someone guide me a bit into the QTFS part of the Script?
Trying to rebuild the ffmpeg conversion Part in Powershell.
So ffmpeg encodes the File into mp4 - but what Command Line is used to move the atom to the start? Cant get it out of the Python Script
Thanks for all the wonderful posts in this thread.
Just wondering, I was playing around setting up Plex and some of the stuff mentioned in this forum post for the extended scanners and agents, then I came across info that the Plugins functionality and channels etc. were all being removed slowly and this got me thinking.
Will all of what I have done so far, using these extended plugins for scanner and agent and renaming all my files to match the format for those, be for nothing?
Will I be able to keep adding files to my library in the same way, using the same naming formats or should I remove the plugins now and go back to the default Plex setup?
Why would you want to try to rewrite it? I don’t know how much you have checked out the functionality of the scripts but it’s basing the conversion on the config you set plus dynamically changes all commands based on the probe of the media. No two command lines are going to be the same as you have no idea of what subs, audio tracks are present or what codecs are there to begin with.
But to answer your question, do your normal ffmpeg conversion and then run a 2nd pass using " -movflags faststart in ffmpeg. That’s the easiest way to do it.
A lot of the cool things we covered here are more or less “dead” now. It’s really a tragedy. I’d personally start working on setting things up NOW to not need plugins. This way you can take a bit of time to sort things out and get your libraries functional before a version drops that forces this on you. Better to do it on your timeline if possible.
With that said, I think most people who follow me know I use Emby almost exclusively these days. I’ve had enough input to get Emby running out of the box so that you/I don’t need these work-arounds. Emby has full support for plugins of this nature with source code available so there aren’t going anywhere. Plugins in Emby are for mainly additional server support and not for content per say, so they don’t have “app store” issues to deal with or piracy issues that subvert store policies.
The only library types I find still a bit lacking in Emby is libraries setup for sports. I for example have all NFL games going back to 2012. Sports are notorious hard to get meta-data for. One of these days I may write a plugin to use https://www.thesportsdb.com/ but I’d really only need this for older content. Anything newly recorded in Emby isn’t a problem because I can have Emby save the EPG data to NFO files at the time of recording. As long as I keep the NFO file in the same folder as the media I can move the files to any library and get the full meta-data which is substantially better then in Plex which can’t do this.
Not sure how much help that is,
Carlo
Thanks for the fast reply, pretty much confirming what I had thought.
I might halt what I am doing for now and give Emby a look over first before I start any more work on Plex and will certainly be cancelling my PlexPass subscription.
Now just to comb through and find some of the posts around here to help me convert all of my video files to a good format and save some space as I have far too many that are needlessly over 1-2GB per movie and space is running short.
Over the years I have haphazardly ripped my movie collection from DVD’s in all manner of formats, resolutions and so on, so they are all over the place in terms of starting point, might just have to start from scratch with some good software/settings and rip them all again the right way from the beginning, to get the smallest size without losing too much quality.
Thanks again for the response.
Just use the scripts talked about here in this thread! Will take pretty much any video format and convert it to a format that direct plays.
Yeah, I’m looking into those at the moment 
Think I may end up staying with Plex for now, despite the lack of plugins, I have read that Emby requires the premium version for a lot of the useful features and that they don’t even have a PS4 native app, only web browser access.
A big deal breaker for me as that is my main media device for now.
I’d agree with that about premiere. I’d say the same for Plex as well.
I wouldn’t consider using either software without the “paid” version but that’s just me.
Yes it uses HTML5 for the PS4 but don’t knock it until you’ve tried it. It’s quite nice and fully featured. HTML5 is quite powerful when done right. They could wrap the HTML5 in an app like lots of mobile apps and other PS4 apps and you would never know the difference. It’s a really nice app framework and I wish this could be rolled out to other platforms such as Roku as it’s superior.
But with that said, PS4 isn’t a great media player IMHO regardless of the software you run on it. Same with Xbox. LOL
Agreed, PS4 is also a power hungry device compared with more light weight players.
For now though it is all I have and I’m not looking to buy new equipment until I get a good working media server that I plan to keep using for years, same with paying for premium versions, waiting until I get the right stuff before I commit and then I would just buy the lifetime option.
I think the main issue with Emby in PS4 would be needing to load the browser and go to a page rather than just clicking an icon and being directly into a full screen app like with Netflix etc. I could put up with it myself, but it has to meet with the WAF lol.
Personally I don’t mind jumping through a few hoops, having tons of tech with cables everywhere and multiple complex menus and anything needed to get something working, but other people using it would prefer clean simplistic solutions that work first time every time.
Seems to be working great using the scripts from this thread I have shaved 1/4-1/2 of the file size from one of my movies while retaining the quality it originally had.
I need to read more into how to use this stuff though and see if there is a way with running the manual.py to have it run on all the files in the folder (except the ones already processed) and not just one specific file I name in the command, or it may take me a lot longer to get done lol. I see it does directories
I have had a look around with Plex and it seems I can do pretty much the same layout for my educational videos as I had when using the extended agents etc.
Only problems seem to be, my folders had to be renamed to Season 01 etc. and not contain the section name they had previously, to give the season a name doesn’t seem possible, same with the episodes/files themselves, they are now named with dates of the day I copied the files there etc.
So, if there is no way to get a good structure/naming system in Plex without these plugins I may have to move.
How is Emby with stuff like that?
Can I easily do the following structure and have poster graphics and thumbnail graphics for each course, section and episode with more info written on them and the various names of sections and lessons showing up, or is it like Plex where it shows only Season 01 and some episode date or something?
Course Name/
/01 - Course section name
/S001E01 - Lesson 01 name here
/S001E02 - Lesson 02 name here
/02 - Course section name
/S002E01 - Lesson 01 name here
/S002E02 - Lesson 02 name here
I may just have to have a play around with Emby and see what can be done.
