I'd like to see higher quality transcoding for lower bit-rates if there is enough CPU headroom.
Alternatively, I'd like the transcoding "profiles" to be customizable, so those with well endowed servers can tweak their encodes.
That would be nice..
Also if we could get the server to output a Zoomed or Scaled resolution for lower quality videos :)
I got one that's MPG4 sized originally at 576x432 and when played on a large screen it's not scaled and looks bad :(
I posted this request a couple of weeks ago. Anyway, the reason i came to the forums today was to actually find a way to thank the plex development team for implementing this very feature!
I use mainly Roku Clients (i gave my GF, mom and sister one) and the quality at high bitrate has always been OK, which is great for LAN.
However, when the client is used over the internet the low bitrate streams looked really bad. (a 4mpbs 720p stream looked worse than a 2mb netflix stream, by a huge margin)
However... with the new server and the "plextest" channel using the "experimental encoder" i have to say, the problem is GONE.
The low bitrate streams now look amazing! Hell, even the <1 mbit stream looks acceptable now.
I had suggested in my previous post that they give us access to profiles myself, and more control over the bitrate and resolution combos that can be used. Like for example: having more control over the bitrate/resolution combos. There's really no reason why we shouldn't be able to have 1080p streams with much lower bitrate than 8mbits, with the new encoder i don't see any reason why we couldn't have 1080p streams with bitrate as low as 2-3 mbits (i've made some pretty impressive looking 1080p encodes with as little as 1.5mbits if the source is low motion)
So, to the plexteam:
THANKS, and now please give us the option to run any resolution we want at any bitrate we want. Thanks again!
I would at least like some additional steps at lower bandwidths... 320, 512, 720, 1m, 1.25, 1.5, 1.75, 2. I have been place where I'm limited to 1.44 or 1.5 and had to step down to 720. You can see some nice quality differences in 125k/256k steps at those low bandwidths.
I posted this request a couple of weeks ago.
Sorry, must have missed that thread when I searched.
Anyway, the reason i came to the forums today was to actually find a way to thank the plex development team for implementing this very feature!
Yes, the latest release / New transcoder does help quality of the lower bit rates dramatically, but I'd still like the ability to tweak them and increase the quality further.
For example, it appears that deblock may be turned off for decoding of AVC source streams during transcode (not positive on this, but it's a common thing to do to increase performance at the cost of quality), it would be nice to tweak this -- especially on higher bit rate streams.
2021 clean-up: implemented
