I’m working on a server for a family member to access remotely. Transcoding testing has been a mixed bag so far, including lip-sync problems. I’m considering just setting up a separate family server where the videos are encoded specifically for remote streaming, to reduce the actual support required from me. The rules:
All devices can direct-play the video codec. (Translation: h.264, since some clients don’t support h.265).
Files will direct-play under Plex’s default settings. (Translation: 4mbps, which is good for my bandwidth, too)
If possible, 5.1 would be nice since they have a surround system.
Audio and video quality is “good enough” for the average person.
My thought process: Create files that look like this:
Video: H.264, two-pass encode, 3,800 kbps
Audio: HE-AAC, 5.1 audio, 160kbps total.
Subtitles: Disabled. (I could consider adding SRT’s though)
In testing, these direct-play perfectly inside of Plex’s 4 mbps threshold.
My questions:
Is this a reasonable move if I don’t want to rely on transcoding? Am I missing anything obvious?
Let’s say you encode 720p and 1080p at the same bit rate. Will 720p look better once zoomed to a 1080p screen than the 1080p encode would look? Has anyone tested this?
An audio problem: Some clients may want to transcode AAC 5.1 to AC3 5.1 for the receiver. Will that push the stream over the 4 mbps line? And if so, how much overhead should I leave?
I suppose the OP is trying to avoid any accidental server-side transcoding from users that go with the default remote streaming video quality/bitrate in their Plex client apps.
Of course you can change that… so it’s definitively no hard restrictions/thresholds.
Yep, this is correct! I’d like to know that when my family member plugs in a device, it will direct-play automatically without any manual configuration (and/or calls).
That’s assuming none of them will start clicking around in the settings on their own.
I see where you’re coming from… reminds me of my mom
In my experience, you cannot make it 100% water/bullet proof for every possible use case. Therefore I consider it a bit overkill to re-encode an entire library. Then again… I don’t know your family – Might be worth a shot. You should be able to create a transcoding queue in Handbrake and process all files with a preset (default or customized to your preferences).
This has been my exact viewpoint! Until I got the questions, and they were always transcoding problems. The good news is that this would be a secondary server, just for family. My private server would still keep the full-quality masters.
Bingo, that’s exactly my thought. I just want to dial in the presets before starting a queue, so I don’t have to re-encode later. Once it’s done, the maintenance would be really low. I think my main concern is what happens if AAC 5.1 transcodes to AC3, and whether that would bump the bit rate over 4 mbps.
