Issue with HD using RPi4 and Chromecast

[robert97332]

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Folks,

I have an RPi4 which streams stuff to Chromecasts in a couple of rooms (one at a time, never both at the same time). It sometimes works really nicely on 1080 but usually stutters. It pretty uch always works well on lower res stuff but I have had a 720p one which it as awful on.

I’ve been reading around and reading that transcoding is a big issue for Pis. What is transcoding (I’m assuing it’s turning the file on the HDD into something the TV can render) and how do you know when the Pi is having to transcode? I’d’ve assumed that the Pi was simply streaing the video and the Chromecast doing the turning the raw file into video, but maybe not?

Is a Pi5 going to be better? Or another slightly higher power SBC? What I really like about the Pi is it’s super-low power consumption, I’d rather not go down an Intel route as I have seen recommended in various places.

Thanks!

[robert97332]

Just in case this helps anyone I think I got to the bottom of it all with the help of a friend who came round,

It seems like the older Chromecasts are set up for H264 and a lot of new stuff now is H265. So what, I think, was happenign was the Pi was trying to transcode 265 to 264 so the Chromecast could cope.

I did have a much newer Chromecast and tried that, which then worked fine. You can see he Pi’s now not breaking sweat and videos are rendered beautifully.