Server Version#: 1.32.5.7349
I am playing around with the “Media Optimizer” since I have not set it up before. Perhaps I am not understanding how the Optimizer feature works, but my understanding is that all manual and automatic optimize processes should follow the “background transcoding x264 preset”. Well, I have that set to “veryslow” and the optimizer is most certainly not following that setting. After looking at the “optimzed” file info in MediaInfo, I suspected that the Optimizer was following the “Transcoder Quality” setting. I changed it from “Make my CPU hurt” to “Automatic” and now the quality is even worse.
I have a few customizations in the preferences.xml file including “TranscoderH264Preset=“medium”” so that all on-the-fly transcodes are MUCH higher quality than even the “Make my CPU hurt” option. I also see in there “TranscoderH264BackgroundPreset=“veryslow”” so that is correct. The "TranscoderQuality=“0"” matches the “Automatic” that I have currently selected. I was previously “3” for the “Make my CPU hurt” option.
Any idea why the Optimizer is following the “Transcoder Quality” setting instead of the “Background transcode x264 preset”? This holds true when I select a specific title to “optimize” and for when I have an optimize rule setup on a specific library to run automatically. I have restarted the docker multiple times after many of the changes though none have made the optimizer follow the “background transcode” setting.
EDIT:
I turned on debug and verbose logging. In the media server log I can see the command issued to start the “optimized” transcode and it does have the “preset:0 veryslow” flag in there, but then gets overridden by these specific settings (controlled by the “Transcode Quality” setting): “-x264opts:0 subme=1:me_range=4:rc_lookahead=10:me=hex:8x8dct=0:partitions=none”. Any idea how to prevent those from being issued and overriding the preset?
EDIT 2:
Turns out that this same behavior is occurring for normal transcodes as well. The “preset” parameter gets passed through to the encoder, but there are multiple flags that override many of the “preset” parameters.
