Rasplex that doesn't cause transcoding?

Dev Community Apps & Creations
1

I’ve installed rasplex on a spare Pi B+ and it can play some movies, but others are transcoded (Bluray rips to mkv).

Will a pi-3 be able to play all movies without causing the server to transcode?

Here is a movie that transcodes (copied from pms -> media info):

Media
Video Resolution 1080p
Duration 2:12:39
Bitrate 4856 kbps
Width 1920
Height 1088
Aspect Ratio 1.78
Container MKV
Video Frame Rate 24p
Video Profile high

Part
Duration 2:12:39
File American_Sniper.mkv
Size 4.50 GB
Container MKV
Video Profile high

Codec H264
Bitrate 4216 kbps
Language English
Anamorphic 0
Bit Depth 8
Chroma Subsampling 4:2:0
Frame Rate 23.976 fps
Height 1088
Level 5.0
Pixel Aspect Ratio 138:137
Profile high
Ref Frames 5
Scan Type progressive
Width 1920
Codec AC3
Channels 5.1
Bitrate 640 kbps
Language English
Audio Channel Layout 5.1(side)
Sampling Rate 48000 Hz
Title Surround 5.1

2

Short answer: Yes.

Long answer: Yes, assuming your settings are all correct (standard setup will do it) and there are no strange anomalies anywhere within your network. I have two 3’s and they’ll both do a HD Blu-ray with full DTS-HD Master Audio at the same time, streaming from a server salvaged from an old computer that was build in 2009!

3

Additionally, most of my movies are quite large in file size, some being up to 20gb (LOTR trilogy - each film) with both DTS-HD MA or Dolby TrueHD (disc dependant) and AC3 audio for compatibility. The Pi3 makes light work of them.

4

Rasplex hardly ever transcodes, except for H265/HEVC encoding. Whether it runs in a Pi B+ or a Pi3 shouldn’t make any difference.

5

Transcoding occurs on all of my 1080p mkv movies with width 1920 height 1088.

6

@jxb1234 said:
Transcoding occurs on all of my 1080p mkv movies with width 1920 height 1088.

The problem is your H264 level at 5, RPi only supports up to 4.1 so PMS has to transcode

7

Ok, does the Rpi3 support L5 ?

8

@jxb1234 said:
Ok, does the Rpi3 support L5 ?

no, just up to 4.1