Since almost all players play mp4, m4v properly I think it would be great and would seriously cut down on the transcoding if Plex Server could be configured to automatically transcode and convert the file upon detection and delete the original.
So if I drop a mkv file into a directory that is in my plex server’s monitoring instead of just adding the meta-data it would also go ahead and convert it to m4v. (and if you want have an option to convert them all to mkv too)
In the process we should be able to setup options reguardless of file format:
Video:
H264 copy Yes/no (this will make it very fast in most cases!)
On Transcode Required:
1080p Bitrate: Keep Same - Specify kbps (keep same would result in a stream copy instead of a transcode if the source was h264 (most are) thus making this a super fast process.
720p Bitrate: (same settings)
480p Bitrate: (same settings)
Force Transcode to Resolution (or lower): 1080p/720p/480p
Audio:
Keep Dolby TrueHD if Exists yes/no
Keep DTS Master if exists yes/no
Keep DTS if exists yes/no
Create/copy AC3 yes/no (this would either copy the stream if it existed or make the AC3 track from one of the above. If there wasn’t, it would fall back to AC3 2.0 with some other format)
Create/Copy AAC yes/no (work the same as AC3)
Create/Copy MP3 yes/no (same)
Then checkboxes for languages you want to keep (so it will drop the ones you don’t want)
Subtitles
Again checkboxes by languages
And control if you want forced only or not.
And then an option to tell it to delete the source file (and it would keep trying this for a long while in the background until successful)
Obviously if multiple audio tracks were selected it would make an .m4v file instead of an mp4.
By doing this, in most cases players would be able to direct play the files without conversion (i.e. iOS, Windows 8, amoung others). Worst case scenario you’d be doing the same transcoding you’d have to do anyhow. But if you play the file more than once, you’ve saved processing and thus power, and obviously this can be done on a background thread instead of realtime thus saving more and making the server stay responsive even more.
I respect the transcoding effort that got Plex to where it is, it’s fantastic. But I think there is a better way now that h264 is the defacto format. A stream copy of video and audio will take seconds and save a ton of effort later and make the clients way more responsive because of doing direct play.
