I’m trying to rip VHS home movies to a format that I can direct play on the Roku Ultra LT. I capture lossless with VirtualDub, then transcode to MKV using the basic 480p preset in Handbrake with the changes below:
Constant framerate 29.97
x264-High-Level 3.1-slower
Cropping/Animorphic is set to auto.
Audio set to convert to AAC @ 92kbps
I cannot for the life of me figure out why it is transcoding the video and audio instead of direct playing. I have other files of varying sizes in my Movie+TV library using x264-high&main-3.1 that have no trouble direct playing or direct streaming. My VHS rips are placed in my “Photos” library if that matters.
Server Version#: 1.23.1.4571
Player Version#: Latest for Roku Ultra LT 4662WR, Can grab if needed
EDIT: Just “figured it out” For whatever reason, setting local quality to 4k 20MBps was forcing it to transcode. These files have a bitrate of 12MBps max so it still doesn’t make sense. Other 1080p/720p/480p files from other sources play just fine. Setting this to “Original” quality resolved it. Perhaps it has something to do with Handbrake’s constant quality setting instead of a constant bitrate.
Example of what I see:
XML from file that transcodes
This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it. The document tree is shown below.
<MediaContainer size="1" allowSync="1" identifier="com.plexapp.plugins.library" librarySectionID="3" librarySectionTitle="Photos" librarySectionUUID=
mediaTagPrefix="/system/bundle/media/flags/" mediaTagVersion="1621889896">
<Video ratingKey="9203" key="/library/metadata/9203" parentRatingKey="9183" guid="com.plexapp.agents.none://9203?lang=en" parentGuid="local://9183" type="clip" title="View" parentKey="/library/metadata/9183" librarySectionTitle="Photos" librarySectionID="3" librarySectionKey="/library/sections/3" parentTitle="VHS Home Movies" subtype="photo" summary="" index="1" parentIndex="1" year="2021" thumb="/library/metadata/9203/thumb/1622983216" art="/library/metadata/9183/art/1622978983" parentThumb="/library/metadata/9183/thumb/1622978983" duration="879900" originallyAvailableAt="2021-06-06" addedAt="1622983215" updatedAt="1622983216" createdAtAccuracy="epoch,local" createdAtTZOffset="0">
<Media id="9248" duration="879900" bitrate="2200" width="706" height="480" aspectRatio="1.33" audioChannels="2" audioCodec="aac" videoCodec="h264" videoResolution="480" container="mkv" videoFrameRate="NTSC" audioProfile="lc" videoProfile="high">
<Part accessible="1" exists="1" id="12353" key="/library/parts/12353/1622982607/file.mkv" duration="879900" file="/media/PhotoVault/VHS Home Movies/View.mkv" size="241984042" audioProfile="lc" container="mkv" videoProfile="high">
<Stream id="10727" streamType="1" default="1" codec="h264" index="0" bitrate="2200" bitDepth="8" chromaLocation="left" chromaSubsampling="4:2:0" codedHeight="480" codedWidth="720" colorPrimaries="smpte170m" colorRange="tv" colorSpace="bt470bg" colorTrc="bt709" frameRate="29.970" hasScalingMatrix="0" height="480" level="31" profile="high" refFrames="4" scanType="progressive" width="706" displayTitle="480p (H.264)" extendedDisplayTitle="480p (H.264)"> </Stream>
<Stream id="10728" streamType="2" selected="1" default="1" codec="aac" index="1" channels="2" audioChannelLayout="stereo" profile="lc" samplingRate="48000" title="Stereo" displayTitle="Unknown (AAC Stereo)" extendedDisplayTitle="Stereo (AAC)"> </Stream>
</Part>
</Media>
<Extras size="0"> </Extras>
<Related> </Related>
</Video>
</MediaContainer>
