List of devices that will direct play HEVC 265 ?

[vaise 307]

I am planning on using the 'tdarr' utility (docker on unraid in my case) to convert all my media to HEVC 265 and hence save a ton of disk space and hence cost savings.

It will take ages to perform - over a number of months I expect.  This is NOT my 4k content.  Just everything else.

I have a number of friends and family that have remote devices that I believe will from then on have to transcode for playback.

I plan on emailing out that they should replace their devices with either of these below which will all be fine : Chromecast with Google TV / FireTV 4K stick / Roku 4 or 4k stick

No-one will front up the cash for the ShieldTV which I use at home.

Remotely, I have users with Roku3's, Chromecasts, XBoxOne's, Cheap Chinese Android TV boxes.

I believe the XBoxOne's will be fine, but all the other will not.

Can anyone comment - any other devices that I have missed for HEVC 265 ?

 

[GrimReaper 3330]

Mi Box / Mi TV Stick. 

[vaise 307]

I just checked, In Australia, the mi things mentioned cost more that the other devices I listed.  

[GrimReaper 3330]

6 minutes ago, vaise said:

I just checked, In Australia, the mi things mentioned cost more that the other devices I listed.  

That's strange, as where I come from they are regularly priced less than both CwGTV and Fire sticks 4K. 

Edit: As it appears here:

https://www.news.com.au/best-of/electronics/best-streaming-devices/news-story/9c0391c406be47b6809481560709c2ff?amp

Likely that's without some discounts, I guess? 

Edited October 16, 2021 by GrimReaper
Link

[vaise 307]

Never seen them in any shops here.  Have to buy from Hong Kong on eBay for example.  We also can’t buy Roku’s here in Australia either!

[GrimReaper 3330]

14 minutes ago, vaise said:

We also can’t buy Roku’s here in Australia either!

And that might be for the better, with all due respect to Roku app, which is great, AndroidTV client app that other devices would run still surpasses it in number of fields. 

14 minutes ago, vaise said:

Never seen them in any shops here.

Rev on your google-fu:

https://www.expansys.com.au/xiaomi-mi-tv-stick-streaming-media-player-324295/

Ebay.au will also do. 

Edit: Anyway, that was just a comment on your query "Any other devices I've missed for HEVC", as I have all of them you listed (save Roku), including both Mi flavors, and any of them will do for intended purpose and offer similar experience (although I cannot stand Amazon interface, GoogleTV is slightly less annoying). 

Edited October 16, 2021 by GrimReaper
Append

[clarkss12 296]

Mecool KM2 IMHO is superior to the Xiaomi Mi boxes. The TiVo Stream 4k is also very good.

 

[neik 838]

17 minutes ago, clarkss12 said:

Mecool KM2 IMHO is superior to the Xiaomi Mi boxes. The TiVo Stream 4k is also very good.

 

The issue I have with those devices is most of them don't use native AndroidTV which sooner or later gets you in trouble you then have to work around.

[visproduction 125]

Just want to point out that if you are converting from h.264 content, you would be adding a generation and really not getting anything worthwhile in return, other than a tighter compression.   The look of the H264 would be underlying the new h.265 copy.  This is hardly ideal.  If you are taking from a higher quality master video, which should be probably 4 GB plus for DVD Mpeg or 12 GB for blu-ray or a post production master 2 hour content, then converting the h.265 would actually show the higher contrast and more detail of using this codec.  That conversion makes sense.

In the post production business if a client asked this service and the originals were same size h.264, I would suggest that they not waste their money and go find higher quality masters to convert.

For 3rd party direct playback, the initial reason HEVC was not supported online, was due to a licensing fee of $0.25 per browser installation.  I believe Safari and Edge paid this and Edge has since dropped support.  I don't think the licensing fee issue has changed.  Does someone know?  I suppose you can find out online.  Initially, the extra cost caused browser to drop support.  I think also trying to support other audio playback would make browsers stack larger and AAC was considered good enough for online.

[rbjtech 4336]

Agree 100% with the above.

Also remember that any non direct playback will mean extra conversions as any form of hevc streaming is not supported by emby  - and I personally don't see this happening any time soon. 

Also to note - have you calculated the extra cost of the power to do all these conversions, vs just buying extra storage in the first place ?  

[vaise 307]

Thanks to all responses.

I have setup just 2 CPU's and threads of the 8 CPU's currently to do the conversions and set it at 2 concurrent.  Power usage is negligible.

I am using CPU to convert - I dont have a GPU - which would add a load of power use to my system.

My biggest folder is Game of Thrones at >300GB, and that has been going since yesterday and I dont see it completing anytime soon as it is still doing the same two files..... with 80 left to go.  At that rate it will take a month just for that show and many years for the rest I guess.  I will let it go til it ends and re-assess.

I can see now why people online have so many nodes configured.  As I am not a gamer, I dont have high end graphics cards anywhere.

[Carlo 4331]

12 hours ago, visproduction said:

Just want to point out that if you are converting from h.264 content, you would be adding a generation and really not getting anything worthwhile in return, other than a tighter compression.   The look of the H264 would be underlying the new h.265 copy.  This is hardly ideal.  If you are taking from a higher quality master video, which should be probably 4 GB plus for DVD Mpeg or 12 GB for blu-ray or a post production master 2 hour content, then converting the h.265 would actually show the higher contrast and more detail of using this codec.  That conversion makes sense.

In the post production business if a client asked this service and the originals were same size h.264, I would suggest that they not waste their money and go find higher quality masters to convert.

For 3rd party direct playback, the initial reason HEVC was not supported online, was due to a licensing fee of $0.25 per browser installation.  I believe Safari and Edge paid this and Edge has since dropped support.  I don't think the licensing fee issue has changed.  Does someone know?  I suppose you can find out online.  Initially, the extra cost caused browser to drop support.  I think also trying to support other audio playback would make browsers stack larger and AAC was considered good enough for online.

I would not agree with that if as a whole. If you have high quality AVC to start with and convert them to HEVC you won't be able to tell a difference.  If you have low quality AVC files then yes it will show. If you have YTS/YIFY quality to start with don't think about it.

I tested this for months and months with different settings, different quality source material and found it very beneficial for my collection.
I went from over 300 TB of primary media to around 76 TB which now fits on my Synology NAS.

It took me about 18 months to convert my movies and tv shows using 2 computers and NVIDIA hardware.
I mainly used FFmpeg Batch AV Converter to do most of this: https://sourceforge.net/projects/ffmpeg-batch/

I created my own "HEVC Profile" to use with these settings:
-c:v hevc_nvenc -vf yadif=0:-1:1 -c:a copy -c:s copy -preset hq -rc constqp -rc-lookahead 60 -spatial_aq 1 -temporal_aq 1 -nonref_p 1 -cq 26

The deinterlacing for the most part wasn't needed but I added it for good measure to be able to use it for recorded interlaced content as well.
This worked for both GTX 1650 and RTX Nvidia cards but I could tweak it slightly for each card.

At first with small samples I would use different settings but as I expanded and processed thousands of files it evolved into those settings which just work.
I kept the -cq value a bit lower than some people would use but I wanted to retain the quality.

I'm very happy with the results on my collection. My daily use TV is 75" so it would show flaws or degraded quality pretty easily.

PS: resist trying to go 10-bit HEVC.  Yes that will give you even smaller files but has compatibility issues with devices that otherwise handle HEVC 8 bit just fine.

[vaise 307]

Nice one @Cayers - My media is way smaller - 13.5TB Tv Shows and 4.5TB Movies.......  

If I have a network connection to my media shares from my PC, can I then maybe drage the folder location to the batch converter you mention, and it will convert and write back with the same name, replacing the file ?

I could at least tackle the movies at the same time as the TV shows (still ages though)

[Spaceboy 2505]

i've never yet seen a h265 conversion that i havent been almost immediately been able to identify as a conversion even without the original material to benchmark it against. my approach has been to throw more and more hard disk space at the problem and retain original quality. but i've got >400Tb now...

[rbjtech 4336]

 

12 hours ago, vaise said:

Thanks to all responses.

I have setup just 2 CPU's and threads of the 8 CPU's currently to do the conversions and set it at 2 concurrent.  Power usage is negligible.

I am using CPU to convert - I dont have a GPU - which would add a load of power use to my system.

My biggest folder is Game of Thrones at >300GB, and that has been going since yesterday and I dont see it completing anytime soon as it is still doing the same two files..... with 80 left to go.  At that rate it will take a month just for that show and many years for the rest I guess.  I will let it go til it ends and re-assess.

I can see now why people online have so many nodes configured.  As I am not a gamer, I dont have high end graphics cards anywhere.

 ..by the time it finishes - AV1 will be the new standard .. 

tbh - with the method of conversion, time taken to complete it, constant drain on your CPU and disk I/O systems, lower quality output - I would seriously suggest having a rethink.

For people with huge disk arrays with 100's of TB's worth of h264 - this solution seems attractive (as cayars has done) but you could store your entire current collection on a single HDD if you wanted to...

[vaise 307]

29 minutes ago, rbjtech said:

 

 ..by the time it finishes - AV1 will be the new standard .. 

tbh - with the method of conversion, time taken to complete it, constant drain on your CPU and disk I/O systems, lower quality output - I would seriously suggest having a rethink.

For people with huge disk arrays with 100's of TB's worth of h264 - this solution seems attractive (as cayars has done) but you could store your entire current collection on a single HDD if you wanted to...

I am in the process of re-downloading any 265 media files i can, have adjusted the settings to prefer 265 over other stuff also.

As to disks, I only mentioned Movies and TV Shows.  about 19TB needed for that - and those size disks are way expensive.  I have other stuff (4k media, documentaries, home Videos, music, data, etc.  Total array use currently stands at 34.4TB.

 

[Carlo 4331]

10 hours ago, vaise said:

Nice one @Cayers - My media is way smaller - 13.5TB Tv Shows and 4.5TB Movies.......  

If I have a network connection to my media shares from my PC, can I then maybe drage the folder location to the batch converter you mention, and it will convert and write back with the same name, replacing the file ?

I could at least tackle the movies at the same time as the TV shows (still ages though)

No, you don't want to do that.  Chances are you will have a lot of mp4 files but when converting them to HEVC you will most likely want to make them mkv files for example to avoid compatibility issues.  So when finished some files will have the same name while others won't.

[Carlo 4331]

5 hours ago, Spaceboy said:

i've never yet seen a h265 conversion that i havent been almost immediately been able to identify as a conversion even without the original material to benchmark it against. my approach has been to throw more and more hard disk space at the problem and retain original quality. but i've got >400Tb now...

If starting out with quality media I seriously doubt you could tell the difference without specifically looking for it.  For normal TV enjoyment you would not notice or care if done right.

I always suggest doing some test samples and judging yourself if it's ok or not.  Only the admin can make that call.

I'm actually a "cheater" as I'll explain in more detail what I actually did for about 75%+ of my media files during my own conversion to HEVC.

I have all my original rips on offline storage. So what I did was remux my entire library to MP4 so that was the only extension I had on my system. This process took a bit of time but nothing like the conversion step.

I then broke out each offline HDD with RIPs on it and recompressed those to HEVC to replace the earlier AVC versions I have online.  So not only did I save space but in many case actually made the quality better as well over the current AVC I had online.  Each of these were done to MKV.

So as I went along this process my library was slowly changing from MP4 to MKV with each new encode.
When I finished the last of my rips I had left things like TV recordings and other sourced stuff which could be home movies, etc

Some of those I cheated and D/L HEVC versions but didn't always use them as my AVCs were still better looking.  I then reprocess those AVCs to HEVC which did add a generation to them but hardly noticeable and still better then d/l version I had got. I choose after comparing both to see which made it.

I have a lot of offline storage (around 600 TB)  with things like rips and original home video footage as well as backups of my current online content.

So yes, in many ways I "cheated" but even for the true AVC to HEVC conversions the quality was very good and I really wouldn't have a problem doing that in mass had I not had the original rips to work with.  But I had them so I used them. 

[MrSpaniard 2]

On 10/16/2021 at 6:00 AM, vaise said:

I am planning on using the 'tdarr' utility (docker on unraid in my case) to convert all my media to HEVC 265 and hence save a ton of disk space and hence cost savings.

It will take ages to perform - over a number of months I expect.  This is NOT my 4k content.  Just everything else.

I have a number of friends and family that have remote devices that I believe will from then on have to transcode for playback.

I plan on emailing out that they should replace their devices with either of these below which will all be fine : Chromecast with Google TV / FireTV 4K stick / Roku 4 or 4k stick

No-one will front up the cash for the ShieldTV which I use at home.

Remotely, I have users with Roku3's, Chromecasts, XBoxOne's, Cheap Chinese Android TV boxes.

I believe the XBoxOne's will be fine, but all the other will not.

Can anyone comment - any other devices that I have missed for HEVC 265 ?

 

From my own experience, I can confirm the following devices:
- Apple TV HD (2021 model)
- Xbox One S, One X and Series S
- Emby Theater from Windows Store (after buying hevc codec for Windows)/native emby theater client for Windows *not a device, but like to put it here anyways

Although I do still see some transcoding happening with all of the above when I have unsupported subtitles with the files that the clients don't like very much.
Though please note I'm not using the subtitle extraction on the fly option yet, but am looking into testing that out soon.
Also note I only run 1080p content myself, no 4k tested here (I don't care for 4k personally)

Also a question for you Vaise;
how does your Nvidia ShieldTV handle 1080p hevc x265 10bit content?
I'm interested in picking up a shieldtv for this purpose, but seeing mixed messages online on the performance in the real world with it.
Would be nice to get confirmation from an actual owner of the device.

Edited February 5, 2022 by MrSpaniard

[vaise 307]

I am half way through converting all movies now - almost 1000 are done (in addition to the ones that were already HEVC).

No issues with the shield on any content at all.  Mine is the old 2019 Shield too - so the new ones are likely better.  There is quite a big sheild community on here.  Basicaslly, the message is if you wish to have no issues with anything, then get a shield.  Too expensive for every rooom in my house though - but we only have 2 4K TV's curtrently anyway - the rest are HD and hence only use a Chromecast with GoogleTV - which can play some 4K shows but not all in my testing.

I have lots of 4k atmos 10bit stuff.

Interestingly, my son just bought a new 59 inch TCL 4K TV which has atmos built in and runs Google TV as the OS.  It can also play all my 4k media natively from emby (direct play) - and the TV only cost Australian $760 bucks....... I was very surprised.  His last 4K TV was useless at any of it.

 

Edited February 5, 2022 by vaise

[MrSpaniard 2]

Thanks for the response Vaise.

Good to hear, I'm looking for better alternative to buying another apple tv hd for another room, as I see some dropped frames with hevc on the apple tv, more often than I'd like to see them.

I believe that's the same model as you can still buy today, usually nicknamed 'the tube', right?
I looked up specs for the 2019 model, seems identical to what you can buy today.
But there is also a pro version, which has 1GB more RAM, 8GB more internal storageand a 64 bit os.
Same SOC as the non pro according to nvidia, but I see people online saying it has better performance. (Wonder if that is true)

How much room does the OS take up on the internal storage?
I see a lot of people complaining about it only having 8GB, but I suppose I would only install emby and netflix on it and call it a day.

[ebr 14959]

14 hours ago, MrSpaniard said:

I see people online saying it has better performance. (Wonder if that is true)

Hi.  It is true.  Whether that will matter to you is another question.  If you have high bitrate content (> 30Mb/s), the pro version is the way to go.

[bandit8623 48]

20 hours ago, vaise said:

I am half way through converting all movies now - almost 1000 are done (in addition to the ones that were already HEVC).

No issues with the shield on any content at all.  Mine is the old 2019 Shield too - so the new ones are likely better.  There is quite a big sheild community on here.  Basicaslly, the message is if you wish to have no issues with anything, then get a shield.  Too expensive for every rooom in my house though - but we only have 2 4K TV's curtrently anyway - the rest are HD and hence only use a Chromecast with GoogleTV - which can play some 4K shows but not all in my testing.

I have lots of 4k atmos 10bit stuff.

Interestingly, my son just bought a new 59 inch TCL 4K TV which has atmos built in and runs Google TV as the OS.  It can also play all my 4k media natively from emby (direct play) - and the TV only cost Australian $760 bucks....... I was very surprised.  His last 4K TV was useless at any of it.

 

just to clear up the true old shield is the 2015 one   plays everything just fine as thats the one i have

[MrSpaniard 2]

7 hours ago, ebr said:

Hi.  It is true.  Whether that will matter to you is another question.  If you have high bitrate content (> 30Mb/s), the pro version is the way to go.

Any idea what might cause the performance increase?

According to Nvidia it uses the same chip.
Only difference 'on paper' would be 1GB extra RAM and 8GB more storage.

'Off paper' I heard it was 64bit OS for the pro and 32bit OS for the tube, could that be where the difference comes from?

I'm really curious, might save up a little extra for the pro now.

[ebr 14959]

On 2/6/2022 at 4:58 PM, MrSpaniard said:

Any idea what might cause the performance increase?

64bit OS and more memory.