Best format for clients (android, apple, tablets)

[crashkelly 62]

Hi,

 

Now that I have completed converting all of my BD ISOs to MKV files, I am looking at creating compressed copies of most of those MKV files for use with secondary devices such as smartphones, android and apple, and other devices such as tablets, with the focus being on serving that content to outside my home network.

 

For instance, when I am at the office and on lunch break and feel like firing up a movie on my soon to be had Nexus 5, what would the most compatible format, resolution, audio, and container be, and if possible one that can be played natively rather than transcoded.

 

Same for the apple phones and tablets, which right now is only my Surface Pro but I imagine that will expand to other soon.

 

Is there a "best fit" across all categories?

 

With the suggestion of format it would be appreciated if a tool name could be included, preferably free, to accomplish the conversion. I have used Handbrake in the past and that would well.

 

Thanks

[ebr 14944]

Why create separate copies?  That will be a mess to manage.

 

Most clients have different streaming quality settings available so that you can make it work best with whatever device you happen to be using at the time.

[Deathsquirrel 741]

If you're actually playing in the client, as EBR says it doesn't matter.  If you really mean copies to drop on a flash disk and take with you on a trip, (yes I know you COULD make your server accessible over the internet), then h.264 video codec and AC3 sound, wrapped up in a shiny MP4 file. Do the conversion with Handbrake and the result will play on pretty much anything without any software that didn't likely come with the OS.

 

I dropped MKVs in favor of a high bit rate version of the above about a year ago since what I really wanted was a simple, single file solution that would play on absolutely anything.

Edited November 11, 2013 by Deathsquirrel

[crashkelly 62]

Why create separate copies?  That will be a mess to manage.

 

Most clients have different streaming quality settings available so that you can make it work best with whatever device you happen to be using at the time.

 

 

Sounds like he wants the netflix/youtube approach. in the real world nobody really encodes on the fly. storage is cheap, but cpu is not, so it's much more efficient to pre-encode lots of different versions. Most MB users are not going to want to commit to that kind of storage requirement though.

 

I totally agree on the mess to manage as I am in a bit of that now with titles made specifically for the xbox, no subs and one audio track. Some things on the web interface, views, are a mess as the xbox titles do get mixed in with the regular ones and the result is duplicates on the screen. I know I can clean this up by taking them out of the default library and attaching them to a profile that is used only on the xbox, kids.

 

Luke pretty much hit it on the head. I tested a full quality mkv on my surface last night and it shot the CPU up to 99% and it stayed there and the movie was jerky.. Not sure if I could get the full quality MKV to play natively on my surface, but if I could that would essentially leave me pulling a very large MKV over the Internet to play on my surface. Even if pulling that large file across the net would work in practice, a bunch of those a month will kill my internet usage and I would hit my monthly cap, 400GB, before I knew it.

 

In terms of storage, I can pick up a 4TB drive for about $179 and that would hold hundreds, well a lot , of compressed files. I am already sitting at about 35TB so what is another 4.

 

Granted I have only performed one test with one movie on one device, but I would imagine that transcoding a full quality BD MKV would be pretty much the same, in terms of CPU usage, regardless of the device it was going to. (I could totally be wrong about that though and unfortunately until I get my Nexus I have nothing else to test it on)

 

Still looking at options and ideas, but anted to get some info on formats so I can run some tests with those.

 

Cheers

[ebr 14944]

Sounds like he wants the netflix/youtube approach. in the real world nobody really encodes on the fly. storage is cheap, but cpu is not, so it's much more efficient to pre-encode lots of different versions. Most MB users are not going to want to commit to that kind of storage requirement though.

 

Yeah, but the right way to do that would be for the server to handle it transparently.  But, we'd have to have people point us to a large storage location for the encoded files and that would have the potential to get very large with multiple encodes for the same item.

[crashkelly 62]

If you're actually playing in the client, as EBR says it doesn't matter.  If you really mean copies to drop on a flash disk and take with you on a trip, (yes I know you COULD make your server accessible over the internet), then h.264 video codec and AC3 sound, wrapped up in a shiny MP4 file. Do the conversion with Handbrake and the result will play on pretty much anything without any software that didn't likely come with the OS.

 

I dropped MKVs in favor of a high bit rate version of the above about a year ago since what I really wanted was a simple, single file solution that would play on absolutely anything.

 

I am looking at making my server accessible over the internet as then I can catch up on all my TV and movies when I am at work

 

I will take a look at the mp4 file through Handbrake. As I mentioned, I have used handbrake before, but only to compress MKV to MKV

 

Thanks

[crashkelly 62]

Yeah, but the right way to do that would be for the server to handle it transparently.  But, we'd have to have people point us to a large storage location for the encoded files and that would have the potential to get very large with multiple encodes for the same item.

 

Just a thought/idea, but isn't transcoding a smaller size file, say a 4GB MKV as compared to a 40GB MKV easier on the system in terms of CPU resources. I know it is not the ultimate solution as there are still at least two copies of the file ....... (thinking as I type) ...... but what about the possibility of setting up a "mobile" type for a collection so if the user connecting is detected to be on a "mobile" device, it would automatically transcode the file from the "mobile" typed collection.

 

Again, not the best case as you still have two copies of the movie.

 

Essentially I was looking at going that route but instead having a collection of "mobile" titles attached to a profile that I would only use while on my smartphone or tablet, whether inside or outside of my network.

 

Cheers

[Luke 37142]

Sounds like he wants the netflix/youtube approach. in the real world nobody really encodes on the fly. storage is cheap, but cpu is not, so it's much more efficient to pre-encode lots of different versions. Most MB users are not going to want to commit to that kind of storage requirement though.