Stream copy

[Luke 40111]

I've added this as a streaming param. "copy" is now an available option for video codec and/or audio codec.

 

When direct play and direct stream are not possible, this is next best option because it avoids encoding by keeping the same video/audio stream and just swapping containers.

 

It's discussed here:

 

https://github.com/MediaBrowser/MediaBr ... Guidelines

 

So now the order of preference for playback is:

 

Direct play -> Direct stream -> Stream copy -> Transcode

 

Tikuf - can you reach out to the ui developers that you think ought to incorporate this and help them? Thanks.

[gcw07 347]

Looks good. Should be able to use this on the Roku. Though with them recently adding mkv as a direct stream option, hopefully users won't need to even use this. Thanks for adding it.

[Luke 40111]

Yea, the one thing I think you might want to watch out for is assuming you can play just by looking at the container. For instance, right now you're direct playing all mp4's right? Since mp4 and mkv can hold just about any combination of formats, you probably also need to look at the audio and video codecs, and also make sure the bitrates and profiles aren't too high.

[gcw07 347]

Yeah, I'm about ready to rewrite the entire section that deals with selecting the streams. Right now it basically just does it off of video type and format, but the plan is to make it check the actual video/audio codecs that are in there to determine if they are too high, etc. and then would need to kick off transcoding instead.

[Tikuf 663]

Yup will do we will also need to look at the profile on some devices with h264.

[gcw07 347]

Do you still need to provide a video bitrate for stream copy?

 

So is it just:

 

/stream.m3u8?VideoCodec=copy&AudioCodec=aac&AudioBitRate=128000&AudioChannels=2&AudioSampleRate=44100&TimeStampOffsetMs=0

 

 

 

or do you need to do:

 

/stream.m3u8?VideoCodec=copy&VideoBitRate=3200000&MaxWidth=1920&MaxHeight=1080&Profile=high&Level=4.0&AudioCodec=aac&AudioBitRate=128000&AudioChannels=2&AudioSampleRate=44100&TimeStampOffsetMs=0

[Redshirt 1487]

Yes. if your using HLS then your first URL is correct.

[gcw07 347]

First URL or 2nd one? First one didn't have the video bitrate field, so just making sure.

[Redshirt 1487]

first. You don't need to specify video info if your asking the server to copy what's there.

[gcw07 347]

OK, yeah that is what I thought too. But testing it, the server errors without the bitrate.

[Redshirt 1487]

Sorry my bad. I was thinking direct stream. In which case you don't need the bitrate info.

[gcw07 347]

Yeah direct stream you shouldn't, but I would think stream copy shouldn't either. I mean you are just supposed to be copying the video as is, so it wouldn't need to set anything on the bitrate of the video.

[Redshirt 1487]

Makes sense. Looks like a bug actually.

[gcw07 347]

Makes sense. Looks like a bug actually.

Yeah it probably is. Luke will see this tomorrow and can answer if it is a bug or supposed to be required.

[Luke 40111]

you don't need it but it's possible there' s a bug. can you post the error?

[gcw07 347]

[Logfile](http://www.mb3admin.com/uploads/logs/server-63515959073.log_mblog5246eeed1cb121.06059125.log)

[Luke 40111]

Ok, right. The hls changes we made for hls now require bitrates to be supplied. But this needs to be fixed for stream copy when it isn't needed. It will be in the next dev build.

[gcw07 347]

Ok, right. The hls changes we made for hls now require bitrates to be supplied. But this needs to be fixed for stream copy when it isn't needed. It will be in the next dev build.

Sounds great. Thanks.