Advanced Conversion Options

[rtfmoz 6]

Premise
Emby is a media server which manages a media collection so the user does not have to do so. 

Basis for Feature Request
Part of managing that collection is conversion to modern, appropriate media types that utilise better codecs, better encoding techniques. Presently people do most of this outside of Emby.

Discussion
The underlying tool being used for conversion is ffpmeg, see attached log. What I would like to see is an Advanced Conversion page which exposes some of these options to allow people to better manage their media conversion requirements. Then save these settings into a user-created named profile which can be exported or imported. This profile is then be applied it to a folder or file in the metadata of their collection. Doing so would initiate a conversion process with the settings of that profile.

Benefits

1. Current conversion options are limited. The Original Quality setting gives you files with 3MB/s bitrate from any source. Exposing more advanced options would allow the user to define specific conversion requirements and save them for use in their collection.
2. The ability to export/import settings opens up a whole new class of community support. Conversion profiles can be shared between members and it is quite likely you will end up with a subculture of conversion expertise. As one person rightly said "giving advice on encoding is a lifetimes work" so its the community themselves who can do it best.
3. Given the development of profiles and settings in a community of like minded people these can filter up to the Devs on which advanced features can be included in future releases. 

Reputation
Given the right interest and gradual development Emby could easily become known for the best media management of all its competitors, something to distinguish itself in a competitive market.

Devs
Encoding and developing of such really is a work of passion. So its could easily become a pet project of some Dev to put together an advanced conversion page internally and slowly test out the options.

Support
Advanced encoding options are really out of scope when it comes to support. The core product does what it needs so if a forum is created for Advanced Conversion then right up front can be disclaimer that use of non standard profiles is at a users own risk. On the other hand, Emby devs working with the community are likely to develop some included advanced profiles that are supported when used for conversion.

Thanks for listening.

ffmpeg-transcode-a0dd4aa0-cce4-4e99-9e36-76d7599cc2e1_1 (4).txt

Edited July 24, 2020 by rtfmoz

[Luke 39306]

HI, I see you mentioned profiles, which is a good idea, but exactly what advanced options would you like to see? 

 

[Carlo 4529]

hevc, vbr vs cbr, max bit rate (not target), crf setting (different for DVR vs bluray vs recorded), hw vs sw conversion, specific audio track as default, extraction of subs, remove language streams not needed, etc

Edited July 29, 2020 by cayars

[rtfmoz 6]

Hi,

Encoding presets ultrafast, superfast, veryfast, faster, fast, medium, slow, slower, veryslow, placebo as drop down list , current default is veryfast.
Tuning presets film, animation, grain, stillimage, psnr, ssim, fastdecode, zerolatency, not used at the moment.
Max bitrate which sets maxrate / rc_max_rate
Rate control mode  cbr/vbr/cqp/icq/qvbr/avbr

Most of the above translate directly into ffmpeg command line options.

Ultimately the output needs to conform to playable material so the final package would need to be suitable for various devices. How we get there though should be tuneable with the above.

If you want to get into track control you would have to analyse the first video and then allow people to choose streams however this is getting into remixing territory. This may not see consistent results across material from mixed sources.

Edited July 30, 2020 by rtfmoz

[Bigmack3000 94]

I would love the option to not auto burn-in subtitles.