Does "convert" produce videos that direct play both audio and video?

[Gilgamesh_48 1240]

I have several videos that direct play except that the audio transcodes. While that does not much impact my use much there have been some recent problems that make me want to have the vids direct play both video and audio.

I was wondering if I use "convert" on those vids will I end up with vids that direct play both audio and video? 

[visproduction 315]

Gil,

For basic browser / TV app playback. Video codec h.264 MPEG-4 AVC (part 10) avc1 and audio AAC (mp4a) or mp3 should playback directly for everyone.

Some TV's workstations browsers might be able to play Video codec h.265, but I wouldn't count on it.  The hardware has to process the video more with h.265 and that can easily overwhealm some workstations or other hardware unless you have the latest and fairly fast gear.

That means most always any .ac3 audio requires transcoding and will not otherwise play directly through the browser or TV app.  Yes, h.265 and .ac3 plays back fine on 3rd party players.  That doesn't mean anything.  Emby playback uses either browser, TV or mobile app or sometimes special graphics card.

If you convert and store your master media on the Emby server in h.264 video and AAC or Mp3 audio up to blu-ray 1080P and bit rates under around 3000 kbps, then the media will direct play for everyone.  That is not so practical and no one really wants to do that.  Getting a quality look on a 1080P video with this bitrate, means you have to encode it at a very high quality which takes a lot of time and this is usually way beyond the quick transcoding used by everyone.   When you have a good looking 1080P media at 6000 kbps, a typical transcode, it should look pretty good.  But that may be to heavy for some user connection and so it will transcode again.  Trying to get 4K into h.264 is a waste of time.  It's too big.  Plus no one likes to store media in h.264 at a high bitrate, because it's too big.

Anyway, I encode manually with AVIDemux which I think handles encoding better than other software.  You can control details better.  Handbreak tries to do everything automatically.  I set the quality level way up and a 2 hour media in 1080P encodes in around 4 hours on a notebook I7.  My 1080P media encodes at 2400 kbps and is converted to audio AAC or mp3, if needed.  At the quality level, I set, the result looks great.  It plays direct on everything.

Hope that helps answer part of your question as a possible alternate method.  I would like to see if anyone has a better solution to stop audio like .ac3 or DTS from having to encode.  I don't think it's possible.

[Luke 42079]

3 hours ago, Gilgamesh_48 said:

I have several videos that direct play except that the audio transcodes. While that does not much impact my use much there have been some recent problems that make me want to have the vids direct play both video and audio.

I was wondering if I use "convert" on those vids will I end up with vids that direct play both audio and video? 

Hi, that is the goal, but it's not guaranteed due to whatever quality settings might be configured, supported audio, subtitles, etc.

[Gilgamesh_48 1240]

1 hour ago, Luke said:

Hi, that is the goal, but it's not guaranteed due to whatever quality settings might be configured, supported audio, subtitles, etc.

Thanks but it now probably will not be as much of an issue as I am no longer running a beta server so the problems I was experiencing are gone. But it is good to know for the future.