Any way to force transcoding via HTTP request?

[fnorbenden 0]

I've been working on a picroft setup which uses http requests in its emby skill to pull music from a server on the local network. One issue I have encountered is that mycroft's support for VLC is pretty terrible and the basic sound system is mpg123, which only supports mp3 files. My library is mostly FLAC.

I've reworked the request string in the skill to specify mp3 as transcode target for all files, but as far as I can tell the server will ONLY transcode if the requested bitrate is lower than the local media's bitrate. I can work around this by lowering the bitrate request to force transcoding, but I would like to force transcoding without having to compromise audio quality; this is all on the LAN so the only reason to not direct play is the player's lack of appropriate codec support.

Is there something I can put in the request string to force the server to transcode for that stream?

[rbjtech 5284]

I've never really played with Audio codecs but could you try using a different container and force emby to remux that way ?

[fnorbenden 0]

That was my thought, that by specifying a transcoding container that mismatched it would pick it up, but alas, using the VLC media information inspector:

vlc 'http://10.0.0.18:8096/Audio/8387/universal?userId=xxxxxxx&TranscodingContainer=mp3&MaxStreamingBitrate=140000000&AudioCodec=mp3'
reports no transcoding (flac)

vlc 'http://10.0.0.18:8096/Audio/8387/universal?userId=xxxxxx&TranscodingContainer=mp3&MaxStreamingBitrate=140000&AudioCodec=mp3'

reports transcoding (mp3)

The only difference between these requests is that the second has a bitrate below the source, triggering transcoding.

Edited October 1, 2020 by fnorbenden
redacting log

[Luke 42079]

Have you compared your url to the query string used by the web app?