Video Steaming (in home)
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MP4 and MKV and just containers, they hold the same formats. If you want the movies to look good, don't transcode them.
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That is my issue. I guess I made the wrong assumption. What file format is preferred for direct streaming with no transcoding? Seems everything I read says the devices can Direct Play .MP4 with no transcoding. Quality is just not there.
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@brandon220 said in Video Steaming (in home):
That is my issue. I guess I made the wrong assumption. What file format is preferred for direct streaming with no transcoding? Seems everything I read says the devices can Direct Play .MP4 with no transcoding. Quality is just not there.
That's on the fly transcoding, but anything MP4 is already converted. If you convert, ever, at all... it's going to be much lower quality. You need to never convert at all if you want it to really look good.
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So you therefore never need to ask what format to put something in, you just rip it and use what you start with.
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I rip my DVDs with DVDFab (https://dvdfab.cn) and get excellent playback quality.
I play on the Roku Plex app, the web interface on my Laptop, and the Android Plex app and never have any problems with quality.
You might could check your Plex server settings to make sure that you don't have any bandwidth limits set up for the local network. That can cause streaming problems sometimes.
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Interesting thread.
I've never fully understood the converted not converted thing.
I read last night about codec H.264, etc but I'm lost.
Isn't anything on a digital medium converted from the analog world we live in?
One thing I was reading was saying that using Handbrake to make a H.264 file would produce a 2 GB file while using MakeMKV you make a MKV file that's 40 GB (this is based upon ripping SW EPIII Blu Ray).And now re-reading the article, I can't tell what codec the MKV is in.
/sigh
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@dafyre There are no streaming issues as far as bandwidth, etc. It is just the "quality" of the playback. I realize it is not playing straight off a DVD but I feel it should be better.
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@dashrender Exactly! I rip to the highest setting the software will allow but it just seems it could be better. I know it shouldn't be so confusing.
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@brandon220 said in Video Steaming (in home):
@dafyre There are no streaming issues as far as bandwidth, etc. It is just the "quality" of the playback. I realize it is not playing straight off a DVD but I feel it should be better.
It could be some of the settings in the App. Have you fiddled with them any?
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@dafyre On the ripping software and Plex, I have everything set to the highest it will allow. I think it all goes back to the ripping but I am not sure.
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@brandon220 said in Video Steaming (in home):
t feel the playback quality is lacking. I know some of you stream video. What is your preferred method to get video from disc to
If you copy that file to your desktop computer and play it directly, how does it look? If it looks good, then you have an issue somewhere between the NAS storage - Plex VM - Plex Player.
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@brandon220 said in Video Steaming (in home):
On the ripping software and Plex, I have everything set to the highest it will allow. I think it all goes back to the ripping but I am not sure.
What hardware is your Plex server on? You basically have to transcode on the Plex server unless you're playing on a semi-modern computer. It's my understanding that not many inexpensive streaming devices have the processing power to do on-the-fly transcoding, and if your Plex is on a NAS or something, that's probably not powerful enough to do the transcoding either.
It sounds like you're ripping and transcoding all in the same program. How big are the finished files? If you're transcoding at the highest possible level, you'd just be straight ripping the Bluray and the files would be like 30+ GB per file. If you're compressing bluray the finished files could be ~3GB depending on the movie, and DVD ~1GB, which would still be really good quality.
I haven't done this in a while but I used to use MakeMKV to rip, and HandBrake to transcode. Both of them used to be free. I've never been disappointed in the quality going this route.
Here's a pretty good rundown of processing power that you need to transcode
https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/201774043-What-kind-of-CPU-do-I-need-for-my-Server- -
Plex is running as an Ubuntu Server (17.04) VM in Hyper-V Server 2016. Going off memory - I believe it has 4 vCPU and 8G RAM. It seems to transcode fine and can support multiple streams.
I'll have to try playing it directly off a PC this evening.
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@brandon220 said in Video Steaming (in home):
@dafyre On the ripping software and Plex, I have everything set to the highest it will allow. I think it all goes back to the ripping but I am not sure.
Ripping does not produce MP4s. If you have MP4s, you are transcoding, just not on the fly.
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@dashrender said in Video Steaming (in home):
Interesting thread.
I've never fully understood the converted not converted thing.
I read last night about codec H.264, etc but I'm lost.
Isn't anything on a digital medium converted from the analog world we live in?
One thing I was reading was saying that using Handbrake to make a H.264 file would produce a 2 GB file while using MakeMKV you make a MKV file that's 40 GB (this is based upon ripping SW EPIII Blu Ray).And now re-reading the article, I can't tell what codec the MKV is in.
/sigh
MKV and MP4 are nearly identical and don't matter at all. It's all what codec and what settings you convert to. Converting is the issue. If you concert, quality is lost.
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@scottalanmiller said in Video Steaming (in home):
@dashrender said in Video Steaming (in home):
Interesting thread.
I've never fully understood the converted not converted thing.
I read last night about codec H.264, etc but I'm lost.
Isn't anything on a digital medium converted from the analog world we live in?
One thing I was reading was saying that using Handbrake to make a H.264 file would produce a 2 GB file while using MakeMKV you make a MKV file that's 40 GB (this is based upon ripping SW EPIII Blu Ray).And now re-reading the article, I can't tell what codec the MKV is in.
/sigh
MKV and MP4 are nearly identical and don't matter at all. It's all what codec and what settings you convert to. Converting is the issue. If you concert, quality is lost.
It's just a question of how noticeable the loss is.
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@scottalanmiller said in Video Steaming (in home):
@dashrender said in Video Steaming (in home):
Interesting thread.
I've never fully understood the converted not converted thing.
I read last night about codec H.264, etc but I'm lost.
Isn't anything on a digital medium converted from the analog world we live in?
One thing I was reading was saying that using Handbrake to make a H.264 file would produce a 2 GB file while using MakeMKV you make a MKV file that's 40 GB (this is based upon ripping SW EPIII Blu Ray).And now re-reading the article, I can't tell what codec the MKV is in.
/sigh
MKV and MP4 are nearly identical and don't matter at all. It's all what codec and what settings you convert to. Converting is the issue. If you concert, quality is lost.
what type of file would you expect if you're ripping but not converting from a Blu Ray?
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@dashrender Bluray is in h.262 in a BDMV container...
I have great success with MakeMKV for blurays. It basically repackages the BDMV to MKV container. I also then reencode it into h.264 in an mkv container with Handbrake. (Optional, but I'll sacrifice the small quality difference I see for the substantially smaller file)
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I'm going to try MakeMKV later and see if there is a difference in the raw MKV file (noticeable) and then go from there.
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how did the file look when playing directly from a local computer?
