High bitrate, lower resolution transcode options

Channels DVR Server Feature Requests
#1

I prefer using software transcoding on my DVR server because, at least on my late 2014 Mac Mini, the hardware transcoding has some quality issues (random blockiness that occurs every few seconds).

Unfortunately, my DVR server is just barely not fast enough to transcode two streams at once in 720p using the software transcoder.

It would be nice if the Channels client apps offered higher bitrate options for lower transcode resolutions. For example, the ability to stream 576p or 480p at 2mbit/s would work really well for me.

(Alternatively, the ability to reduce the ffmpeg encode quality for simultaneous transcodes would also do the trick. Or even better, have the transcode quality adjust dynamically as needed to keep up.)

#3

This is a very interesting case. The way we're doing adaptive streaming is by having the server present multiple bitrate playlists to the client and the client decides which to use based on the bandwidth it measures.

This would make it very difficult to solve the situation you're describing where we would only lower the resolution when multiple transcodes are happening simultaneously.

It would be possible to add a "maximum resolution" option for what we served to all clients. If you could set the maximum to 576p for any bitrate, would that be enough for what you need?

#4

Yes, being able to set a max resolution would definitely work. I’m assuming it wouldn’t affect remux, right?

#5

Ah, that's an interesting point. I'll see if I can come up with something to handle this.

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