So in this case, even if your hardware was impacted by this, if you tried to play a H.265 (HEVC) file within Windows, it would play, but will software encode / decode. What if you are playing something through a client like VLC or Jellyfin Media Player? Prior to this change, would Jellyfin report Direct Playing (using iGPU) and now it will be forced to transcode on the server side, and VLC would still use the CPU for encoding and decoding, since there is no server to do it for you?
“Direct playing” just means the source file is entirely compatible with the client device and doesn’t require any transcoding/re-encoding by the server, it doesn’t really tell you whether the client is using software or hardware decoding to play it. I’m guessing it’s probable that a Jellyfin server could still report “direct playing” even if the client is using software decoding to play it. However, if the client device is something like a smart TV or something with a more locked down OS, and the maintainer/manufacturer removes support for a codec from that device, you may show more transcoding action on your server for things that previously just direct played because smart devices like that may not have support for software decoding, or may not have the horsepower to try even if they still have the codecs installed.
I just set it to downmix to mono in Handbrake and it’s been alright. I’ll definitely do some reading/comparing to see what this setting is all about though.
Kinda makes me even more glad I’ve been migrating all my stuff over to AV1/OPUS.
So in this case, even if your hardware was impacted by this, if you tried to play a H.265 (HEVC) file within Windows, it would play, but will software encode / decode. What if you are playing something through a client like VLC or Jellyfin Media Player? Prior to this change, would Jellyfin report Direct Playing (using iGPU) and now it will be forced to transcode on the server side, and VLC would still use the CPU for encoding and decoding, since there is no server to do it for you?
“Direct playing” just means the source file is entirely compatible with the client device and doesn’t require any transcoding/re-encoding by the server, it doesn’t really tell you whether the client is using software or hardware decoding to play it. I’m guessing it’s probable that a Jellyfin server could still report “direct playing” even if the client is using software decoding to play it. However, if the client device is something like a smart TV or something with a more locked down OS, and the maintainer/manufacturer removes support for a codec from that device, you may show more transcoding action on your server for things that previously just direct played because smart devices like that may not have support for software decoding, or may not have the horsepower to try even if they still have the codecs installed.
Make sure to use “disable phase inversion” for Opus if you want good quality in mono. I’m suprised this isn’t set by default.
I just set it to downmix to mono in Handbrake and it’s been alright. I’ll definitely do some reading/comparing to see what this setting is all about though.