Video Files - playing, editing, metacommentary |OT|

[the-pi-guy]

i should add that my Plex server is running an i3-14100 with no dedicated gpu.  

The integrated GPU should be really good at live transcoding, but it's not necessarily something I want to count on.  

[the-pi-guy]

Been working on a custom scheduled task to downscale my 4k movies for when people struggle to stream them. 


Kind of fun.

- have a C# project publishing to my NAS. 

- had to set up the conversion (4k -> a low bitrate 1080p, while mapping all the audio and subtitles)

- figured out how to use the gpu instead

- still have to figure out why it crashes after it's done.

Plex will also do this, but I have been having issues with it. It hasn't been running. And Plex doesn't keep the subtitles.

My app is working mostly well, except it throws an error when it finishes a video.

It validates the output afterwards and everything is good, but it seems like ffmpeg is throwing an error. But it doesn't seem to really be affecting anything.

[Legend]

My app is working mostly well, except it throws an error when it finishes a video.

It validates the output afterwards and everything is good, but it seems like ffmpeg is throwing an error. But it doesn't seem to really be affecting anything.

Did you vibecode your app? Maybe AI is at fault for the error.

And if you didn't, maybe AI can fix the error.

[the-pi-guy]

Did you vibecode your app? Maybe AI is at fault for the error.

And if you didn't, maybe AI can fix the error.

I vibe coded a couple parts of it.  


I guess I'm not worried about it. 


Just vibe coded a multi threading for it. 

And that's working great actually. Downscaling two videos about as fast as it was downscaling one. 

[the-pi-guy]

Been working on a custom scheduled task to downscale my 4k movies for when people struggle to stream them. 


Kind of fun.

- have a C# project publishing to my NAS. 

- had to set up the conversion (4k -> a low bitrate 1080p, while mapping all the audio and subtitles)

- figured out how to use the gpu instead

- still have to figure out why it crashes after it's done.

Plex will also do this, but I have been having issues with it. It hasn't been running. And Plex doesn't keep the subtitles.

In summary:

- check every directory under the Movies/ folder
- check each video's resolution, skip if less than 4k.
- 4k videos will transcode to 1080p at 8 Mbps, copy all the subtitles, and transcode the audio to I think aac. Something to maximize compatibility.
- it prints a loading bar to the console based on the percentage.


.net has a nice utility where you can do a for each async with a specified limit. Made it very easy to spin off into a multi threaded app.


I did mention that Plex does have a feature like this. But the scheduled job has been broken for like a year. You can run it manually, but eh. I'm actually running pretty similar settings to one of the profiles Plex has, with the exception that Plex doesn't keep picture based subtitles (apparently for compatibility reasons)*. Which is what all my 4k movies have...  

*But I don't know of any devices that don't play those subtitles, so *shrugs*

Was looking at doing something like this 6 months ago, but I didn't commit a lot of time to it.


Feeling very accomplished this weekend. 

[the-pi-guy]

I have around 168 4k Movies. 

Take probably 1.5 weeks to transcode them all.