Hi,I'm looking to dive into ReadyNAS and get all of my pictures and music somewhere central so they're shared across all of my devices. As a bonus, and something I don't do today, I'd also like to rip a decent sized DVD collection onto it so that I can watch the movies on our different devices (iOS, Android, SmartHUB/DLNA, etc) easily. It sounds in some threads like I need a device powerful enough to transcode the videos (ReadyNAS Pro 6) but in others it seems like it can be done on any of the devices.Could someone help clarify in what situations I would need to transcode video?Thanks,Chris

Transcoding is the direct digital-to-digital data conversion of one encoding to another such as movie files or audio files. This is usually done in cases where a target device does not support the format or has limited storage capacity that mandates a reduced file size.

HERBIEO wrote:Transcoding is the direct digital-to-digital data conversion of one encoding to another such as movie files or audio files. This is usually done in cases where a target device does not support the format or has limited storage capacity that mandates a reduced file size.I assume I'm fine with music, since they're just MP3s and everything under the sun supports MP3s... how big of a deal is this with video these days? My target devices are mostly Android (Honeycomb and above), and iPhone 4's+, iPad 2+ type devices. I also have an xbox 360 that would be an added benefit, but probably not a deal killer if it didn't work.

It's a bigger deal for video. Most portable devices support AVC (H.264)'s constrained baseline profile, and many also support H.263/mpeg 4 ("xvid")However, there are a lot of non-compliant H.264 MKVs floating around. And a lot of other codecs (DV, Motion JPG, VC1, VP8, Theora in use ). Also, these files might also need audio transcoding (for instance ogg is not supported on many mobile devices).However, you don't necessarily have to use real-time transcoding. Another option is to convert your media offline into something your devices can play.

StephenB wrote:However, there are a lot of non-compliant H.264 MKVs floating around.I'd be ripping my own DVDs, so I suspect I'm not worried about things that are "floating around" since I'd be able to control the format I suspect (but I'm new to this...)StephenB wrote:However, you don't necessarily have to use real-time transcoding. Another option is to convert your media offline into something your devices can play.Thank you - this line helps clarify a ton for me. It sounds like so long as I rip into a format that the players support, I'd be fine. This wasn't the way my mind was working - I was thinking that some devices just weren't going to stream, but I guess that's not really the case.

Chris-Boston wrote:It sounds like so long as I rip into a format that the players support, I'd be fine.Yes. An MP4 container with AVC video and AAC LC audio should play on your iPAD just fine (and also on your Android devices). The other aspect is to choose a file size / bit rate which fits your NAS and network, as well as giving you reasonable quality. You likely will need to experiment a bit with the first couple of DVDs, but once you find a working recipe it will become routine.

What exactly is transcoding? | NETGEAR Communities

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HERBIEO

Aspirant

Jun 28, 2012

PapaBear wrote:
Handbrake does a good job of encoding to .mp4, it's default is .m4v which is on the i devices. The few times I have forgotten to change it, I simply changed the extension and never had a problem. Some one more versed in all the video formats could probably tell what difference there is if any. I use .mp4 because it play nicely in Media Player.

PapaBear wrote:
Handbrake does a good job of encoding to .mp4, it's default is .m4v which is on the i devices. The few times I have forgotten to change it, I simply changed the extension and never had a problem. Some one more versed in all the video formats could probably tell what difference there is if any. I use .mp4 because it play nicely in Media Player.

Read this wiki Papabear this answers your question about mp4 and m4v
https://trac.handbrake.fr/wiki/Containers

I like handbrake i use it for all my mkv video's.

StephenB

Guru - Experienced User

Jun 28, 2012

PapaBear wrote:
The few times I have forgotten to change it, I simply changed the extension and never had a problem. Some one more versed in all the video formats could probably tell what difference there is if any. I use .mp4 because it play nicely in Media Player.

PapaBear wrote:
The few times I have forgotten to change it, I simply changed the extension and never had a problem. Some one more versed in all the video formats could probably tell what difference there is if any. I use .mp4 because it play nicely in Media Player.

Apple uses m4a, m4p, mp4, and m4v as its extension for mp4.

Normally m4a is DRM-free, and m4p is not. Both are audio-only. Apple usually likes m4v for video (whether it has DRM or not). All of these (mp4, m4v, m4a, m4p) use the standard container format MP4 which is defined by MPEG/ISO.
BTW, most MP4 video players cannot deal with AC3 ("Dolby digital") in an MP4 container - this is an extension that Apple uses. So with Handbrake you need to be careful if you specify that audio.

MKV is totally different from MP4, and is not a true standard at all. It is based on an open source, but there is no standards body managing the specification. There are a lot of MKV files out there though, it is particularly popular for BluRay rips. AVCHD and MP4 might replace it over time, we will have to see.

Chris_Boston
Aspirant
Jun 28, 2012
Really appreciate all the great information in this thread - well above and beyond anything I was looking for and I think it's going to be really helpful for a lot of people coming across it.

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What exactly is transcoding?

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