Serviio

atc98092 wrote:I'm not certain exactly what you are describing. How are you changing the resolution of what you're watching? What are you using as your player?

Serviio profiles do not alter the output resolution. It can reduce bitrate, but that in itself doesn't change the resolution. It can change the video codec, but that might only change the resolution if you are watching a 4K video and need it transcoded to MPEG2 (for example). Serviio doesn't know what resolution your TV is capable of. It simply determines the TV make/model if possible and looks for the closest match in its profiles file. The profile is what tells Serviio if transcoding is called for and what format to use. Once that's determined, it simply transcodes the file in real time and streams it to the player. As you've noted, it uses a temporary folder location for those transcoded files. If you stop and start the video, it will continue to stream using those transcoded files. But if the stream is stopped and then you select a different video, or a different player begins streaming the same video, those transcoded files are deleted and it begins anew.

atc98092 wrote:OK, MediaBrowser. That switch isn't changing the resolution per se, but as I mentioned it's changing the bitrate. And that is going to require stopping the transcoding and starting over. It was originally transcoding at a certain bitrate, and when you change the quality setting you are requesting a different bitrate. There's no way for Serviio to reuse the previously transcoded files, so it has to start over.

atc98092 wrote:No, Serviio does not support retaining previously transcoded files. The problem is it would become a storage capacity issue, as well as the need to track the title and transcoding settings for each stream. The transcoded files will take about as much space as the original file, so keeping multiple copies would require a large storage space. And then the internal tracking Serviio would have to do to know which title was transcoded at what setting, and if that matches what is now being requested, would be a nightmare to program.

atc98092 wrote:The Internet providers usually have multiple versions of the same title, so no transcoding is required to provide different resolutions. But they also use something called Adaptive bitrate to adjust the stream on the fly. However, you have to remember that they have spent a lot of money to have the hardware to support that sort of functionality. For a home system, or even a small public facing media server, it would likely be simpler to have copies of the title with different levels of bitrates available. How you would configure that so the user can select the proper version, I can't say.

atc98092 wrote:I would think that might be possible, but it would be buried within a jar file for MediaBrowser. I would have no idea what file that is or how to edit that.