[Feature] Multi-resolution video transcoding

[gyscos]

I have searched the existing feature requests, both open and closed, to make sure this is not a duplicate request.

• Yes

The feature

Hi, and thanks for this great software!

One of the issues when selecting video transcoding parameters is the need to support multiple clients: encoding videos as high-res would benefit desktop users watching videos in fullscreen, while it would just be heavier to load on small mobile devices without obvious benefits.

One solution to this problem is to encode several videos using an array of parameters, and select the appropriate one to load on the client.

This would be a large change with multiple parts:

• A change to the video transcoding settings to allow specifying a list of settings
• A change to the storage layout and DB registration for transcoded video to support several transcoded videos per asset.
• A change to the client to detect the viewport size and select the appropriate video to load. Probably also a UI element (button/dropdown) to manually change this selection if desired. Future improvements could consider connection speed, and even automatically switching to a lower-res video if playback is interrupted by a slow connection, but at this time it'd be going full youtube, and that might be a long way off.

I understand this is a lot of work for a relatively niche improvement.

If it simplifies things, we could also consider having a fixed number of "slots" rather than an arbitrary list of arbitrarily different codecs. I suspect up to 3 options (for example "best"/near-original, "good"/default and "fast"/mobile) would cover most uses.

Platform

• Server
• Web
• Mobile

[gyscos]

Nevermind, I did look for duplicated issues but missed the discussion tab. This is a duplicate of #19958.

[gyscos]

Actually looks like #19958 was closed "as duplicate" (probably by mistake, as the linked duplicate is quite far from the closed discussion), so let's keep at least one discussion open.

[bo0tzz]

I'm going to close this as a duplicate of the root #7666 anyways, as covering this need by generating a whole bunch of transcodes ahead of time would be very storage intensive so we're unlikely to go that way.

[gyscos]

I'm not sure this would really be storage intensive. Compared to the current solution of using the highest quality setting, lower quality would likely end up taking a very small fraction of the highest quality (or the original) video size.
And on-demand transcoding is not realistic for even medium scale (10+ concurrent users) without support for transcode farms. It is an entirely different solution to a different problem.

I understand if the answer is "we do not want to support multiple preview files per asset because it would take too much space" (though I would disagree with it), but marking it as duplicate is quite misleading.

[gyscos]

The linked discussion does not even mention multi resolution or settings in the original post, only how to save space for the current single config. There seems to be very little overlap between the two.

[bo0tzz]

The requested end result is the same, to have video served based on the client's needs, the only difference is the proposed solution. That's enough for me to consider it a duplicate.

[gyscos]

The original post in #7666 does not mention adapting to the client. And indeed a lot of the other comments is about on-demand and caching, and not about handling (or configuring) multiple settings. Actually I'm not sure I can find any comment about that.

Are you suggesting we should use #7666 to talk about these different subjects, and it won't be flagged as hijacking that discussion?

[bo0tzz]

does not mention adapting to the client.

But the the draft PR does, and any reasonable implementation of it would bring it 'for free' kind of by default. A feature request is more than its initial post.