Disabling All Transcoding?

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WirlyWirly
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Joined: Sun Jan 08, 2023 6:10 pm

Disabling All Transcoding?

Post by WirlyWirly »

Hello,

I'm wanting to use UMS to dire-stream files to Kodi. That's it, NO transcoding, messing with subtitles/tracks, none of that. Just plain direct-streaming.

There are so many advanced settings, but I don't see any that disables all but direct streaming. Any help?
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mik_s
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Re: Disabling All Transcoding?

Post by mik_s »

There is a conf for Kodi that will stream everything that is supported by it and only the unsupported formats will be transcoded. This should automatically be used once Kodi is detected.

If for some reason some videos are being transcoded when they shouldn't be then the conf can be tweaked.
To make sure that file will play streaming then you can try playing from the #--TRANSCODE--# folder and choose "No transcoding"
(if you do not see it, enable "show the #--Transcode--# folder" in the GUI on the navigation tab, in the web GUI it is in the "virtual folders/files" section)

There is the option "Skip transcoding for the following extensions" in transcoding settings but this will effect any renderer connected to UMS, not just Kodi and anything unsupported by it will not be playable.

The best option to reduce unnecessary transcoding is to make sure the conf is correct. If you need help with any changes to the conf I can help but will need to see logs trying to play that video so I can see why UMS is choosing to transcode when it can be streamed, see the section in red above on how to do them.
Logs are important for us to help, Please follow This Link before asking for support. Just a forum cleaner, Will help if I can but no expert.
WirlyWirly
Posts: 2
Joined: Sun Jan 08, 2023 6:10 pm

Re: Disabling All Transcoding?

Post by WirlyWirly »

Thank you,

I was looking for a checkbox that would disable transcoding, I didn't notice there was a field for excluding extensions. I set the wildcard * and it seems to be working. To play it safe, I also emptied the subtitle settings, audio settings, disabled thumbnails, removed folders such as #--Transcode--#, Media Library, Live-Subtitles, etc. Basically anything I could find that might speed things up and make it so I'm only served the hierarchy of folders/files.

A few questions;

1) Is there a way to disable conf files in order to speed up browsing? It seems that when browsing folders, UMS will try to detect if each file in that folder can be played on the render. This really slows down browsing, especially when there are hundreds of files to be checked in the folder...

Code: Select all

...
13:32:54 DEBUG Final verdict: "Cat Soup (2001).mkv" will be streamed since it is forced by configuration
13:32:55 DEBUG Final verdict: "Chronus (2014).mkv" will be streamed since it is forced by configuration
...
2) Under the Shared Content tab, there's a column that says Name. I'm curious if that's used to override the name of the shared-folder. I have 2 shared folders, both named Media, but they're on different drives. When I access the DLNA server from within Kodi, there's not really a way to tell them apart. I'd like to avoid renaming them directly if possible.

3) Is there a way to disable the http server? I saw the setting in UMS.conf to disable the webplayer, but not one to disable the http server entirely.

4) Is backing-up the UMS.conf file enough to retain all configurations across computers? The file-manager in Kodi shows the server name as having a long and unique looking string (upnp://5051fc03-2b09-4987...). I'm curious if that ID will change between windows installs, which I think will mean I'll have to scrape everything all over again in Kodi.
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mik_s
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Re: Disabling All Transcoding?

Post by mik_s »

To speed things up you have to enable the cache and that will scan everything once on startup and store everything in the database so when you do browse those folders in your renderer this can be retrieved much quicker. The inital scan can take a while with a large media library though but should not slow down browsing any more than if the cache was turned off. This also stores thumbnails, subtitles info, supported formats and whether to stream or transcode so there is no need to disable everything as this severely limits what UMS can do.

The renderer conf files are only used when a renderer is detected, and as you have forced everything to be steamed there is no decision making on how UMS should handle them. You will quite likely come across files that are not supported and cannot be played by your renderer that way though. The final verdict response in the logs will have no effect on speed of browsing and is just there to log what it is doing.

If you have a folder called media on 2 different drives then you can create a virtual folder that combines them both into one on your renderer and that is where you can name that folder anything you want. If it is set as a standard folder at the moment you can't change that name but I hope that will change in future versions. At the moment you will have to rename one of them something different to tell them apart.

I don't know all the details about the http server but I assume it is used for the web settings now as they are planning to move away from the Java GUI so is not a good idea to disable it.

If you want to back up the settings you should do the whole C:\ProgramData\UMS folder (in windows), your shared content will be in the SHARED.conf file. Each computer will have its own unique UID which is stored in UMS.conf so not a good idea to share this between them as this could cause problems if many computers on your network have the same ID. Ideally you only want 1 computer on your network running UMS.
Logs are important for us to help, Please follow This Link before asking for support. Just a forum cleaner, Will help if I can but no expert.
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