Server Side Transcoding

[jeffgt14]

Hi, love what you have going here. I might add quite a few separate issues so I hope you don't mind.

For this one, is there a way to let the server decide what gets transcoded? This app seems similar to Symfonium in that you can either get the raw file with no transcoding or select one of the prebuilt profiles on the client for the trancoding to occur. DSub has always been my go-to because it just pulls in whatever the server sends over.

I have profiles setup that transcodes 24/96 FLAC to 16/44 FLAC, MP3's to MP3's, DSD Wavpack files decompressed to PCM with filters applied then transcoded to 16/44 FLAC, Obscure files such as AC3 Audio from DVD's that get converted to FLAC. All this is handled by what I specify on the server and the client (DSub in this case) just takes the final transcode and streams it for me.

Tempo can handle my 24/96 FLAC files but not necessarily with my preferred dithering mechanism that I specify in my current transcodes. It's unable to handle my WAVPACK DSD files entirely because it doesn't know how to convert this to a PCM format that can be streamed. For obscure formats such as AC3 and MKA, Tempo just shows the files as (null) and can't handle them at all.

[c0utta]

Agree 100%

I also prefer the server to designate the transcoding, not the client. As Jeff says above, it enables fine tweaking for particular files, meaning the client just does what it's told.

[CappielloAntonio]

I would like to know how to replicate this behavior on the server first, I don't know if Navidrome or Gonic (the servers I use) have this capability, maybe yes or maybe not.
Then I would like to understand how the official stream API behaves when the rules for transcoding are enforced by the server.

Anyway, thanks for the suggestion, I'll keep that in mind!

[jeffgt14]

I can't speak for Navidrome (although from previous research, I believe it behaves the same), but I'm not sure you can completely replicate with Gonic but maybe enough for testing a single server side transcode vs client specified.

Gonic allows for the server to specify a transcode towards a specific client, however it is restricted to FFmpeg only and only on a 1:1 relationship so all input files must go through the same transcode process with the same output format. The custom profiles can be created within the transcode.go file.

I've created this as a feature request within Gonic, however, only Airsonic/Subsonic allows you to drop/symlink custom transcoders into the /var/airsonic/transcoders folder and have it available for the server to use. It allows you to specify, by client, how to transcode a file based on file format.

[ivan-avalos]

Supysonic is much better in this regard, because it allows you to use any custom command to decode and encode files from/to different formats. https://supysonic.readthedocs.io/en/latest/transcoding.html

[ivan-avalos]

Also, this might be a duplicate of my issue: #6

[CappielloAntonio]

Hello everyone, here we are. I added an option in the settings to give transcoding priority to the server, overriding any user settings.

It seems to work with Navidrome, but using the Subsonic API I miss the transcoding specification information (at least with Navidrome). The Child object by definition has two properties, "transcodedContentType" and "transcodedSuffix" which I would have expected to have a value do not.

Anyway, it works, so as soon as I release this new version I should be able to mark this issue as closed. You are free to reopen it or open new issues related to the problem.

[CappielloAntonio]

New version released, closing the issue