[mythtv-users] Playing nice with plex/what to transcode to?

[Michael]

On 12/28/2016 04:37 AM, Mike Perkins wrote:
> On 27/12/16 23:37, Gary Buhrmaster wrote:
>> On Tue, Dec 27, 2016 at 11:09 PM, Monkey Pet <monkeypet at gmail.com> 
>> wrote:
>>> I have mythtv with the HDhomerun ATSC tuners. the default save file 
>>> is *.ts.
>>> Unfortunately, plex doesn't recognize them as valid, so I plan to 
>>> transcode
>>> the files to something else.
>>
>>
> .ts is just a wrapper around the content stream. It stands for 
> "transport stream" and is basically just a chunk of what arrives at 
> your antenna/ cable port. The contents may be of a number of different 
> formats including mpeg and H264 plus perhaps alternative audio 
> streams, MHEG info, EPG, control streams, etc.
>
> Plex likely can't play it because it doesn't know what is inside. A 
> .mpg suffix tricks the recipient into believing that is what the file 
> is and for OTA ATSC that is likely correct. The actual differences lie 
> in the timing of individual frames and most software can compensate 
> for that.
>
> The "clean" way to deal with this is with a transparent decode, which 
> will take in the .ts file and retime it to be kosher .mpg. If you set 
> up the transcode elements to be just "copy" then it shouldn't touch 
> the content or degrade it in any way. You are basically doing a file 
> copy with a little cleanup along the way.
>

I am using mythlink to generate a tree of video file links for Plex.  It 
recognizes and uses the .ts files without any issue on my system.  I 
haven't had to do anything else to play Myth shows on my plex systems or 
to sync them to devices when I travel.


Michael