Evolution never stops. And MC might get a improved transcoder engine some day.
This engine will allow media coming from any source to be played on almost any device
by converting the source media format to a format that the target device is able to render.
For this new transcoding engine I want to start a thread which collects all the ideas people
might have about what improments it shall bring to enhance the user experience to the max.
These are my suggestions:
AUDIO
- transcode video-audio (audio stream inside a video)
- apply DSP effects (including 3rd party like VST) to video-audio
- selectable target channel format: 7.1, 5.1, stereo, mono etc. (if the target container format supports the specific channel layout)
VIDEO
- content length info / byte seeking in transcoded video streams
You can ALWAYS skip forwards and backwards in a transcoded video stream on ANY renderer.
- support independent transcoding of audio and video:
(1) transcode video-audio only (including DSP) but don't transcode video frames (take them "as is")
(2) transcode video frames only but don't transcode video-audio (take it "as is")
(3) transcode both the video frames and the video-audio (including DSP)
- support repackaging media files into specific container formats (e.g. AVI, MP4, MKV) with or without transcoding (without = retargeting only)
E.g.: this would allow media renderers to play back MKV files in an AVI container when the MKV container format is not known to the specific renderer
- support repackaging of video streams (coming from webcams or HTTP / RTMP streams e.g.) into specific container formats (see above)
- support basic video DSP effects to be applied to the video frames on-the-fly like: color balance, contrast and brightness, saturation etc.
- add a user defined overlay to video frame output
This overlay may contain media information like play time, codec information, subtitles, tags and other things. Using an dedicated editor the user can define where the information will be displayed on the video frames. Each video frame will be imprinted with the overlay so that it becomes visible on the renderer.
So now please feel free to comment my suggestions or post your own ones. This thread shall be a reminder for the dev crew what should be included. Thx.