Pre-Transcode

[Tythus]

What I am looking for at the moment is a way to pre-transcode all the video on my media server in one click so the idea would be that whenever I want to add content for the server to be-able to use in a preselected area it would check the file against the accepted format and if its not compatible it then converts it to the new format and either leaves or deletes the old file I would find this very handy.

[Raptor399]

I doubt you are truly looking for that.

Transcoding costs a lot of resources (cpu power, disk space) and takes a lot of time. If there were such a button, you wouldn't be able to use your computer for the coming month or longer, depending on the size of your library and the number of devices you want to view the media on.

Because of this PMS takes a different approach. Using lazy evaluation it only transcodes on the fly when it is really needed.
This is a good thing. Learn to love it.

In special cases transcoding in advance can come in handy, and there are other tools that help you to manually transcode files.
PMS was specifically designed to avoid manual transcoding.

[Tythus]

I am sadly as while my fileserver can pull enough MB via being a file server it doesn't have enough to real-time encode so I was wanting to know if I could just slap my collection on and let it do it as soon as possible I admit the first time it does it will take forever and a half but for any newer things I put on it will take barely any time comparatively.

[meskibob]

This, as Raptop399 details, is outside the scope of PMS. There are other programs that can accomplish what you want (Handbrake seems to be pretty popular on the forum, although you need to take the time to make sure the correct options are selected for optimal playback)

[Tythus]

Pardon my ignorance but handbrake?

[meskibob]

http://www.google.com/search?q=handbrake