Transcoding support

[rudnypc]

it could be interesting when clicking play, the system could transcode with ffmpeg to formats compatible with the player. Some formats are not visible on the web.

[KiraLT]

I tried it before (to convert MKV to MP4). The issue was, that it needs a stream from the start. So you lose skipping support (you can only watch video from the start without skipping anything). Maybe it is possible to implement skipping (like cache meta info from the start and then skip and transcode)

Another issue is that transcoding requires a lot of CPU.

[omgbox]

there is a established project which is already doing what you describe, i am not sure if you are aware of it , check out webtor.io it also has subtitles and chromecast support .

Features
Online torrent content streaming without waiting for full download
On-the-fly content transcoding
Downloading torrent as ZIP-archive
subtitle subtitle transcoding, srt to vtt_
OpenSubtitles support
Streaming of external resources (including transcoding)

also awaiting for wasm player client side , here looking forward for a web assembly mkv player maybe in few years

[omgbox]

like to share this also, HLS streaming app, maybe this code could help out

[omgbox]

KiraLT check this out, i think you were talking about this, if you are planning on adding ffmpeg have a look at his code, maybe this could be added later or give you better understanding how it works. his project hls-vod

[f8ith]

https://github.com/leeroybrun/webtorrent-transcode
This uses a custom video.js to implement time seeking. It works beautifully. I'm going to adapt the code to work with torrent-stream-server and hopefully submit a PR soon™

It is quite hacky upon inspection, but it works. It doesn't work if you try to remux the video instead of transcoding it though. My fork adds an additional play button that triggers a transcoded stream, which by default transcodes the video into x264 MP4 stream with hard English subs if they exist in supported containers. Haven't gotten to adding a plugin for changing subtitles yet.