2016-01-14, 23:37
Does kodi support any sort of compressed files in addition to MP4 and wav? I'm lookin to compress my files as much as possible. Are there suggestions on what to do or is this as good as it will get?
2016-01-15, 09:37
What files? Video or audio files? Kodi mainly relies on FFmpeg for decoding and it support practically all modern codecs available today.
Up front I will say that my opinion is that re-compressing files it not worth it, and instead I suggest that you just buy a langer harddrive.
Codec discussion can get religious, however I would say that HEVC (H.265) is currently the best supported codec in Kodi of all the modern video codecs that offer very high compression. However note that higher than standard resolution HEVC decoding requires either a very fast CPU or a your dedicated "VPU" (Video Processor Unit) integrated in your device or computer.
If you want a good compromise that is something that that most devices can play without any problem then go with H.264 video codec and buy a slightly larger harddrive. Or better yet leave all your files as they are and only get a much larger harddrive.
For audio encoding the most commonly used codec for high compression today is AAC. With it just like any codec you can choose how high compression you want to use which means lower bitrates = smaller files, but high compression / low bitrate = worse audio quality. Audio files are usually so small anyway that might as well not bother with trying to use high compression.
If you do some research on your own I think that you will find that decoding HEVC (H.265) means that you have to buy a relativly expensive player device or computer, and no player is future proof, so in the end it today not worth using a higher compression, and again I suggest that it is instead less expensice to just buy a larger harddrive.
If you was planning on buying a new media player in anyway regardless then have a look at the Nvidia Shield TV as is one of a few hardware devices that both can playback all HEVC files and have great support for its manuafacturer.
Up front I will say that my opinion is that re-compressing files it not worth it, and instead I suggest that you just buy a langer harddrive.
Codec discussion can get religious, however I would say that HEVC (H.265) is currently the best supported codec in Kodi of all the modern video codecs that offer very high compression. However note that higher than standard resolution HEVC decoding requires either a very fast CPU or a your dedicated "VPU" (Video Processor Unit) integrated in your device or computer.
If you want a good compromise that is something that that most devices can play without any problem then go with H.264 video codec and buy a slightly larger harddrive. Or better yet leave all your files as they are and only get a much larger harddrive.
For audio encoding the most commonly used codec for high compression today is AAC. With it just like any codec you can choose how high compression you want to use which means lower bitrates = smaller files, but high compression / low bitrate = worse audio quality. Audio files are usually so small anyway that might as well not bother with trying to use high compression.
If you do some research on your own I think that you will find that decoding HEVC (H.265) means that you have to buy a relativly expensive player device or computer, and no player is future proof, so in the end it today not worth using a higher compression, and again I suggest that it is instead less expensice to just buy a larger harddrive.
If you was planning on buying a new media player in anyway regardless then have a look at the Nvidia Shield TV as is one of a few hardware devices that both can playback all HEVC files and have great support for its manuafacturer.
