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FAQ - Content

What is Direct Play, Direct Stream and Transcoding?

Not All Devices Are Equal!
You can use many different kinds of devices to watch media. You might have a mobile smartphone that you take with you on the way to work, a tablet you use while relaxing in the house, and a full-featured streaming device in your home cinema. Each of these devices have a different set of ideal needs for playing back media.

The app understands the device it’s running on. It knows the ideal media resolution, whether it can handle a particular audio format (Dolby Digital, AAC, etc.), and what file format it prefers. When the app connects to a server, it tells the server about itself, so the server knows how to tailor media sent to it.

  • Direct Play: The client supports the container, video stream, and audio stream natively. The server just sends the media file as-is to the client. This uses very little CPU power.

  • Direct Stream: The client supports the video stream and audio stream, but not the container. The server remuxes the file before sending it to the client (copies the video stream and audio stream into a compatible container). This uses very little CPU power.

  • Transcode: The client does not support the video stream and/or the audio stream. The server re-encodes the video, audio, or both into a compatible format. Transcoding video uses a lot of CPU power, but transcoding audio uses little to moderate CPU power.

Note: Subtitles can introduce a wrinkle here sometimes. Even if a file’s audio, video, and container are all compatible with the app, if a subtitle stream is selected and is not compatible with the app, then the server will “burn in” the subtitle text within the video. This requires a full transcode of the video stream.

Make sure you have a device that can handle the video properly!

A lot of devices have issues because Plex/Emby doesn't update all their apps the same. They give the best updates to some apps like the NVIDIA Shield and Apple TV 4K. Some devices don't do well some Smart TVs and some Chromecast models.

Try to get the NVIDIA Shield, Apple TV 4K, Roku Ultra, or Amazon Firestick 4K if possible. These have generally good support and are easier to find and buy. Try to stay away from the web based client, if you are on a PC/Mac try and download the Media Player.

If you have a smart TV with a built-in app, and movies always get stuck, try changing to one of the devices above!

Does Celestia Media support transcoding?

We do allow transcoding but only for Full-HD or lower content. Transcoding 4K content is not allowed and will result in our server to end the stream with a message to change the settings to Direct Play or to switch over to a Full-HD or lower version of the media.

4K movies not working?

Streaming 4K requires a 100% compatible 4K device, and media app – Transcoding of 4K is not allowed as this requires too many of the server resources, due to this, 4K is only meant to be “Direct played” to prevent resource starvation on the servers.

In order for you to direct play 4K, your device must meet basic requirements:

  • The device must support HEVC (Video codec).
  • The device must support the chosen audio codec (AC3, DTS, TrueHD or similar).
  • The internet connection of your device, should exceed 150 Mbps
  • The device must be configured for remote max or original quality streaming within the app.
  • If you use subtitles, the device must natively support the subtitle format.

Whether 4K will work for you, and the amount of “work” you must put in, in order to make 4K work on your device, will vary depending on your setup. Using 4K requires some knowledge of the app, the 4K media and your device.

If you try transcoding 4k, you will experience one of the following symptoms:

  • Your stream will crash, with the message “Transcoding streams are not allowed from the 4K Movie library. Please set the playback quality to Original or Max quality. If that still does not work, please watch the movie in the Movies library.”
  • Your stream will never start, and spin endlessly trying to load.

Why do some 4K movies look washed out/really gray?

That would be because your device (monitor or tv) doesn't support HDR content. Not all 4K movies are HDR by the way. The highest requirement is HDR10 and TrueHD 7.1 for audio.

4K Media buffering or stutter?

If your device supports 4K, your internet connection speed is at least 100 Mbps but your 4K video still stutters? One of these is probably the issue:

The chosen audio format for the 4K video is not supported by your device, mostly due to TrueHD 7.1 audio. Try a different audio track. The chosen subtitle type is PSG and not SRT. PSG subtitles are images that the server tries to transcode into the stream causing it to stutter. Select a SRT subtitle file.

Why is everything buffering?

Unfortunately, your internet may not be ideal for the quality you are trying to stream at even if you have a high end device. Please refer to the recommended minimum internet speeds.

Why doesn't my Chromecast play sound?

Chromecasts seem to have issues with surround sound. We found that simply disabling surround sound in the Chromecast does the trick!

Some content has foreign audio, what do I do?

Some content does not come with an English audio track by default. If available, you can switch the audio stream from the foreign language to English or use subtitles.