Limiting Resolution to Device Without Transcoding ?

I recently started adding some 4K video content to my Mezmo library but not all devices are able to support 4K yet (i.e. my Raspberry Pis etc..). I was hoping to stop them from being able to play the 4K video files by setting the Max Video Size in the Performance tab to 1080 but because I disable transcoding for the device Mexxmo sends the video file anyway at 4K vs. just not playing it because it exceeds the max resolution. Is this maybe a bug ? Or was it just anticipated that transcoding would be enabled and thus transcode down to the max resolution ? These files are 30mbps HEVC files so transcoding isn't realistic. I'd prefer that Mezzmo just not serve them up on devices which can't support them when the Max Resolution is set..

If transcoding is enabled the videos will be transcoded to the max resolution. With transcoding disabled videos are delivered without transcoding so the original 4k file is listed. The only time Mezzmo hides videos from the list is if there is a content rating set where the video exceeds the content rating and should not be shown. There is currently no direct way to hide videos that exceed the resolution on the device, possibly you could re-use the content ratings for this purpose if you are not already using this and set a custom content rating on the files and then set the device to not allow this content rating. The custom content rating could have the age set to 4000 for example.

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Originally Posted by Peter

If transcoding is enabled the videos will be transcoded to the max resolution. With transcoding disabled videos are delivered without transcoding so the original 4k file is listed. The only time Mezzmo hides videos from the list is if there is a content rating set where the video exceeds the content rating and should not be shown. There is currently no direct way to hide videos that exceed the resolution on the device, possibly you could re-use the content ratings for this purpose if you are not already using this and set a custom content rating on the files and then set the device to not allow this content rating. The custom content rating could have the age set to 4000 for example.

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Thanks Peter. I am already using the content rating option. I wasn't looking to hide the 4k videos from the 1080 clients. I was just hoping that the Mezzmo behavior was to not serve the 4k video files to the 1080 clients since they exceed the max video size option. Basically if a 1080 client clicked on a 4K video file nothing would happen if transcoding is disabled. To me I just thought this would be desired behavior for the Max Video size option.

Disabling transcoding is treated as a way to bypass the device profile formats and deliver all files without modification. Pre-transcoding the files would allow them to be played with transcoding disabled so this might be a solution to avoid the problem where the files show an error when trying to play them.

After a bit of thought, my original plan not working and doing some testing I am going to go a different route. I am replacing the Raspberry Pis with Vero 4k+ units which can play 4K HEVC but can downscale it to 1080P output for my 2 TVs which don't yet support 4K. This gives me the advantge of all streaming end points (except web) being able to play 4K files without any transcoding. At some point in the future I'll replace these 2 TVs with ones which support 4K.