H.265 Native on client player

[Efficient_Good_5784]

Not sure how you reached this conclusion that I don't understand why transcoding is needed.

Sorry, I read too much into it and assumed so because of this:

So will we ever see a day when we won't need to transcode in real time or is there a technical reason the client playback software can't decode certain codecs? (licensing perhaps?)  

Basically, I read the "is there a technical reason" part of this quote and thought you didn't know.

Also, Handbrake lets you add a folder and it will load all video files in all the subfolders within it. You can then add all the videos to be encoded in one go. Just let your computer run until all the videos have been encoded. There's even programs online that lets you automate media being sent to Handbrake and the final encode stored in a sorted location.

This is exactly what I have been doing, but I still need to go through and find out which files are problematic first and that is the biggest pain. So for now I test on the lowest common denominator (the browser) and re-encode as needed.

The biggest issue you'll face here is that the same problamatic files can be a problem in some clients, and be fine in others. As of right now, if you want the most compatibility for all clients, your best bet is to encode everything to AVC (H.264).

Also, there's things that force a transcode like certain subtitle types and special audio files not being compatible with the client. Like how ASS subs can't be direct played on browsers.