Avoiding transcoding ...

[Efficient_Good_5784]

All people I ever met in person or online rips their DVDs and BluRays with makemkv, mostly because it is the best container.

I find it strange that such an important container type is not supported by a client for a server that services such rips - it seems to be the most logical thing to FIRST support MKV, simply as most content will be available in this container format.

I never bothered before, as I locally just use VLC to play anything.
But after I found Jellyfin, I liked the idea of such a server - and even a way to watch from remote.
But I cannot do that with such an amount of remux files ...

That means, either ditch Jellyfind or re-encode ALL my stuff as MP4, loosing most subtitle track.
I will need some days to get over that.

If want, take this up with Apple as they are the ones that created Safari and what it supports.

Yes, I know - but constant creation of immense amounts of new files is nearly as bad, just the CPU usage and time is smaller without transcodes.

You may not know, but constantly writing new files in a large number and in terms of total size is surely going to kill your disk, regardless if HD or SSD - and your whole Mac with M* CPU, as normally you cannot replace it's disk.

It is totally unacceptable to me (and sure most people) that such files get created - I need to remove both transcoding and remuxing!

What happens in the future when you buy a different device that doesn't work with your current files?
Are you going to convert them all again to work on the new devices?

Transcoding exists for this reason.

No, I did not misinterprete.
I know this and I noticed the "remux" in the playback information - also the files in the transcoding cache.
What I tried to say here is, that from the Codec information page, H265 should NOT directly playable from a MKV container - but it is (with remux because of the container).
At least, this is how I read the table.
More clear?

No it's not. The whole reason the remux happens is because Safari cannot play HEVC (H265) content inside an MKV container.
That's why Jellyfin switches to using an MP4 container.

You are misinterpreting the act of the video being direct as it being from inside an MKV container.
The client is direct playing it from inside the new MP4 container that is sent to it.
The MKV container was long since ditched and never reached the client.

No, I sure don't want Jellyfin to either transcode or remux anything!
Instead, I will need to re-encode Terabytes of data, which let's be freeze in horror.
I need encodings that will not need transcoding or remuxing anymore ....

The only choice you have is to use a client that can direct play your MKV files.

You should check out Jellyfin Media Player. It uses MPV as the player, so it can direct play MKV files.
https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-media-player

So, for DTS 5.1ch, AAC with 384 would be best?
This is only half or a quarter of the DTS tracks, which seems ... a bit low.

No. You need 2 channels only. 5.1 channels does not work everywhere.

You need to transcode the audio to always be 2.0 if you want the most chances of not needing a transcode or remux.