direct-play-nice

direct-play-nice is a cross-platform CLI tool that converts video files to profiles more likely to Direct Play across common streaming devices.

What Is Direct Play?

Direct Play means the client can play the original media file as-is, without server-side video transcoding. In practice, this is usually the lowest-load, highest-quality playback path for media servers.

Official references:

• Plex: https://support.plex.tv/articles/200250387-streaming-media-direct-play-and-direct-stream/
• Jellyfin codec support (goal is Direct Play): https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/clients/codec-support
• Emby playback methods: https://emby.media/support/articles/DirectPlay-Stream-Transcoding.html

Quick Install

cargo install direct_play_nice

Quick Start

Convert one file using the default multi-device profile:

direct_play_nice input.mkv output.mp4

Target specific device families:

direct_play_nice --device chromecast,roku input.mkv output.mp4

Probe local hardware/codec capabilities:

direct_play_nice --probe-hw --probe-codecs --only-video --only-hw --probe-json

GPU Acceleration

direct_play_nice supports GPU acceleration in two places:

• Bitmap subtitle OCR (PGS/VobSub/DVD) via ONNX Runtime providers
• H.264/HEVC hardware transcoding via FFmpeg hardware encoders

Project-specific behavior:

• --ocr-engine auto prefers pp-ocr-v4 on modern GPU stacks
• legacy NVIDIA (Maxwell-class / compute capability <= 5) auto-selects pp-ocr-v3 for better stability
• OCR benchmark evidence in this repo shows full-movie OCR at 87.62 FPS (3.65x realtime) on a self-hosted Linux GPU run (OCR benchmark report)

Official compatibility and architecture references are collected in the manual: Hardware Acceleration.

Sonarr Download Hook Example

Use Sonarr Settings -> Connect -> Custom Script and enable the script on the On Download event. Point it to the direct_play_nice binary with a config file:

/path/to/direct_play_nice --config-file /path/to/direct-play-nice-sonarr.toml

Example direct-play-nice-sonarr.toml:

streaming_devices = "all"
servarr_output_extension = "mp4"
servarr_output_suffix = ".fixed"
video_codec = "h264"
video_quality = "1080p"
audio_quality = "192k"
hw_accel = "auto"
sub_mode = "auto"
ocr_engine = "pp-ocr-v4"
ocr_format = "srt"
ocr_write_srt_sidecar = false
skip_codec_check = false

# Optional: require imported media to contain English audio.
# Start with dry-run while tuning candidate policy and custom formats.
servarr_language_check = true
servarr_language_dry_run = true
servarr_language_candidate_policy = "custom-format-or-title"
required_audio_languages = "eng"
# Leave subtitle requirements empty unless subtitle completeness is a goal.
required_subtitle_languages = ""
# Optional: for trusted English-native libraries, retag untagged audio before
# deciding the file is missing English audio.
servarr_untagged_audio_language = "eng"

To catch delayed dubs/subs that arrive after the first import, run the same binary periodically with --servarr-language-audit. Use --servarr-language-audit-scope inventory for a Sonarr current-library sweep. Before applying broad language replacements, follow the Safe language upgrade runbook in the Sonarr/Radarr manual.

Supported Devices

For the full model matrix and constraints, see SUPPORTED_DEVICES.md.

Documentation

For advanced usage, read the manual:

• direct-play-nice Book (mdBook)
• AI OCR for bitmap subtitles (setup + runtime notes): Subtitle OCR
• GPU acceleration and supported architecture references: Hardware Acceleration
• Plex auto-refresh workflow: Plex Refresh
• Arr custom-script operation: Sonarr/Radarr Integration
• Hardware probing and diagnostics: Probe and Debug

For Rust API docs (library internals used by the CLI):

cargo doc --no-deps

License

GPL-3.0-only