Not able to watch your favorite movie or series on you TV?
Avoid “File Format Not Supported” or “Error Reading File” errors when watching videos from your DLNA server by converting them to the appropriate format.
What’s the problem?
Most often videos can be decoded by VLC or other video players , but Smart TVs (Samsung, Sony, Panasonic,…) and similar devices are not able to stream them from the DLNA server. This is because those devices do only support specific file formats. Therefore, the video files need to be converted before they can be streamed.
Which software is the best?
XMedia Recode is a great tool which is capable of converting a wide variety of different audio and video codecs. It also supports subtitles conversion such that they can be switched on/off on your TV. Many other video converts lack this feature.
Step-by-Step Guide
- Download XMedia Recode
On Windows, download and install XMedia Recode.
- Run program and select profile
Start the program and select a profile according to the device you want to watch the video on. If you want to support most devices, select the Matroska Multimedia Container (.mkv).
- Select video files
Next, choose the files you want to convert. Check the “Video” and the “Audio” tab. If the file is already in the correct format you might want to choose “Copy” instead of “Convert” to save conversion time and keep the original video quality. Most likely, either video or audio need to be converted to be readable by your device. If you want to copy subtiles, they must be selected in the subtitles tab.
- Add Jobs
Finally, add each file you want to convert as a job by clicking “Add to queue” in the top menu. Check you Queue and start the conversion by clicking “Encode”. Once converted the old files can be removed.
- Enjoy watching!