Video Quality

The Video Quality settings control how much visual detail Sovereign preserves when it has to transcode a stream, and the peak bandwidth that transcode is allowed to use. Together they let you trade picture quality against bandwidth and hardware load.

---

When These Settings Apply

Sovereign only re-encodes video when it has to. When the source video and audio codecs are already playable on the client, the stream is Direct Played, copied through untouched, and neither quality setting has any effect. The same goes for a Remux, where the video is copied and only audio is converted. See Transcoding for when a re-encode is required and how to read the reason Sovereign records for it.

When a transcode is required, two settings shape the result:

• Quality tier (Sovereign__Transcoding__VideoQualityTier) - the target level of detail. This drives how many bits each frame receives, so busy, fast-motion scenes (action, sports, grain) get more data than calm ones.
• Bitrate ceiling (Sovereign__Transcoding__MaxVideoBitrateBps) - a hard cap on peak bandwidth. The transcode never exceeds it, regardless of the quality tier (Intel Quick Sync is the one exception, explained below).

Sovereign spends bits to hit the quality target but doesn’t go past the ceiling, on software and GPU encoders alike. Each client also reports the highest bitrate it can take at the frame size it’s being sent, and when that’s lower than your ceiling it becomes the cap for that session. Sovereign’s clients report 10 Mbps for 1080p and below and 40 Mbps for 4K, so at the default 30 Mbps ceiling a 1080p transcode is held to 10 Mbps, and your ceiling is what caps a 4K one.

Note

Intel Quick Sync can’t hold a quality target and a bitrate cap at the same time. A Quick Sync transcode limited only by the global ceiling therefore encodes to the quality tier with no cap at all. When a viewer has asked for a lower bitrate, or the device reported a lower one (as every client does at 1080p and below), it targets that bitrate instead, and the tier no longer applies.

Note

A transcode keeps the source resolution unless the client can’t decode it: a 4K source stays 4K for a client that handles 4K, and is downscaled only when the client advertised a lower decode limit. Sovereign never downscales to fit a display, so the bitrate ceiling is the main lever that softens very high-bitrate 4K content down to a size your network can carry.

---

Quality Tiers

The quality tier is a single, encoder-independent setting. Sovereign translates it to the right internal quality target for whichever encoder ends up being used (software or GPU), so the same tier gives a comparable result across your hardware.

Tier	Picture Quality	Relative Size	Use For
Efficient	Good	Smallest	Bandwidth-constrained remote streaming, limited server capacity
Balanced	High	Moderate	A middle ground for mixed libraries and networks
HighQuality	Best, fewest artifacts (default)	Largest	Local playback with ample bandwidth; fast-motion / action content

HighQuality is the default. Drop to Balanced or Efficient if your server is bandwidth-constrained or struggling to keep ahead of playback.

Tip

Because the bitrate cap still applies, raising the tier helps most on calmer content and on GPU transcodes. In sustained high motion the cap is what limits quality, so for action-heavy libraries raise the tier and make sure the ceiling has headroom.

---

Choosing Settings for Your Scenario

Pick the row that best matches how your server is used. The ceiling values are starting points; adjust them to your upload bandwidth. A ceiling above 10 Mbps only changes 4K transcodes, since clients already cap 1080p at that.

Scenario	VideoQualityTier	MaxVideoBitrateBps	Why
Local network playback, plenty of bandwidth	HighQuality	20000000-40000000 (20-40 Mbps)	Nothing to conserve, so spend bits freely for the best picture
Remote streaming over the internet with limited upload	Efficient	4000000-8000000 (4-8 Mbps)	Keeps streams within a modest upload budget and avoids buffering
Action, sports, or film-grain heavy content	HighQuality	Raise until artifacts clear	Fast motion needs both a high quality target and ceiling headroom to look clean
Low-power server or GPU that struggles to keep up	Efficient	Lower the ceiling	Fewer bits per frame is faster to encode; pair with a faster encoder preset (see below)
Mostly Direct Play library (already-compatible codecs)	Leave default	Leave default	These settings rarely engage, since most playback is copied through without transcoding
Mixed audience, want per-user control	HighQuality	Generous (e.g. 30000000)	Set a high global cap and let individual users turn their own streams down (see below)

Tip

The encoder speed preset (Sovereign__Transcoding__VideoEncoderPreset, one of fast / medium / slow) is a separate knob that trades encoding speed for compression efficiency. It defaults to medium. On a server that struggles to keep up during playback, drop it to fast; on a powerful machine, slow can squeeze more quality into the same bitrate. VAAPI encoders ignore the preset.

---

Per-User Preferences

Each user can override both the quality tier and the bitrate ceiling on the Preferences tab of User Settings, and an admin can set them for any user from the Users page. That helps when one server feeds a mix of local TVs and remote phones on cellular data.

A user preference can only make playback lighter, never heavier:

• A requested quality tier is clamped to the global tier. A user may pick an equal or lower tier, never a higher one.
• A requested bitrate is clamped to the global ceiling. A user may request a lower cap, never a higher one.

So you can set a generous global tier and ceiling for your best clients, and bandwidth-limited users can still turn their own streams down without raising the load past the limits you set.

---

Example

# Best quality for a fast home network
Sovereign__Transcoding__VideoQualityTier=HighQuality
Sovereign__Transcoding__MaxVideoBitrateBps=30000000

# Conservative settings for remote streaming
Sovereign__Transcoding__VideoQualityTier=Efficient
Sovereign__Transcoding__MaxVideoBitrateBps=6000000

---

Next Steps

• Transcoding explains when Sovereign transcodes versus Direct Plays, and the reason recorded for every session.
• The full Configuration Overview lists every transcoding variable and its default.
• Hardware Acceleration explains how a GPU is detected and selected for a transcode.