Is that an option? It was my understanding anime stuff typically comes with several subtitles and in my case dual audio for each episode
not knowledgeable about them things but normal movies and shows with multiple audio streams and subtitles play just fine with directplay, selecting them from the client works fine, etc.
the only reasons I know of for transcoding would be if you have ancient clients that can’t play e.g HEVC or something, or if you’re on shitty broadband and it ain’t feasible to stream 4K to a phone.
Especially anime often use the superior .ass subtitle format, which many devices don’t support. Sadly Crunchyroll is switching to .srt which has broader support, so it likely won’t require burning them in the video (transcoding), which is the only positive thing (still a shame imo).
It’s immature but I laughed when I read superior .ass format.
gajahmada@awful.systems 11 hours ago
I watch a bunch of weekly anime stuff myself. Never have to worry about transcoding with my devices (locally) and just directplay it. Unless I watch it remotely then it transcodes, I never mess with the default settings and it’s fine.