Video Playback

Video Station comes with an embedded player which allows you to play videos with once the package is installed on your Synology DiskStation.

In addition to playing videos on your local computer, you can also stream multimedia contents to DLNA/UPnP-compliant DMAs or AirPlay compatible devices for video playback. Before you start, please make sure you have been granted the AirPlay/DLNA Renderer privilege.

Play Videos

Playing videos with Video Station is fun and intuitive. For better viewing quality and faster transcoding speed, it is recommended you install VLC media player (Windows, Linux) on your local computer for video playback.

To play videos:

1. Select any video clip you want to play, and do either of the following to open the Video Player window:
   • Click the play icon at the bottom-right corner of the video image.
   • Click the Action drop-down menu, and click Play.
2. The video should start playing right away. If not, please make sure you have installed VLC media player on your local computer.
3. At the bottom of Video Player, do the following to control video playback:
   • Click Play/Pause to play or pause the video.
   • Click Next or Previous to play the next or previous video episode (if available).
   • Click Stop to stop playback.
   • Use the Progress bar to skip to any point you want.
   • Use the Volume bar to adjust the volume.
   • Click Settings to select a video playback quality and audio track.
     • Playback Quality:
     • Original: Available only when you are using streaming mode. Video Player starts playing the original files without transcoding if the VLC plugin, HTML5, and Flash are supported. If any of them is not supported, the files will be transcoded automatically for playback.
     • High/Medium/Low: Depending on the individual model and transcoding capabilities of your Synology DiskStation, the actual playback quality may slightly vary. Generally, the higher the quality is, the more system resources are occupied and the more bandwidth is taken up when video files are being transcoded. In this case, if you are not located in the local area network, it is suggested you choose medium or low quality for faster file transmission and transcoding. However, you may select high quality if you want to enjoy high-definition video.

     Note: Not all quality options are available for selection because of different transcoding capabilities of your Synology DiskStation. If none is available, Video Player can play videos still.

     • Audio Track: Available audio tracks for the video will be displayed on the menu. Select your preferred language to play. If the video has no audio tracks, no options will appear.
   • Click Subtitles to choose whether you want to play videos with subtitles.
     • If you have a subtitle file (in .srt format) with the same name as the video and both are located in the same folder, you can choose External subtitles.
     • If your video contains embedded subtitles, you should be able to see the subtitles during video playback. Select the embedded subtitles appearing with its language code onscreen.
     • Select No subtitles if you do not want the video to display subtitles.
   • Click Player to select a device to stream videos to.

   Note: HDCP (High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection) support is required if you want to stream videos to Apple TV for playback.

   • Click Fullscreen to play videos in the full-screen mode.

   Note: Subtitles may not be displayed when you play videos in the full-screen mode with VLC media player.

Transcode Videos

While playing videos, transcoding capability is a must when the video format is not supported by the client device. Most Synology NAS are equipped with the capability in software, able to detect whether transcoding is required and perform transcoding for playback if necessary. To learn more about video transcoding, please visit Synology website.

In addition to software decoding, hardware acceleration*, the use of computer hardware to perform some functions faster than is possible in software, leads to higher performance in transcoding. For models which support hardware-accelerated transcoding, this option is enabled by default to allow for faster transcoding. If you want to disable the setting, go to Settings > Advanced to untick the checkbox.

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*  Applies to specific models only.