# How to transrate H264 format stream without a need to transcode

**URL:** <https://community.wowza.com/t/how-to-transrate-h264-format-stream-without-a-need-to-transcode/37544>\
**Category:** Wowza Streaming Engine\
**Created:** [November 24, 2011, 2:05am UTC](https://community.wowza.com/t/how-to-transrate-h264-format-stream-without-a-need-to-transcode/37544 "2011-11-24T02:05:04Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Divya\_Bhargov1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ecb155/32.png) [@Divya\_Bhargov1](https://community.wowza.com/u/Divya_Bhargov1)\
**Post date:** [November 24, 2011, 2:05am UTC](https://community.wowza.com/t/how-to-transrate-h264-format-stream-without-a-need-to-transcode/37544/1 "2011-11-24T02:05:04Z")

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Hi,

I have one incoming H264 format stream and want to transrate it to different bit rates for adaptive bit rate switching. Should I be using the Wowza transcoder add-on for it even though I dont need to actually transcode the format.

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**Author:** ![Charlie\_Good](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/community.wowza.com/charlie_good/32/383_2.png) [@Charlie\_Good](https://community.wowza.com/u/Charlie_Good)\
**Post date:** [November 24, 2011, 5:03am UTC](https://community.wowza.com/t/how-to-transrate-h264-format-stream-without-a-need-to-transcode/37544/2 "2011-11-24T05:03:53Z")

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Yes, that is the transrate case. See the tutorial here for more information:

[https://www.wowza.com/docs/how-to-set-up-and-run-wowza-transcoder-for-live-streaming](https://www.wowza.com/docs/how-to-set-up-and-run-wowza-transcoder-for-live-streaming)

Charlie

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**Author:** ![Richard\_Lanham](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c68b51/32.png) [@Richard\_Lanham](https://community.wowza.com/u/Richard_Lanham)\
**Post date:** [December 2, 2011, 4:19pm UTC](https://community.wowza.com/t/how-to-transrate-h264-format-stream-without-a-need-to-transcode/37544/3 "2011-12-02T16:19:32Z")

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Are you running Wowza in stand-alone (/bin/startup.bat) mode? What is log messages do you see when the stream is published?

Richard

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**Author:** ![Ricardo\_Oliveira](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ecccb3/32.png) [@Ricardo\_Oliveira](https://community.wowza.com/u/Ricardo_Oliveira)\
**Post date:** [December 2, 2011, 1:14pm UTC](https://community.wowza.com/t/how-to-transrate-h264-format-stream-without-a-need-to-transcode/37544/4 "2011-12-02T13:14:34Z")

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Charlie,

My source is encoded in h264 and has 9 MBits/sec and I want to transrate to 1MBits/sec. I put passthru in codec at transrate.xml and stream out dont work.

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**Author:** ![C\_F](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c0e974/32.png) [@C\_F](https://community.wowza.com/u/C_F)\
**Post date:** [November 25, 2011, 12:39am UTC](https://community.wowza.com/t/how-to-transrate-h264-format-stream-without-a-need-to-transcode/37544/5 "2011-11-25T00:39:16Z")

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I’m curious - is transrating a stream as computationally intensive as transcoding?