Hi Alex,

Sorry but I have tested the following

• Posting Update To Timeline
  • Encoding starts on cron.
  • Encoding will not start unless "Post" has been clicked. 
    • Uploaded a video and pressed "Post" straight after upload and it started to encode when cron ran after posting.
    • Uploaded a video a waited 3 minuets for encoding to start. Cron ran 3 times and the video did not encode. One pressed "Post" the video started encoding straight away once the next cron ran.
  • Have to wait for video to finish encoding before watching.
  • Do not get an update of video encoding.
• Posting a Post
  • Encoding starts on cron and before clicking "Post".
  • Can start watching before the video is encoded.
  • Do not get a update that the video is finished encoding.
• Discussions
  • Video don't encode at all. And if it don't encode and we can watch it straight away can't that be done for Updates, Posts and Albums.
  • Attachment has no thumbnail.
  • Video works straight away.
  • On timeline it don't show that the discussion has a video attached. Might be handy to show it has. 
  • On Post you can insert media, maybe do this for videos in discussions.
• Albums
  • Encoding starts on cron and before clicking submit.
  • Have to wait for video to finish encoding before watching.
  • Do not get an update of video encoding.

I do like that discussions bypass encoding, to be honest, I wish videos did not need encoding at all, it would save on CPU resources allowing for UNA to be run on low-end servers. And also videos would be instant. 

I understand it's for compression and encryption, but I would be happy to have the media stored on a secure data storage server or similar to keep the data safe and as for compression I would be happy to sacrifice space to bypass FFMPEG.