Hi
Just invested in a nw 4K TV.
However, no matter which player I use (LG TV or PS4 Pro), the 4K MKV videos are always transcoded in to 1080p. As far as I can tell I’ve set up everything I need to be able to direct play the video.
Any suggestions?
Thanks,
LG TV’s plex player is not great - it transcodes when it doesn’t need to - I know some people have messed with it’s configuration to “fix” it, but I just ended up buying an NVidia Shield and using the Plex app on that, and 4K with HDR works great (as well as ATMOS audio).
I have heard that an app called XPlay on LG does a much better job of not transcoding - you might give that a shot.
True, but I have the same issue on my PS4.
Shame that the basic options are not covered in any of the Plex apps that I can use.
If I use a normal DLNA service it works fine. Also if I convert the MKV files in to MP4 it works fine. The only issue is that if I use the optimise feature within Plex, it halves the file size and you can really tell the difference in quality.
To DirectPlay a 4K video your PMS/media needs to meet these requirements including notably a MP4 container and not MKV:
support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/203810286-What-media-formats-are-supported-
We don’t support 4K on the PS4.
My bad, I have a PS4 Pro, which does support 4K.
@mattcartlidge said:
My bad, I have a PS4 Pro, which does support 4K.
The hardware does, but Plex doesn’t on it. The PlayStation Plex app is absolute garbage, nevermind supporting the pro.
Grab yourself a ShieldTV, or even a Roku 4K, you’ll be much much happier.
@KarlDag said:
@mattcartlidge said:
My bad, I have a PS4 Pro, which does support 4K.The hardware does, but Plex doesn’t on it. The PlayStation Plex app is absolute garbage, nevermind supporting the pro.
To be clear, the hardware is capable, but Sony makes it difficult for 3rd party developers to utilize it. We would love to support 4K, but there are technical difficulties right now. We are trying.
@dduke2104 said:
To DirectPlay a 4K video your PMS/media needs to meet these requirements including notably a MP4 container and not MKV.
Well apart from all the Plex clients that happily direct play 4K MKV.
@HitsVille said:
@dduke2104 said:
To DirectPlay a 4K video your PMS/media needs to meet these requirements including notably a MP4 container and not MKV.Well apart from all the Plex clients that happily direct play 4K MKV.
Exactly. I’m sure Plex is trying, but that’s not saying much considering how terrible the app is.
@HitsVille said:
Well apart from all the Plex clients that happily direct play 4K MKV.
Well, I was quoting a Plex support article about what is required for 4K DirectPlay by PMS. Is it wrong?
@dduke2104 said:
@HitsVille said:
Well apart from all the Plex clients that happily direct play 4K MKV.
Well, I was quoting a Plex support article about what is required for 4K DirectPlay by PMS. Is it wrong?
PMS doesn’t have “requirements”. How hard it will be on the server depends on what the clients support.
Edit of course technically it does have requirements, but don’t think of it that way. Depending on how your files are encoded and what client you use, it can be a very light task for the server.
Hmmm. Just checked the support article again and am I mistaken or has it been edited a bit now? (Italics mine.)
“Native video support is typically (but not always) limited to the MP4 container…”
Possible. We update those as we find mistakes or when things change.
@“MovieFan.Plex” said:
Possible. We update those as we find mistakes or when things change.
Does your dev team have any ETA of a fix for either the PS4 Pro support or LG Oled TV (webos) support? I know you said there are technical difficulties - what kind of difficulties are there? What difficulties are there on the LG TV?
Technical difficulties as in, the file plays, but there’s no picture. No ETA on when/if our devs will be able to find a solution.
Okay so I converted my 4K MKV files in to MP4 and Plex still cannot play them in full resolution - it insists on transcoding. XPlay plays them perfectly fine so it’s not a hardware problem.
Can you post the XML for this file? It may not be the container causing the problem.
As the first reply said, bite the bullet and get an Nvidia Shield TV. It’ll direct play your mkv files without the time and hassle of converting to mp4.
As another thought, have you tried Kodi/the Plex for Kodi add-on?
@KarlDag said:
@dduke2104 said:
@HitsVille said:
Well apart from all the Plex clients that happily direct play 4K MKV.
Well, I was quoting a Plex support article about what is required for 4K DirectPlay by PMS. Is it wrong?
PMS doesn’t have “requirements”. How hard it will be on the server depends on what the clients support.
Edit of course technically it does have requirements, but don’t think of it that way. Depending on how your files are encoded and what client you use, it can be a very light task for the server.
Before I moved my media to Google Drive so I could use Plex Cloud my local PMS was hosted on a 4TB Seagate Personal Cloud. That must be the cheapest lowest powered NAS that can run PMS & it did a great job as I used decent clients & an AV receiver so everything cold Direct Play. I even tested it with five simultaneous 1080p streams & it performed pertly. The load of PMS is minimal & without any transcoding it’s basically just serving up files like a NAS or a PC or Mac sharing a folder…
