I have mainly BD mkv rips with occasional other files 265. I play from my windows server or armv8 pi4 4gb to my 4k fire sticks to my 4k TVs. Playing any media on my 1950x windows server is impossible on Plex. It just lags or has the spinning wheel. My pi is better. Using dlna and vlc player I can only play with my pi and usually have audio lag 150ms (which Plex does not have) but can play an entire movie without lag or spinning wheel.
I do not have Plex pass and have selected direct play on both, usually about 13mbps playback. I wanted to switch to a Synology918+ but have a feeling it wouldn’t work without a Plex pass because no transcoding. My windows setup does not transcode at all even with hardware transcoding selected. I have 30sec buffer Added to both setups as well that seems to help some. Will getting Plex pass solve my transcoding issues on my windows server?
If you attempted this with the default Plex web app, then of course this is destined to fail.
Normal web browsers don’t support HEVC video, so anything off a UHD Bluray requires transcoding.
Download and install either Plex for Windows or Plex Media Player.
Even though the RasPi 4 appears to have a hardware decoder for HEVC, I am not 100% sure that it is able to handle those high bitrates from Blurays without a hitch.
I think you’ll have more luck with “Netflix 4K” quality.
I have pms installed on my windows setup and using my fire sticks for player.
Will transcoding work on my 1950x for Windows or will it only use the 1070ti with plexpass? I want to play full quality with no buffering and I would think with direct play enabled and 30seconds buffer that a 1950x would have no issues playing.
Also regarding 4k, I only have maybe 5 4k movies of my 500+ but I honestly forget what ones and have never seen the 4k h265 tag on the movie info page on Plex (or vlc). I also use audio pass through on the fire sticks when playing. An odd thing is that when playing from Plex on either to my 1080p 32” Samsung tv that I rarely have any of the above issues. It’s only with the 4k TVs I get buffering and lag while playing.
If hardware transcoding will work to fix the issues I have no problem getting plex pass.
It is certainly cheaper than buying a NAS.
I am not trying to play 4k. If direct play is enabled on PMS I would assume there is no transcoding even being attempted, other than maybe audio, hence why I don’t understand why I can not direct play blu ray rips to my tv’s, the issue I’ve had since day one with Plex. Direct play should be (Blu-ray.mkv-> firestick Plex player-> 4k tv playing original blueray.mkv). If Plex is not doing this then either it’s not working as advertised, or, something else is going on that I do not understand with Plex.
If Plex can’t direct play as above, I might as well just plug an external hdd into my tv USB port.
Ok so tonight I had zero issues at all playing the movie I did on Saturday on my windows server. I tried as well with the pi4 and it seemed to work just fine as well for 5 minutes of the movie. So I tried a few other movies on my windows server just to see what would happen.
h264, dts-HD ma 5.1 - transcode works fine, movie plays fine
HEVC 1080p, etc-HD ma 5.1 - transcode works fine, movie plays fine
HEVC 1080p, etc-HD ma 7.1 - transcode works fine no sound (soundbar is 5.1 only)
h264, its-HD MA 7.1- transcode works fine no sound (soundbar is 5.1 only)
h264, AC3 5.1 - no transcode, movie plays fine.
I do not know what has changed from Saturday to today, other than its a Monday. I did move my “Temporary transcode folder” from my C:\ drive to my other m.2 slot with a sabrent rocket 1tb drive on the windows server. I found my logs from Saturday when this issue was occurring. I PM’d those to @OttoKerner.
It has the DLNA vlc logs with the plex logs as well.
