4K MKV on Apple TV 4K stutters. No Direct Stream?

General Discussions
1

Hi guys,

I recently started storing my 4K UHD discs on my Synology DS1815+. I only have a couple as not all the VUKs are available yet. Anyway, when playing the MKV, the movie begins to stutter a few minutes in. Here’s what I have:

Plex Media Server 1.9.7.4460 running on a Mac Pro 2013 (the cylinder)
Plex App running on Apple TV 4K
PlexPy also running

Everything hardwired on an internal gigabit network with AT&T Fiber as my pipe to the internet.

Here are my observations:

  1. When I choose 7.1 Audio, PlexPy reports the audio is transcoding, so I changed it to 5.1 and it then said direct stream. I’m okay with this since I don’t have a 7.1 setup.
  2. However, the video continues to say 3840x2160 transcoding.
  3. I’ve confirmed the AppleTV Plex App has Allow Direct Play enabled
  4. Video resolution is set to Original / Max Resolution
  5. Regular 1080p raw bluray rip MKVs work just fine.

Is there any way to Direct Stream the 4K video in the MKV container?

Thanks for your help.

2

The only way to get them to direct play on the ATV4K is by using MrMC (Kodi 16 fork) and connecting that to your Plex server. Infuse is another player that has a better interface but isn’t a Plex client yet (they plan to have Plex support soon).

Plex uses the native player and doesn’t use their own like those two apps, so it’s extremely limited in what it can play.

3

@timstephens24 said:
The only way to get them to direct play on the ATV4K is by using MrMC (Kodi 16 fork) and connecting that to your Plex server. Infuse is another player that has a better interface but isn’t a Plex client yet (they plan to have Plex support soon).

Plex uses the native player and doesn’t use their own like those two apps, so it’s extremely limited in what it can play.

Thanks timstephens24 !

4

just wanted to post an update.

After doing some additional testing, here’s what I found.

  1. Playing the UHD MKVs on my Samsung TVs native PLEX app worked perfectly using Direct Play on both the Audio and Video streams.
  2. As originally posted, AppleTV 4K PLEX app won’t Direct Play or Direct Stream UHD.
  3. On my PLEX Server (Mac Pro 2013), I’m able to Direct Play UHD MKVs using PLEX Media Player with no issues.

That being said, are there any plans on upgrading the AppleTV 4K PLEX app to allow direct play / direct stream UHD MKVs? The native app seems to work fine on the computer and the TV, just not on Apple TV 4K.

Thanks.

5

I know this is quite related to your issue but I record tv shows off an antenna and plex has stuttering issues with .ts files and that’s like 6-8 Mbps rate. Small compared to 4K rate. I also tried infuse and that worked fine. Only way I could fix it is a force transcode but with 4k that means loosing quality:(. I feel your pain. Plex should have done their own player