Server Version#: 1.15.8.1163
Player Version#: Amazon Fire Cube and Xbox One X
I am running my Plex server in UnRaid. Before going with UnRaid, as a proof of concept I tested Plex out in Windows using an old gaming laptop that I had. The laptop had an Intel 1Gb wired NIC, my whole house is wired with Cat6, and my routers/switches all support 1Gb. One of my main requirements was being able to stream 4K movies on the local network using Direct Play with no transcoding. The two main reasons for not wanting transcoding were that I wanted to maintain originally quality and my old gaming laptop was not up to transcoding 4K content. In this configuration it worked perfectly and I was able to stream 4K movies to both an Amazon Fire Cube and Xbox Ones using Direct Play with no transcoding.
Once I tested out Plex and saw what I liked on the Windows PC, I decided to build a new Plex server and go with UnRaid server so that I could have resiliency in case on of my hard drives died. I set up the UnRaid server but on a different old gaming laptop. The gaming laptop had similar specs as the first one I used and was actually a bit newer model PC. I have an external 4 bay hard drive enclosure connected to the laptop via eSata. I got everything working, both from the UnRaid side and the Plex side. I had this set up for a few weeks when I noticed that the 4K movies were actually pulling down the 1080p version of movies instead of the 4K version of the movies (I have both 4K and 1080p copies for most of my content). When I tried to play content that just had a 4K version, the Plex server would try to start transcode and would essentially choke because it was just not up to transcoding the 4K stream.
I knew my network was capable of streaming the 4K content via Direct Play based on my tests with the Windows Plex server, so I knew the network or the clients were not the problem. To double check, I went back to my Windows Plex server which I still had up and it was still able to stream 4K content via Direct Play. Both of my old gaming laptops are connected to the same exact switch. From there I determined that the problem has to be somewhere with the networking on the UnRaid server. I took a look at the network card on the UnRaid server and discovered it was a RealTek NIC. I have not had great experience with RealTek NICs and from what I hear they are on the cheap end of NIC cards so I suspect this may be where the problem is. However I am not sure. Could anything else be causing the problem? How can I better troubleshoot this issue? I considered plugging in a USB 3 Gigabit NIC dongle to test if it was the RealTek NIC but it appears UnRaid does not support USB NIC dongles (already posted over in their forums confirming this).
I am trying to keep costs down which is why I am using the old gaming laptops. They are pretty good laptops with 1st or 2nd generation Intel i7 CPUs (high end for their day). I don’t want to spend hundreds of dollars to buy and build a new PC when I already have capable hardware to do the job. My wife was already not happy with the several hundred dollars spent on the hard drives and external enclosure.
I am considering moving the UnRaid server to the other laptop where 4K stream worked fine (at least in Windows) but that will take quite a bit of work. I much rather get it working on the existing laptop.
Doing some more testing I think this may be a client issue. I think my original tests with my Windows server it was actually transcoding, but audio only so I didn’t notice. Reading over other posts it looks like the Nvidia Shield is probably the best client out there that can best handle 4K content plus has the most amount of codecs so I may just go with one of those to fix the problem.
no longer high end, also not as high powered as you may remember. you can google the exact cpu model(s) and see benchmarks to compare your perceived performance value vs actual.
audio and subtitle transcoding are single threaded, so single core performance is still important.
for full 4k hardware transcoding support, you need quicksync version 6 (Kaby Lake, Coffee Lake, Whiskey Lake) 7xxx series cpu.
pretty much yes, you will still need an atmos receiver if you want hd audio, otherwise you will need to use non-hd audio streams such as dd/dts 5.1 or stereo to avoid audio transcoding.
Well if my whole goal was to always use DirectPlay and never transcode, then the CPU specs should have been sufficient. This is part of the reason why I do have multiple versions of a movie - 4K, HD, and even SD. Hard drive space for me is not an issue. What I was expecting was that the HD/SD versions would only be selected if I was watching outside of my house. I was not expecting for them to be selected in my house where there is plenty of bandwidth. I have since learned that there is much more that goes into whether or not it decides to transcode besides bandwidth, and that the way Plex was designed wasn’t specifically to always use DirectPlay.
In the end it is a lot cheaper for me to pick up a Nvidia Shield client than getting newer hardware that can properly transcode, plus being a quality snob I don’t want it to transcode - I always want it to just use the original source material. And yes I have audio receivers that support all of the latest and greatest sound formats including ATMOS. And that is another thing that the Nvidia Shield can seem to do properly - pass through audio, something that the Xbox One X and Amazon Fire Cube cannot seem to do properly. What I am really learning is that you learn all of this as you go along and actually use it. You live and you learn.
Man I wish I had found that FAQ sooner! It would have saved me a lot of trouble and work. I am actually going to test switching the audio stream on the 4K movies to something lower to see if it will start using DirectPlay. I get a feeling that the audio is my main issue (primarily due to my clients not properly doing pass through).
I completely removed the subtitles from the MKV file to rule that out (I never use them anyways) and the issue still occurred. I suspect it is the audio stream since when I was monitoring the stream video was using DirectStream but audio was being transcoded. I’ll know later today when I test.
Right. I just removed them out of one file to be sure. I did not know about the global settings though. I will make sure to set that on the players to make sure they never come into play.
