Server Version#: 1.32.5.7349
Player Version#: 5.64.1
Hi,
I’m a new user of Plex after buying Samsung S95C and I run into some issues. Plex on Samsung TV is direct playing only first audio AC3 stream, if I select any other AC3 stream then it transcode it to aac which is not so much of the issue for me but if audio transcoding is performed regular buffering/stuttering happens (video is 4K) so watching a movie is not great experience.
When checking for playback info in Plex client it shows following reason:
‘Cannot direct play with protocol: http, codec: ac3. Reason: Player does not support selecting alternative audio stream.’
Is it Samsung TV, Plex app or Plex server limitation/bug? Is there anything I can do without remuxing every mkv so the audio stream I want to use is first?
Also why does buffering/stuttering happens during audio transcoding? I thought it’s not so much demanding operation. By the way I run Plex server on desktop with i5-6500 and CPU doesn’t have high utilization during transcoding. I tried both with TV connected via Ethernet cable and WiFi. LAN interface seems to be still only 100Mbps (I’ve seen up to 100Mbps upload in Windows Task Manager where Plex Server is installed), so maybe it’s not enough but WiFi 5Ghz signal is excellent and bandwidth is much better (above 250Mbps peeks). Any suggestions what could I possibly tweak to get around this issue?
I’ve not experienced this issue before because I switch streams just fine when I have multiple audio tracks… I wanted to ask if this behavior is exhibited when you select the alternative audio track before playing the movie from the movie’s detail page.
Also, in case that is still the case, how many channels does the other track have? Could it be a 5.1 track and your device doesn’t support it? The only times I’ve seen transcoding for an otherwise supported audio track is when watching something with a 5.1 audio channel on my phone and that always gets transcoded.
This behaviour exhibit regardless of whether I select audio before playing movie or during the playback and both tracks are 5.1 AC3 and TV definitely supports Dolby Digital 5.1 also when I remux the file and change the order of AC3 tracks, again only first AC3 audio track is direct playing. But then there’s that second issue why buffering happens when Audio transconding is done? I think it shouldn’t be like that.
It’s a limitation of the TV’s video player. TVs on Tizen 6 and higher isn’t able to select audio tracks and always plays the first track, so we need to remux to play other audio tracks.
Is it different player used for Plex than internal player used for playing from USB? Because I’m able to select whichever AC3 audio track when playing from USB.
And why there’s buffering when Plex transcodes and server’s CPU is not overutilized? Is it because of server or tizen client?
Any answers? Can it be fixed? When DTS to AAC transcoding takes place for most of the time play just halts buffering endlessly. Plex is not usable on Tizen OS.
