All trailers are transcoding

Plex Players Streaming Devices
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Server Version#: 1.25.5.5492
Player Version#: 7.28.1 (1)

I have zero issues with my plex server. All movies play direct without issues. What I am noticing however is that my trailers are transcoding on my Apple TV 4K. Looking at the dashboard on my server I see that the trailers are direct streaming while playing the same trailer via my computer they are direct playing.

Any thoughts at all?

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Direct Streaming doesn’t mean transcoding. It means that the original video stream is extracted and re-packaged into a container format that’s compatible with the client.

It’s a lightweight process, and shouldn’t put much burden on the server.

There’s no re-encoding or change in video quality.

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Completely forgot to add what the tech details read on apple tv when trying to play a trailer.

“Source - Transcode; Transcode reason - App cannot direct play this item. No direct play video profile exists for protocol mp4, with container mp4, and video codec h264”

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Yeah. It says “Transcode” in the decision logs, even if the only change necessary is a remux.

If it shows Direct Streaming in the status dashboard there’s no re-encoding taking place.

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But you know what? It does seem weird that these are being remuxed at all.

I would expect H.264 MP4 to Direct Play.

I wonder if it’s treating Trailers/Previews/Extras differently. Or if they’re different because they’re plumbed “through” Plex instead of being saved.

I’m going to try to extract one and look at it directly.

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I’m actually sure this is why. The trailers/extras aren’t stored on your Plex Media Server. They’re fetched and relayed on demand.

So there’s no file to Direct Play.

Are you having a problem; is there a quality issue?

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A couple old ones I tried are very low in quality, 480x316 to be exact. It’s an old movie (Kingpin). I assumed it was just an older movie therefore a lower quality trailer, even though there are HD versions available. That’s what got me looking at randomly selected movies in my database in the first place to see how they would look. Some of the more modern ones are better quality yet still “transcoding”.

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I see the same low-quality trailer for Kingpin.

Plex gets the videos from https://www.internetvideoarchive.com/. It looks like that’s the only quality they have available for that movie.

Weird that we used to watch VHS - and liked it!

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Those were the times!

Thanks a lot for the help today and helping me look into things.

You seem like the kind of person that would be able to assist me with a couple other questions regarding apple tv and plex. Rather than starting a new thread, haha.

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Go for it - I’m happy to answer, or just make something up, or try to point you in the right direction. :slight_smile:

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Anything works for me! I’ll just list some issues I’ve had with the plex app for apple tv4k. All issues are random and don’t always happen.

  • sometimes loading the app will stall with a blurry screen then shoots back to the apple dashboard
  • I find the loading times of movies/shows can be for a good 5 seconds or so before the page fully loads with the actors/background
  • when selecting tv series, the season will load and rather then resting on episode 1, it will jump to have episode 2 selected and trying to reselect episode 1 will again just jump to 2
  • rare times when playing a movie or show I get a sudden pause with the loading circle. It may then proceed at it’s current place or jump back a tad before resuming.

Sorry for all that! I have a 6-month at home so just feeding my issues to someone at once works best for me rather than posting a few threads and following each one.

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I haven’t seen this recently. I do feel like I’ve seen it occasionally before. I used to wonder if it happened when the App had been updated in the background.

When you open Plex again after this happens, does it do the “launch” animation?

Does this only happen once during a session? Or is it random, and might happen multiple times?

You might share server logs after it happens a few times, and timestamps of when it happened.

This one I’ve got a concrete suggestion for!

Are you on tvOS beta 15.4? That was happening in the first few tvOS 15.4 beta versions.

Try updating to the latest tvOS beta from this week. It has resolved that problem for some of us.

My first guess is a momentary connectivity or bandwidth issue, especially if you can’t reproduce it within the same file.

You could gather Plex tvOS app logs and Plex Media Server logs when it happens.

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At times I may select plex a few times before it finally kicks in. Sometimes it opens flawlessly. Sometimes force closing the app works. It happens without the app updating but there’s always updates with content that maybe it’s causing some minor crash. :man_shrugging:

I feel like the load time happens frequently. Even if I were to select a movie, back out, and then re-select it. (is there a simple step-by-step to share server logs upon the next occurrence?) :innocent:

I’m actually running the latest tvOS and not any sort of beta. I was debating updating to the latest beta so I shall definitely do that now! :raised_hands:

This one doesn’t happen to often and often just a reboot corrects things but I’ll check out logs for that as well the next time it occurs. :wood:

I appreciate all of this help! :beers:

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Yes - the forum automatically makes a link to the instructions when anybody types server logs.

There are some in-depth instructions here:

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Cheers and thanks for all your help today.

By the way, I installed the latest tvOS beta and it corrected the jumping of episodes so thanks for that as well!

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