Reading the thread, seems plex staff is really good at explaining how ‘difficult’ it is. I agree with previous comments that this is shameful and not acceptable to have such a feature not available since it has been requested over a long period. For me this is the number 1 frustration with the tool and I would not have bought a Plex Pass if I would known upfront.
Would anyone known how we can hack the config files to sync any mkv format without transcoding? I am happy with a hit and miss if the file would not play in the device.
[quote=“BigNate84, post:137, topic:31916, full:true”]
… One of the best use cases for sync is when the car is packed for a long road trip and a Plex Pass Life Time membership user is trying to quickly load movies on a tablet. …[/quote]
Very well put! I don’t care about sync (at least not for the above type situation)… I just want to be able to browse the library and download/transfer some movies in how ever long it takes to send the files across the network.
I just bought a Plex Pass, and was rather shocked that the iOS app doesn’t seem to do this. (Or, am I missing something?) If that functionality can’t be added to the ‘sync’ feature, just make direct-download another button.
100% agree. This was actually one of the main reasons I opted to pay for my Lifetime Membership. Was tired to go and transfer individual files in a File Explorer - where I was under the misconception that syncing a video file would just allow it to be downloaded on my device (or at least giving me the option to do so!) without transcoding it.
Now I have to stick to my old ways of working as I’m not prepared to wait 12 hours for my 4-5 movies to transcode where I could have quickly transferred them to my device 12+ times over
HEVC is quickly becoming the preferred method of storing higher resolution media and support across devices is increasing constantly. The burden on my server transcoding these small and high quality h265 files to larger and lesser quality h264 synced files is huge and highly inefficient.
I’ve actually gone the route of not even using Plex to sync content to my device. I just setup an FTP server on my Plex server and download using an FTP client to my mobile device. Works slick and never an issue…you can try to use Plex to watch the videos on your mobile device but I found that VLC works better in many cases…
Another +1 : I don’t personally use the sync feature with video media (only audio, so it never transcodes), but some of the users I share my server with do, and the fact that transcoding occurs although their device is perfectly capable to direct stream the files is driving them nuts (and I definitely understand that).
This really is silly. I’ve spent tons of CPU time transcoding my content into x265 so that they’re high quality and small. I’m doing it in advance so I have the best quality and size balance. I just purchased Plex Pass so my family can download content to their devices to watch on a plane… only to find out Plex wants to transcode my files into something else. Just to move one 45-minute TV episode over will take an hour, so this will only take me a full 24-hour day to move just one season of TV to my wife’s iPad.
Plex is so frustrating… so close to awesome but then silly things like this.
Good point. I have next to no need for all the sync features that seem to be holding things up. All I need is an easy in-app way to initiate the transfer to local storage on the device, and then play it. If the device doesn’t support the format, then I’ll encode them so they do. But, my devices all play the files as I have them encoded already.
Yes, this is really silly. This should be a base feature, long before sync.
What tweaks me off even more, though, is the lack of communication or even seeming to care from Plex. I get these goofy-happy emails about feature after feature (most of them useless to me) from Plex that they’ve apparently been hard at work on, when such basic stuff like this sits FOR YEARS!
There is. If you are the admin, load up Plex Web. There is a download option which will do a direct copy of the file and place it into your device’s downloads folder. You can then use the Plex app’s ability to read local files to play it back.
The Sync feature was created years ago before mobile devices could playback video well. That was the whole point of PMS in the first place, to allow playback on devices that didn’t have the power. That’s changing quickly now, but this wasn’t expected when the sync feature was created. There is a plan to re-work the feature and bring in more functionality, but that is not a quick change.
Thanks for the tip, but I need a more family-friendly solution ultimately. There are several ways I could get the files on devices and play them back, but having it be push-button is the goal (w/o the time and resources of re-encoding again).
OK, but it seems this ‘reworking’ and ‘not easy’ has been the story for quite some time now. Could a non-sync capability be more easily added? ie: kind of like what you were talking about above, but as a button in the app interface?
I guess it depends on how long we’re talking here… a few months? 2022? After the world ends in 2030?
Until then, I’ll have to be using your tip above or manually shuttling files to family member’s devices (which kind of defeats a bunch of my work trying to sell them on using Plex in the first place).
I haven’t started trying out the photo and music management yet… but hopefully that stuff goes better.
So I’ll be canceling my Plex Pass because this was the sole reason I purchased it. I have zero interest in the other features, all I wanted was to be able to sync my content remotely. I have to believe that copying a file is much easier to code than transcoding a file and then copying it.
Download Yatse from the play store and buy it for a couple of bucks. Link to plex and sync direct with no conversion. You use either mx player or vlc to play. I use mx player. Way better. Notice plex player when you zoom the video, the subtitles also zoom right out of the screen! Mx player handles that and everything much better.
I understand that it’s probably complicated for Plex to provide a universal solution for all the devices out there, but I was actually surprised by how much easy it is to fix from the user side: it looks like just editing one line in the server profile of your device makes sync not transcode anything you don’t want it to.
I hope you’ll find the following links helpful: original solution for docker container, and same with windows Plex server, and on Synology you can find profiles under /volume1/@appstore/Plex Media Server/Resources/Profiles/ (you’ll have to use ssh to access that)
I advice to list only the codecs that can be direct played from your device, otherwise you might find playback issues.
I only tried it for iOS, but it’s quite possible it’ll work the same way with Android profile.
I only tried it with one HEVC file, cause I have no need for sync currently, so there’s no guarantee it’ll work at all or won’t make things worse, so remember to back up the original profile to roll back to it.
Also if you have multiple Plex sync devices and some of them aren’t compatible with added codecs, it might affect them if they use the same profile file. I’m not sure whether it’s possible to create new or fine-tune existing profiles for such situation.
Also, future server updates may overwrite it, but still much better solution than nothing
