Server Version#: 1.18.7.2438
Player Version#: 7.28.0.15501
Hi all,
Recently (the last 2 weeks or so) any time audio needs to be transcoded on my nvidia shield, it also forces the video to transcode to.
This is not typical behaviour, normally if the audio needs transcoding it will simply direct stream the video, as expected.
Definitely isn’t a bandwidth issue, as it’s hardwired gigabit and can stream high bitrate 4k just fine.
No subtitles are being used (I’m well aware that subs + transcoded audio = transcoded video)
The same files playback absolutely fine on my chromecast and phone
Edit
BTW, the reason given for transcoding is “eac3 audio is not supported”. Nothing about video.
Hi how high is your client level? because I noticed that with the new version of plex, on the mobile phone it says to me recommended 1.0 triggers the transcoding and looks bad. To see the movies in decent quality I had to raise the level to 5.1 in doing so does not transcode.
Thanks for your reply.
It’s set to 5.2, same as it has been for the 18 months or so that I’ve owned my shield. The whole time up until 2 weeks ago it worked completely normal, and would just transcode the audio. Nothing else has changed on my home setup recently except for replacing some network gear, but everything was working fine still after that.
It also seems unique to the shield, as here is an external user who has the audio being transcoded, but the video is being direct streamed, as it should be
Well, I’m glad the problem has been solved.
Instead, I take this opportunity to ask you if you could elucidate me on the operation of transcoding and direct transmission. In practice I have several films stored in my PC all in mkv and mp4 format with h264 and h265 encoding with audio ac3, aac and eac3. For several days I have been doing various tests for streaming in both data and local networks and something that I can’t really understand happens to me. Let’s take as an example a mkv 1080p h264 film with ac3 audio and with a bitrate of 8000 kbps, by testing I noticed the following. When I set the 1080p 8Mbps quality in any device, the PC transcodes which I don’t understand if the film does not go beyond that speed. The matter is different when I set the quality to the maximum the film goes in direct transmission with a speed of 16Mbps but why? where does this Mbps take them? logically all this affects the upload bandwidth which is 20Mbps. I have checked how much my pc is uploading and I never get to 16Mbps.
I can answer your question though. 8mbps is the average bitrate of the file, not the maximum. There may be some parts where little is changing on screen, so the bitrate will be much lower. There may also be parts where the screen changes rapidly, so the bitrate is much higher. From memory plex doubles the average bitrate, and if this is below the limit set, then it will direct play it. If it’s above, then it will transcode it to make sure that one user cant hog all the bandwidth.
Sorry I did not understand. Thank you for the answer, I thought it was the highest quality the film could reach. Basically plex shows you double the bitraite but I’m not really going to transmit at 16mbps right? They sent at 8mbps at this point. What do you think are the right settings to have a smooth streaming?
Hi I am writing to you about the issue of increasing a movie’s Mbps during direct broadcast. Today I noticed doing various tests that in fact it is as you say the speed doubles but I wonder why? the only explanation that comes to mind and that since there are variable bitraites in a film, plex recognizes that the film varies for example: A 3 Mbps film can have a variation up to 6mbps and shows you the maximum value. I think the reasoning is correct
Yeah, that is the expected behavior. Can you recreate the issue and provide logs from both PMS and the Shield? Also provide the xml for the video you tested with.
