Audio transcode causing video transcode

[Deihmos]

This has always been the case for many years and Plex doesn’t seem to want to change the behavior. If the audio is transcoding and you enable subtitles it will cause the video to also transcode. Plex gave a reason about keeping audio and video in sync. It makes no sense to me because the competition does not have the same behavior. If you search you will find many threads about this. going back many years.

NVidia Shield: SRT subtitles causing "burn subtitles" to activate when audio is also transcoded

This isn’t a bug, it’s a limitation that we are trying to remove but haven’t yet. Basically when the audio needs to be transcoded and subtitles are enabled, the only way we can keep them in sync (and to deliver them to the clients) is to burn the subtitles into the video. When the audio doesn’t need to be transcoded everything direct plays rather than direct streams, so the subtitles can be played directly by the client. The limitation itself is in the HLS protocol which only supports subtitle…

[nikul01]

I never use subtitles. For me it’s new from the new version.

[Deihmos]

I have not seen this happening on my shield.

[tmack41]

@nikul01 Yea I’ll post over there and see if he needs any more logs.

@Deihmos I’m also not using subs. What is your setup? Seems to only be affecting h264 with eac3 or truehd audio (and probably any other audio format that would need to be transcoded).

[Deihmos]

I have lots of videos with eac3 and the audio transcodes but not the video.

[dan-the-man]

there is 100% a issue here and ive sent my android and PMS logs to the devs

both the videos in these screenshots should be getting directstreamed not transcoded.

[ritalin]

Issue requires a couple factors to be in play for this to show up.

A. You need to be using an Android Device (firestick as well) to be the playback client.
B. EAC3 audio and I believe it only happens with MKV containers.
C. No device to like a 5.1 amp or sound bar that can decode EAC3 audio in passthru mode.

[PlexInTheCloud]

@ritalin Your issue sounds very similar to the issue I posted about here. Though for my particular issue it only affects files for which Plex can’t detect the bitrate of the EAC3 track. If Plex shows an audio bitrate under “Get info” then it will correctly only transcode the EAC3 audio and not the video

[tmack41]

Problem found in the other thread. Fix coming soon.

[PlexInTheCloud]

@tmack41 Did you try going into your Plex app Settings > Advanced > H264 Max Level and setting it to 5.1 ? That should fix the issue I believe if it’s a matter of it incorrectly defaulting to 1.0

Edit: Nevermind. I now see that’s one of the first things you tried