For instance, automatically make a 1080p optimized version of a 4k video.
This is already done, explained here: https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/214079348-Example-Media-Optimizer-Usage
The keyword is automatically, I know it can be done manually.
Ah, you may want to elaborate on that in the main body. That’s actually a good idea.
The only issue I see with this is crippling your PMS from being able to stream without buffering.
Unless you PMS box can support 4k transcode and watching a video at the same time this could be problematic as creating an optimized version takes as much CPU as transcoding a 4K.
I always move media I want to optimize off of the PMS server and re-encode on a different machine in order NOT to impact my Media Server’s performance for folks that want to watch media. This is especially the case with 4K.
Basically, if your PMS cannot stream transcoded 4K without buffering, running an optimize on 4K on the same box will affect the performance of other streams trying to play.
Early 2021 clean-up: duplicate
