Plex Media Server still doesn’t support Direct Stream for AV1-encoded video files.
Direct Stream is used when Plex transcodes the audio but leaves the video untouched. So for example, if your client supports HEVC but doesn’t support DTS-HD audio, Plex will transcode the audio and leave the video untouched. This saves an immense amount of energy.
However, if you try to play an AV1-encoded video on a client which supports AV1, but doesn’t support the audio format, Plex will transcode the video to H264.
This is extremely inefficient. I’d like an update on when we can expect Direct Stream to be supported for AV1-encoded video files. Is there a technical reason behind why this can’t be implemented?
This is not a server issue. Supporting av1 with direct streaming is on the client end. Clients typically rely on the clients hardware, so if something isn’t supported, Plex can’t just add it.
It absolutely is a server issue. See this page - https://support.plex.tv/articles/200250387-streaming-media-direct-play-and-direct-stream/
Plex Media Server uses an older version of tools meaning it doesn’t yet have the capability to mix different audio transcodes with av1 video streams. This is a Plex server limitation. The client is only relevant because it supports AV1 decoding but doesn’t support (for example) DTS-HD, forcing Plex to transcode. For other formats, Plex Media Server can transcode just the audio. For AV1 video format, Plex can’t do it due to outdated tooling.
Jellyfin, by contrast, fully supports this functionality with AV1 video files as it users more updated tools on the server-side. The Plex Media Server team just needs to catch up in this regard. AV1 is getting more widely supported every day but it’s not ubiquitous yet, so we can’t really fault the Plex team too much, but it is an annoying gap that needs to be closed and some acknowledgement of the gap would go down well.
