According to the support article for Multi-Version Movies, “When a Plex app goes to play the collapsed item, it will automatically request and play the most suitable item by default” for items that contain multiple versions. I have not seen any documentation beyond this, but whatever the apps are doing to select the version to play does not seem immediately logical. This is most obvious for my movies that have both 4k and 1080p versions of (I maintain the 1080p versions to keep a version with the rec. 709 color space for my non-HDR displays.) I have 2 Roku devices that do not support H.265 decoding and are hooked up to 1080p displays. The Plex player on both devices always chooses the the 4k HEVC, even though that means a transcode and scale will be necessary, because the device doesn’t support the codec or resolution. The Plex web app in a Firefox browser on a Windows 10 computer with a 4k display on a network local to the PMS always chooses the 1080p version. Yet, the same Firefox version running on a Windows 10 machine at my workplace with a 1080p display and indirect connection to the PMS chooses the 4k version. Again, requiring scaling to match the display size. As far as transcoding, this would need to be done anyway because of the 2 Mbps limit for indirect connections, but wouldn’t it be smart to choose the lower bitrate source file to start with?
The “Play Version” option obviously works, but if the apps are suppose to be choosing the correct version automatically, why not have that happen in a common sense way, mainly matching codec and resolution capabilities
