# Better Bitrate / Transcode Options for Servers
**URL:** https://forums.plex.tv/t/better-bitrate-transcode-options-for-servers/908012
**Category:** Feature Suggestions
**Created:** [March 5, 2025, 1:42am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/better-bitrate-transcode-options-for-servers/908012 "2025-03-05T01:42:18Z")
**Posts on this page:** 5
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@LaZiOPLEX](https://forums.plex.tv/u/LaZiOPLEX)
#### Post date: [March 5, 2025, 1:42am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/better-bitrate-transcode-options-for-servers/908012/1 "2025-03-05T01:42:18Z")
I wanted to open up my server to more quality choices / 4K possibilities now that I have a better connection. And after some reading, I understand that when dealing with 4K, it’s best to take advantage of Hardware Acceleration, and to bump up my Remote Stream Bitrate to something 4k-friendly. No problem. But I’m finding that it’s being so wasteful with the bandwidth now, in non-4K situations.
I’ll attach an example. That episode is a 1080p file, in AV1 (which not many clients support yet, OK understandable). But it’s maybe a 2-3mbps rip. Since I have now toggled hardware acceleration to allow 20mbps 4K, its passing this job to the GPU (its a 6600XT) to transcode this 2mbps file to like, 17+mbps. That seems unnecessary. I was quite happy with making my CPU do the work, because I had only a 1080p collection and it could handle it easily, but it now seems that if I want to get into 4K, there aren’t many options to configure this the way I like.
So the feature request is:
- Give the server operator more choices and control when it comes to transcoding, like - transcode 1080p and under using CPU only, to a max of X mbps. Transcode 4K content via GPU, to a max of X mbps. Something like that.
Thank you.
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### Author:  [@tom80H](https://forums.plex.tv/u/tom80H)
#### Post date: [March 5, 2025, 6:59am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/better-bitrate-transcode-options-for-servers/908012/2 "2025-03-05T06:59:52Z")
There’s already two existing suggestions discussing such an option. Please comment/vote in those threads to help us avoid distracting or cannibalizing votes.
> [@PMS: Hardware device rules](https://forums.plex.tv/t/pms-hardware-device-rules/887945):
>
> My setup has two gpus; a GTX 1070 and an ARC A310. The A310 I acquired recently to be able to live transcode AV1 since not all my devices support streaming it directly. The transcoding itself is working flawlessly, although it’s not the strongest card and I want to only use it for AV1, all other codecs I want to be handled by the 1070. Currently the only options plex gives me are as such; Auto, Arc A310, GeForce GTX 1070; My problem is that Auto forces everything to go over the…
> [@Selective Hardware Transcoding by resolution](https://forums.plex.tv/t/selective-hardware-transcoding-by-resolution/484934):
>
> Hello! Hardware transcoding works great for me at 720p or higher resolutions and saves my Intel NUC server a lot of CPU power when enabled. However my 480p or lower transcode remote users complain the quality is unwatchable. Please add a setting to only use hardware transcoding at select resolutions or greater. We could set it to only use hardware transcode at 720 or 1080 stream or higher and then use the normal transcoding processes for lower resolutions. This would provide at least some CPU …
#
Unless I’m missing some unique aspect of your suggestion I’ll close this thread as a duplicate.
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### Author:  [@MovieFan](https://forums.plex.tv/u/MovieFan)
#### Post date: [March 5, 2025, 10:11pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/better-bitrate-transcode-options-for-servers/908012/3 "2025-03-05T22:11:30Z")
That is expected when transcoding from av1 to h264. Av1 is similar in quality to 265. There is a 4x conversion factor used to maintain the quality for these codecs. Have you tried the new h265 transcode option? Also note that the number you see is the bandwidth of the connection to the server, it’s not the bitrate of the file.
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### Author:  [@LaZiOPLEX](https://forums.plex.tv/u/LaZiOPLEX)
#### Post date: [March 6, 2025, 5:41am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/better-bitrate-transcode-options-for-servers/908012/4 "2025-03-06T05:41:46Z")
Thank you for posting the 2 other threads. I did search (I swear!) but there are a lot of posts /complaints in this forum about transcoding overall. It was hard for me to find ones that were similar to this situation. I have upvoted them. And @MovieFan yes I do see the new x265 function, but got worried about the part that mentions its Experimental. So I have not tried it. Thanks guys.
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### Author:  [@tom80H](https://forums.plex.tv/u/tom80H)
#### Post date: [March 6, 2025, 8:40am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/better-bitrate-transcode-options-for-servers/908012/5 "2025-03-06T08:40:37Z")
2025 clean-up: duplicate