Lately I have noticed when selecting 2 mbps and sometimes 3 mbps stream quality the resolution is actually 480 instead of 720. This happens on multiple clients and multiple servers. It results in a very poor picture as well especially when streamed from the Nvidia Shield server. Its not as noticeable on a phone as it is on a TV. I have been running the latest Plex Pass server releases but have noticed this in the last few and can’t remember how far back. I am currently on 1.6.1.3722. I have done some optimizations at those settings and they come out correct. So is anyone else seeing this or is it just me?
What is your external bit-rate settings?
I found, for some bizarre reason, PMS was identifying my computer as the routers IP address and treated it like an external stream; therefore lowering the quality from 1080p down to 480p (2Mbps)
Solution was to add my internal network to the Lan Network settings in Networks
settings → Network → Lan Networks:
Typed like above will include all local network addresses. Just change to suit yours.
May not be same reason as you, but possible. 
One server I have this set and another I don’t and I have changed them around. That’s not really the issue though as mine will play at whatever I select its just that any movie on any of my players with any of my servers will output my selection of 720p (2Mbps) or 720p (3Mbps)on the client, at 480p (2Mbps) or 480p (3Mbps). To actually get it to play at 720p I have to set it to the 4Mbps option on the client which isn’t Ideal for some of my remote users with spotty WiFi.
I’m wondering if this is a bug or typo and those bit rates are actually supposed to be 480p instead of 720p. Though like I said if I optimize at those settings they come out correct.
Are you saying that any of your internal networked players, wired or wifi, will only play at 720p if you set remote access to 4Mbps?
Any player on your internal network should play at whatever the bit-rate of the movie file.
If you are playing remotely then the bit-rate will be determined by the setting in remote access and the upload speed of the servers internet connection:
No, I’m not referring to the remote stream settings I’m referring to the client settings. I do see that for the remote bandwidth management that the 2Mbps is at 480p but all the clients list it at 720p.
To clarify I guess my question should be, why is it that when I select 720p (2Mbps) and sometimes 720p (3Mbps) from the client (local or remote) is the video actually outputting in 480p?
Can you play something and post your logs please?
Note start and stop times and play for at least a minute. 
Logs are found in settings → server → help → download logs.
Only need the plex media server.log file. You can also delete everything up to the minute before you started playback. 
I think the question is why do you get a different resolution then what you set the client to.
Think of the client setting as a guide used to select the max resolution and bitrate. There is a correlation of screen size to bitrate when doing transcodes. It’s not perfect but it’s pretty accurate. So when you take something like a 10Mb+ size 1080 file and transcode it down to 720/4Mb you can do this without much loss of quality. Since it shifts from 1080 down to 720 you don’t need as high a bitrate to represent the new resolution.
Now with that same original file going down to 720/2Mb isn’t going to work so well. There won’t be enough bitrate to support that resolution so the Plex server will do the math it knows that generally produces good results and will select a lower resolution that fits the bitrate you selected.
That’s a high level overview but it’s more involved than that. You can get a feel for how this works by studying the server log for a transcode.
Just keep in mind that Plex has to decide what is going to work for a real-time transcode. You could certainly do better with a hand crafted ffmpeg/handbrake encode done offline where time isn’t important and you can spend the CPU cycles to get a higher compression rate. There is only so much that can be done in real time however.
Carlo
Thank you, that was the conclusion I had come to as some will display properly but most will not be 720p. I assume the bit rate is an estimate and if its closer to 1.5Mbps then it would be 480p.
So I will go back to optimizing or pre encoding to keep the quality higher and ensure 720p.
