Server Version#: Version 1.40.0.7998
Player Version#: iOS: 8.30, Current Web Version
I’ve noticed that Plex automatically deinterlaces, even when it says it’s direct playing and there’s not an option to change that. It’s not the worst thing in the world when it works, but it looks like there’s some issues with the built in de-interlacing. I’ve noticed it on an iPad and the Web player (on Windows). However, I have also tested it on Android Clients (TV and Mobile) and the Plex Client for Windows, and there it seems to be working correctly.
Left: Plex Web De-interlacing
Center: Interlaced
Right: VLC De-interlacing
The Left one has a lot of distracting blockiness on the edges. The center one is untouched, and the right one is how VLC de-interlaces it. All of these have been full-screened to exaggerate the artifacting, but it’s very visible on a 10.5" iPad screen.
The link you provided is also blocky. I think the direct play is working and the local system, in this case your iPad, is having a hard time handling the workload. Your Windows PC is more powerful and TV has dedicated encoding/decoding hardware; while your iPad is trying to brute force it and failing.
Are you sure? That doesn’t sound right. An iPad is blocky, a Pixel 4XL is not. The Web player is blocky, Plex for Windows (on the same machine) is not blocky.
Importantly, I’m saying “blocky” because the edges with high contrast have large blocks along them. It’s a 480i video, so the resolution is pretty low, but the de-interlacing technique is introducing artifacts only on certain players.
I don’t know what Plex uses to de-interlace, or whether that’s done on the server side or the player side. I would assume it’s client side if it says direct play and there’s this difference, but there’s no documentation on it. So if someone had some insight into that, it would definitely help.
Not sure why this isn’t getting a lot of traction. Do most people encode their 480i content? Has no one else noticed this on affected devices? It’s almost unwatchable to have the edges constantly moving. Maybe it would help to see Pikachu’s face.
Plex for Desktop is applying a ton of post processing (depending on the “video quality” selection in its settings).
So not comparable to a web browser, which was never built to play interlaced content.
If the server dashboard is showing Direct Play for the file or Direct Stream for the video stream, then the interlaced video is given to the web browser as it is. It is then up to the web browser how to display it. At this point it is completely outside of Plex’s influence.
And that applies to pretty much all Plex client types.
The only ones where Plex has any influence on how video is processed, are Plex Desktop and Plex HTPC. With these two, Plex delivers and utilizes the mpv media engine.
