Bug? Plex for Mac set to "Convert (10 Mbps, 1080p HD)" shows in Stats as "

Plex Players
1

Hi,

when I watch a 4k Movie on my Laptop that does not support 4k (and therefore needs to be transcoded down), it stutters freaking hard when watching it on “Plex for Mac” app, eventhough I select “Convert (10 Mbps, 1080p HD)” .

When I watch the same movie on the same machine on the website (Plex Web), it runs smoothly, when converting it with above settings.

Interesting: When I run it on “Plex for Mac”, and check the stats, it shows “Direct Play”, eventhough I have selected to Convert it.

Bug in the “Plex for Mac” app?

Here is what I chose as playback settings in"Play for Mac":
image

Here is what the stats show for “Plex for Mac”:
image

Here is what the stats show for “Plex for Web” with the same settings as “Plex for Mac”:
image

2

In the desktop app:
Settings - Plex for Mac - ‘Show Advanced’ - Player
Set “Video Playback Quality” lower
do also toggle “Use Hardware Decoding” and compare performance.

If this is a Macbook Air from 2011, it might be slightly underpowered to perform the intensive picture filtering which is default in Plex Desktop.

3

hi Otto,

thanks for your reply.

Yes, it is a MBair 2011.

I tried both of your suggestions (playing with “Video Playback Quality” and “Use Hardware Decoding”) to no avail.

I really think it’s a bug I am facing here
Firstly, the web player with the same settings is able to play the video on 1080p/10Mbps.

Second, if I chose “Convert (10 Mbps, 1080p HD)” on Plex for Mac, the stats show “Direct Play”, which to me sounds like the file is not actually played as 1080p, but as 4K.

Third, and this backs up my 2nd point in my view, when I chose “Convert (2 Mbps, 720p HD)”, then finally the stats show that hardware transcoding (on the server) kicks in, showing “SD (H264) - Transcode (hw)”.

See below what I get when playing with two Quality Playback Settings on “Plex for Mac”:
[1080p → Showing Direct Play on a 4k File - Stuttering as hell]

image
image878×176 54.9 KB

[720p → Showing Transcode (hw) on the same 4k File - Playing Smoothly]

image
image1046×196 36.3 KB

4

Could you set it to 10 mbps again, then play for about 30 seconds,
then fetch log files from both the player and from the server?

5

hi Otto,

happy to provide logs, however not quite sure I did it correctly.

Please find the logs below; please let me know if those are not the correct logs, and if not, happy to generate another batch if you can give me some pointers how to do it.

Plex for Mac Logs
(Taken from the app, menu Item “Plex For Mac”/“Debug”/ with “Debug Level” = Enabled)

Server Logs
(Taken from the app, menu item “Manage”/“Console”):

6

These look OK so far.
The server log says that it’s Direct Playing. Why that is, needs further investigation.

Could you add the Plex media info XML of the video item in question?
Please do only post the XML code, and NOT the URL of the file!

7

Thank you for your help.

Please find the Media File XML below:

8

hi @OttoKerner , just wanted to check if you had any further insights into this by any chance?

Best regards

9

Hi Otto,

just wanted to check if the XML I provided was helpful and if you had any pointers how to resolve this?
Many thanks for your help

10

Anyone from Plex who can look into this bug? :slight_smile:

11

hello Plex? This seems to be a bug quite clearly… any help would be appreciated…

12

hello Plex Support?

13

@ManiMatter, FWIW, I recently bought my first Mac and have found the Mac plex player to be extremely buggy…sorry. I rarely had issues with the windows plex player on my previous laptop. Hope they bring it up to par.

14

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