I am running PMS on a very low-powered freeNAS device so I’d liek to avoid transcoding as much as possible…
I used to stream from PMS to a chromecast via the Andoid app but have recently replaced the chromecast with a RasPlex on a RPI3.
The idea was to use directplay and avoid any transcoding as the PMS and the RasPlex device are both in the same lan.
P.S. I assume the PMS and RPI3 will realize they are in the same network aka locally?
The settings on the RPI3 are to directplay local and remote content and ask for internet content.
Yesterday I tried playing a movie with a higher resolution, usually I watch 720p material yesterday it was a 1080p movie and on my TV the RPI3 showed me: Resolution too big, transcoding: 1920x800 so I am elft wondering what it is transcoding.
The TV is also an older model which only has a resolution of 1366x768 but can play anything up to 1920x1080
Can someone shed some light onto this issue please?
Without seeing the mediainfo XML of the affected movie and the information whether you use subtitles, only generic advice can be given.
Make sure you did not set a PIN on your plex user account and you did not activate the Guest account under Settings - Users.
Remove/deactivte if necessary, then restart PMS.
Thanks for the additional info, I’ll get back to you with the required info once I get around to check the mediainfo XML. Subtitles were not enabled.
I have not set a PIN, I just checked.
Not sure where to check for the Guest account - do I check that on my PMS?
I can’t find a guest account setting so I guess that’s for Plex Pass users only.
I’ve attached the mediainfo.xml file although I had to append .txt to be allowed to attach it here.
The only piece of info I can spot that seems relevant is that it says: subtitles: PGS. After googling, it seems that is some kind of burnt-in subtitles? Might this be the reason?
###edit###
I guess that is the reason:
Note: Subtitles can introduce a wrinkle here sometimes. Even if a file’s audio, video, and container are all > compatible with a Plex App, if a subtitle stream is selected and is not compatible with the Plex App, then > the Server will “burn in” the subtitle text within the video. This requires a full transcode of the video
stream. https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/201566396
Any more info as well as confirmation or links are welcome.
Your movie uses the HEVC (H.265) video codec, even with 10 bit color depth.
The Pi’s hardware video decoder cannot decode this video codec, so it asks the server to transcode it to the supported AVC (H.264) codec - leading to a very high cpu load on the server machine, because alone decoding HEVC requires a lot of cpu power. And it then needs to encode it again to AVC too.
btw. I found a setting in RasPlex, something along the line: direct play HVEC up to 720p. The value can be changed. How would that work if the PI3 cannot decode it? Unfortunately I already deleted this problematic media file so I can’t test what happens if I up the value to direct play HVEC up to 1080.
If you’re interested in a stronger client, the Odroid C2 running OpenPHT direct plays HEVC/h265 up to 4K just fine. Wetek Hub is based on the same base CPU/GPU hardware and is being tested by the development team. Might be supported in the next release due out soon.
The best bet is to avoid x265/HEVC for the moment. X264 is fine. The only benefit of x265 is smaller file size at the expense of a huge increase in CPU resources and the incompatibility with lots of hardware. Since storage space is much cheaper than adding CPU these days, there isn’t much point in using x265 unless you are making a huge investment in 4K hardware.
