Chromecast No Longer Supports H264 Direct Play

Plex Players Streaming Devices
1

Server Version#: 1.41.6.9685
Player Version#: 2025.16.0 iOS

Hi all,

Been experiencing an oddity since the plex app updated on my phone - previously, my chromecast would happily direct play 1080P and 480P H264 video from my server, however, after updating to 2025.15.0, I noticed buffering issues while on the same network as my server with no change to my local network since updating the iOS app. (No changes to the device my Chromecast was hooked to either)

I logged in to my server and now it would appear that all of the H264 video that would previously direct play to the chromecast (and other devices) is now being transcoded when played on the chromecast… to H264?

Streaming via browsers (chrome, firefox, etc) do not seem to have issue with direct play, nor does streaming directly on my iOS devices. However, streaming to the chromecast is always transcoding H264 to H264.

Are there any updates on this bug? Any fixes known or in the works? Wish I could revert to an older version but iOS does not seem to support that :frowning:

Thanks in advance for your help!

1 Like
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Following. I posted a similar thread also. Using Plex app on mobile device to control a Chromecast seems pretty broken on the “new builds”. I’ve had to roll back to 10.26 to restore functionality with mine.

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@thisisse can you provide some details on one of the files you are playing that does this. Like the Plex Media info . I tried a few h264 files and they direct play fine. Unsupported audio like DTS may transcode but the video is direct playing.

May need app or server logs to see why the server thinks it needs to transcode. I am assuming if you cast from the web app it is working fine since you only tagged this for iOS

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I’ve attached the server logs here -
Plex Media Server Logs_2025-05-15_20-23-09.zip (5.0 MB)

The files aren’t anything special - h264 w/ AAC, I’ve copy pasted here:

Codec H264
Bitrate 5209 kbps
Bit Depth 8
Chroma Location left
Chroma Subsampling 4:2:0
Coded Height 1088
Coded Width 1440
Color Primaries bt709
Color Range tv
Color Space bt709
Color Trc bt709
Frame Rate 23.976 fps
Height 1080
Level 4.0
Profile main
Ref Frames 4
Scan Type progressive
Stream Identifier 1
Width 1440
Display Title 1080p (H.264)
Extended Display Title 1080p (H.264)

Codec AAC
Channels 2
Bitrate 164 kbps
Language English
Language Tag en
Audio Channel Layout stereo
Profile lc
Sampling Rate 48000 Hz
Stream Identifier 2
Display Title English (AAC Stereo)
Extended Display Title English (AAC Stereo)

I hope there’s something helpful - thank you for taking a look!

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