@Elena_Sanchez said:
just transform your HEVC movies to one of the common format.
The reason we store HEVC content is to save on storage space : an x265 file can weighs up to 50% the size of x264 for the same quality. Otherwise we would have encoded in other formats like the ones you mention in the first place. A 4K BluRay file at very high quality in HEVC weighs between 40 to 60 GB. Convert it in x264 or similar and you end up with a 120 GB file and more.
Also, one of the reasons for having a CCU (besides the ability to play 4K content) is to be able to play HEVC content : it supports x265, so it should direct play (as long as you respect other limits such as max bitrate, audio codec, subtitle format, and so on), itās as simple as that.
@Elena_Sanchez said:
Besides, Chromecast supports to stream a lot of movies and TV shows directly.
The whole point of Plex is to be able to play oneās own content, without relying on streaming, which will never (at least for most people) provide the same level of quality than a local file (assuming weāre talking about high bitrate 1080p and more) and can even be awful for people with poor internet connection (like me).
Take my case for exemple : I have spent a lot of time, effort and money into building myself a dedicated NAS with FreeNAS running Plex exactly so that I donāt have to pay any monthly fee to any of these companies to get a service that will eat up all my bandwidth every time I use it and wonāt even be able to provide me with decent quality playback because of my poor internet connection. Also, I want to be able to access my content all the time, which I wouldnāt be able to if I decided to cancel my subscription to the streaming service.
Donāt get me wrong : your arguments and solutions make perfect sense and could suit many people just fine and thatās ok. But I honestly donāt think that this is the case for members of this forum and for their use cases. If it were, I doubt that they would have come here in the first place and written 8 pages on the subject
@boboki said:
I was under the impression that no CC profiles need be modified and that it downloads one from plex each time you play something regardless? Either way no changes to my default CC profile have been made.
What log specifically are you looking for, I can go try to stream something and post.
There are two local profiles and one that is I think part of the Plex app on CCU. One of the local profiles is for custom and the other gets overridden every time you update the server. So modifying the custom one which gets used first makes a difference.
The reason to do this is because CCU is not officially supported in a profile, only CC is. You can have some control over things with a modified profile (several of which are in this thread and others).
Log files as mentioned by only1hammy.
However the bitrate may be being overridden by the profile on the CCU and that as far as we have worked out, cannot be changed. Logs will say the reason why it cannot direct stream. Again you can try modifying the local profile as that may work in this case. I havenāt checked what bitrate my files are at but most are only demo files. But they all play.
Updated my chromecast.xml and both video and sudio say direct stream. But it still shows converting. I can play about 40 minutes of a movie but if you watch the memory on my server it gets eaten up then the movies get really choppy. Any ideas?
@EchoPlexTv said:
Ey Guys, I want to confirm that the modified chromecast.xml file + Android apk 5.9.1.758. + PMS Version 1.7.5.4035 video H.265 and H.264 in 4K are Direct Streaming to the CCU.
android Plex apk-> Settings / Direct play / Forced
I am still getting Audio ACC to AC3 transcoded though, which is annoying.
The transcoding from AAC to AC3 is due to Chromecast dropping support for multichannel AAC (and then Plex dropped it) as per this post http://forums.plex.tv/discussion/216688/plex-for-chromecast#latest . I remember reading a post here from Plex saying Chromecast removed it first. At least transcoding audio is no where near as taxing on the system as video.
Yep, officially dropped fro 2nd gen and ultra (AAC multi-channel): Google Issue Tracker
If itās any help to anyone that still has issues; I still need to use the modified Chromecast profile. As long as I stay away from PGS subtitles (.srt works just fine) I can cast all my 4k HEVC-encoded media regardless of bitrate from both the iOS and the web-clients.
For now I have write-protected the Chromecast.xml file to make sure itās not overwritten when upgrading the server.
Oh, and make sure to restart both PMS and your CCU after modifying the profile.
According to https://www.reddit.com/r/Videostream/comments/5o08do/hevc_and_the_ultra_high_cpu_use/, It is possible for a media server to differentiate regular Chromecast from a Chromecast Ultra. Why Plex does not support it yet, is beyond my understanding. Ultra has been out for about a year, Plex is still not taking advantage over itās extra powers vs regular Chromecast.
Quote from reddit:
"Classic Chromecast:
Received on socket: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux armv7l) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/52.0.2743.84 Safari/537.36 CrKey/1.22.78337
Earlier versions had other variations of that with CrKey coming before armv7l.
So: UserAgentSearch = CrKey.*armv71|armv71.*CrKey
To match the Ultras:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux aarch64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/52.0.2743.84 Safari/537.36 CrKey/1.21a.76178
So:
UserAgentSearch = CrKey.*aarch64|aarch64.*CrKey"
Bump - I have two Chromecastās in my house, and one Chromecast Ultraā¦ Iād prefer not to modify the one chromecast profile, Iām interested in getting a separate CCU profile with HEVC support. Additionaly Iād love to see support for modern audio formats like DTS-HD, Dolby TrueHD, Atmos. Isnāt Chromecast Ultra capable of passing those through to a receiver?
I get a little better luck by converting everything to mp4, straight copy not even reencoding them. Still some donāt work, but itās better than it was.
So when I use the old plex app, regardless of chromecast profile, my 4K HEVC HDR movies will play, but only for a few seconds. After a few seconds they just stop and Iām kicked back in to the movie info screen.
@arebokert said:
So when I use the old plex app, regardless of chromecast profile, my 4K HEVC HDR movies will play, but only for a few seconds. After a few seconds they just stop and Iām kicked back in to the movie info screen.
I have this same issue. Plex Android app, Plex server running on WD PR4100, to a CC Ultra. First, it automatically gets set to downconvert to 1080p, so I select direct 4K. Then after watching for ~30s, it kicks off.
@arebokert said:
So when I use the old plex app, regardless of chromecast profile, my 4K HEVC HDR movies will play, but only for a few seconds. After a few seconds they just stop and Iām kicked back in to the movie info screen.
I have this same issue. Plex Android app, Plex server running on WD PR4100, to a CC Ultra. First, it automatically gets set to downconvert to 1080p, so I select direct 4K. Then after watching for ~30s, it kicks off.
@arebokert said:
So when I use the old plex app, regardless of chromecast profile, my 4K HEVC HDR movies will play, but only for a few seconds. After a few seconds they just stop and Iām kicked back in to the movie info screen.
I have this same issue. Plex Android app, Plex server running on WD PR4100, to a CC Ultra. First, it automatically gets set to downconvert to 1080p, so I select direct 4K. Then after watching for ~30s, it kicks off.
Iām having the same issue. 15-30 seconds of playing and then iām seeing āReady to castā screen. Anyone knows what has happened?
Plex Android app 5.9.1.758 (1f0448ce) with Settings->Video->Original quality over wifi & Original quality over mobile network
PMS 1.9.6.4429-23901a099 (no custom .XML needed anymore)
These two things allow every 4K HEVC/HDR file (apart from a hybrid-log gamma clip) that Iāve tried to either Direct Play or Direct Stream.
@arebokert said: @only1hammy Yupp Iām even on the latest beta. Bought plex pass only to see if this issue was fixed in the beta but nope.
Thatās likely the problem. My solution works only with the PMS version I mentioned (and probably some previous to it). Not great having to use an older version but it is what it is.
@arebokert said: @only1hammy Yupp Iām even on the latest beta. Bought plex pass only to see if this issue was fixed in the beta but nope.
Thatās likely the problem. My solution works only with the PMS version I mentioned (and probably some previous to it). Not great having to use an older version but it is what it is.
No I mean this used to work on older versions of PMS for me but stopped working for some reason. I figured it was due to an update so I made a clean install over and over progressively going backwards but no version ever worked again. Only after trying all older versions of PMS have I bought plex pass to try the beta.
Plex Android app 5.9.1.758 (1f0448ce) with Settings->Video->Original quality over wifi & Original quality over mobile network
PMS 1.9.6.4429-23901a099 (no custom .XML needed anymore)
These two things allow every 4K HEVC/HDR file (apart from a hybrid-log gamma clip) that Iāve tried to either Direct Play or Direct Stream.
I do not have option āOriginal qualityā in my Android Plex app:
@arebokert said: @only1hammy Yupp Iām even on the latest beta. Bought plex pass only to see if this issue was fixed in the beta but nope.
Thatās likely the problem. My solution works only with the PMS version I mentioned (and probably some previous to it). Not great having to use an older version but it is what it is.
No I mean this used to work on older versions of PMS for me but stopped working for some reason. I figured it was due to an update so I made a clean install over and over progressively going backwards but no version ever worked again. Only after trying all older versions of PMS have I bought plex pass to try the beta.
Iāve deliberately avoided updating either the Plex app or PMS just incase this happened to me. All I know is PMS 1.9.6.4429-23901a099 (with the default Chromecast.xml) and Plex Android app 5.9.1.758 (1f0448ce) with Settings->Video->Original quality over wifi & Original quality over mobile network still works for me.
Plex Android app 5.9.1.758 (1f0448ce) with Settings->Video->Original quality over wifi & Original quality over mobile network
PMS 1.9.6.4429-23901a099 (no custom .XML needed anymore)
These two things allow every 4K HEVC/HDR file (apart from a hybrid-log gamma clip) that Iāve tried to either Direct Play or Direct Stream.
I do not have option āOriginal qualityā in my Android Plex app:
Thatās a newer version than 5.9.1.758 (1f0448ce). The option was removed sometime after this version.
Thatās a newer version than 5.9.1.758 (1f0448ce). The option was removed sometime after this version.
Can anyone from Plex team comment this? Iāve bought Plex Pass only because I could stream 4k content on my Chromecast devices. Now this purchase seems to be uselessā¦
