I am using a new fire stick 4k. I have a 55mb connection and am streaming over the internet from the latest server version. Since the plex quality settings jump straight from 20mb to “maximum” I am left with the problem of either transcoding everything that is >20mb, OR playing everything at maximum and continually having to check and then manually change the quality setting every time I play a file if it happens to be above about 45mbps. If plex used the sensible approach that Emby has and had variations of quality settings right up to 120mb then I would simply be able to select 40 or 50mb and that would be perfect. Since I cannot do that I assumed the “convert automatically” option might actually do what it says and convert it if my connection is not fast enough. It didnt. First thing I tried to play was a 125mbps file which just buffered endlessly because it was trying to direct play it despite me having set “convert automatically” to on. I fiddled about with the settings a bit more trying to figure out why it didn’t work but couldn’t see anything wrong. Decided to go and try playing a 22mbps file…and it starts transcoding it! When I set it to play original quality, the same file will direct play just fine with no transcoding so there is no reason for it to be transcoding it when set to automatic!
I had hoped it would be fairly good at detecting that I can direct play anything up to about 45-50mbps and simply direct play those and transcode anything higher but it simply doesn’t work for anything at all. Seemingly transcoding lower bitrate files for no reason, and failing to transcode huge bitrate files that I so obviously cannot direct play!
I had set the streaming quality to maximum for this since there is little point in me setting it to 20mbps as that will defeat the point in what I was trying to do in the first place. Not sure what else could be wrong with it.
Edit: ok I found this statement on the website which seems to suggest the whole setting is pointless…
“Auto quality is only used when the video is being converted (transcoded). If a video starts with Play Original Quality, also known as Direct Play or Direct Stream, it will not automatically change quality based on connection speed. Similarly, if a video starts with Convert Automatically, it will not automatically change to Play Original Quality.”
So by setting quality to “maximum” its going to start by direct playing everything which means “convert automatically” will never actually do anything anyway. And If I set the maximum speed to 20mbps then it will never try to direct play anything that happens to be a bit higher even if the connection can handle it. So the ONLY use for this setting is basically if you set a limit on quality which is something below “maximum” (i.e. 20mbps or lower) and you happen to have set that limit too high for your connection such that your connection cannot cope, so it would then adjust it lower. Completely pointless!!
So basically I am stuck setting max quality to 20mpbs and then transcoding everything that is between 20mbps and 45mbps for no good reason, or set it to max and having to manually check the quality on every file I play (several button presses for every file I play when that sort of thing should really be visible easily with a single button press) and manually adjust it if its above 45mbps. Urgh I think I will just use Emby.
