And what do I do when one of my users randomly wants to play a video that happens to be an avi file that their player doesn’t support? Or one of the myriad of complicated issues that Chromecast has with audio?
Every time you bring this up, you get the same responses.
It’s not a workaround for this issue, because it’s very highly specific to certain use cases, and doesn’t come close to addressing all of them.
You can either use a solution that isn’t as user friendly as you may want or wait years if ever for something else that nobody knows anything about. My point is there are things that can be done already to mitigate some of the pain even if you don’t like it.
You can set a rule in Tautulli based on the type of video if you understand the conditional rule sets.
Cripple Plex further for no real gain. FTFY.
Right, cripple Plex even further except most people here can’t even transcode one video at a time. That’s completely off base. One wrong setting will completely slam most peoples server no problem.
So basically we should use Tautulli to recreate Plex’s entire transcoding feature? Come on, you’re trolling now. I have tens of thousands of media files, and tens of users. You think building a compatibility matrix of all of the different codecs, containers, subs, etc… and all of their players and then scripting that in Tautulli is the way to go?
You not understanding that simply forcing people to change their own settings would cause even more problems when they don’t understand how and need somebody to show them. What you’re describing isn’t a work around nor a viable solution
OH I completely understand the whole thread and it’s ridiculous on Plex’s part that they wont even change a simple setting that most of their user base wants.
Ease the pain as much as possible is the name of the game when Plex will not budge on a thread that’s been active for what seems like the eternity of Plex itself.
I for one have zero issues killing streams automatically when clients do things I do not want them to do until the user either 1) learns to change the setting and navigate the menus or 2) quits using Plex all together because it’s not as user friendly as Plex themselves make it out to be.
It’s complete BS that a server owner would need to do that but it is what it is.
Yes the inflexibility of Plex has bothered me for years. I’ve been using it for over 8 years and I’m always extremely disappointed that they don’t listen to the wishes of the users and prefer to add useless things that very often cause more problems in other parts than that they really bring something but that’s the way it is.
Plex can be happy there are no viable alternatives. All the others are even worse.
This thread has 777 votes. Nobody vote on it again maybe it’s a lucky sign.
I’m pretty sure the feature suggestions category is a meme at this point. The users are the joke after all.
Tautulli doesn’t ease any pain if you just want users to play at the best quality they are able to. I don’t give a crap about the resources used for transcoding, it’s neglible in my case (and many others’ case - HW transcoding isn’t really cutting edge). I DO give a crap that I spend extra resources serving a lower quality file to a user on a 200Mbit connection.
Terminating streams via filters is a terrible solution for the user - many, including me, have extensive experience doing UX, and almost NO USER will read text when they get errors. They click “OK” to make it go away and try again.
The entire premise that users should care about quality settings in a modern streaming app is kinda ridiculous. If they manually want to limit quality, fine. Let them. But the Netflix default setting isn’t 720p. The default Prime setting isn’t 720p. The default Apple TV setting isn’t 720p. NO user thinks they need to change something to get the best quality stream.
Plex doesn’t trust the people who run servers to know the impact of changing a default for their server, but users should be able to dive into settings and chose which bandwidth is good for them, without even being promted that the defaults assume 3rd world networks. Truth is, they just took the lowest-effort solution, set the default so low everyone can play. Not very ambitious.
You can’t say you don’t give a crap about the resources used for transcoding and then go on saying you care about the resources used for transcoding. It’s very contradicting no matter how you phrase it. In the same paragraph none the less.
Understand I don’t give a crap about the resources, IF there’s a point to it. I also don’t have my server running Prime95 day long just because I can - that would be idiotic.
I care about WASTING resources. Transcoding to provide a better experience is not a waste, transcoding to provide a worse IS.
If users need to transcode for a valid reason (slow connections, incompatible media, need image-based subs etc.), they can transcode all day long.
Look, the Tautulli workaround is helpful. You aren’t the first user in this thread to recommend it, and I’m sure you won’t be the last.
With that said, this thread is about a specific request to the Plex devs. Tips and tricks are useful and have their place, but arguing with other users that there is a workaround is totally besides the point of this specific thread.
It is 2022 and the biggest self hosted media solution defaults to 720p and gives the server admins zero control over that with the exception of completely disabling transcoding. This is a problem and we would like it changed. Default to maximum, give admins more specific settings, or release this fabled feature you’ve been hinting at for years now. I personally think the server owner should be able to dictate their own resource allocations, but really any solution as this point would be welcome after years of watching this thread.
I am a monthly subscriber and am considering Emby for the first time because I am sick of texting my users custom web pages and infographics about settings. It’s enough already.
Tell us what you’re working on and give us a timeline for the love of god.
-Transcoding has its place and I don’t want to just turn it off. So no thank you.
-Thanks for the Tautulli tip, now please go away.
-Oh your system is completely different than mine and transcoding isn’t an issue for you? Then why the hell are you even responding to this thread? You must be incredibly bored to contribute a whole lot of nothing to a thread that has nothing to do with you. Bye bye.
How can tautulli force a stream to be original quality if the user has left it default?
If you don’t like my suggestion then use cloudflare or nginx to rewrite the requests from client to server and truly force the change on the fly. No I will NOT be helping with this y’all too rude.
Yeah, that’s a way better solution than the one OP suggested. Thank you!
If the client is set to play a maximum 720 @ 2mbps can I have Tautulli force 1080 @ 8mbps?
Edit
Ah, I see @Orko asked essentially the same question.
Your answer seems to be you’ve taken your ball and gone home. 
