I had a legitimate question about your solution. The same question @Orko had. You chose to not respond to it. I just found it a bit funny.
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Here’s an idea: how about upon installation there is a quick setup option where the app does a speed test of the users network and then automatically sets the recommended bandwidth for the client? This way there is no guess work or trial and error, the app just sees the max bandwidth and determines the optimum setting.
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You prolly will not have servers enabled at install time.
I’m not talking server side, I’m talking client side for those less knowledgeable about Plex settings. All the test would do is see what they’re connection is and set the default streaming settings for them.
yeah, new users don’t have servers added yet when they dl the client often.
Just wanted to push the topic, am also for the default setting should be automatic or max. Every time I have to annoy new users with the fact that they should please change the standard setting.
Thanks to the Plex team for the great work so far!
Soon I’ll be one of them
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I spent quite some time reading through these forums a bunch and learning a lot more about Plex’s development history - not just the general disregard and absurdity, but the clear indication of severe issues when it comes to both the quality and the process of decision-making.
At this point I’ve done the same as you, and it’s honestly been great - the nimbleness/efficiency, the avenues of customisation, etc., and it’s so nice to not have to deal with parasitic auth, aggressively bizarre constraints, & knowing you’re not farming out your friends/family for data.
It’s super clear that Plex (both the company and the product) just no longer has the potential that it used to, point blank, let alone the specific potential to address the real needs of viewers/clients & server operators, not the imagined ones. You don’t have to put up with any of it!
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It could check the client’s Internet speed at install then check server speed on first connection. It has to check both anyway and go with the lowest speed.
Multiple servers would be another issue.
How about a plex pass server side button similar to ‘Stop User Playback’ but instead ‘Recommend Maximum Quality’. This would trigger a dialogue box client side “Server admin recommends adjusting your global remote stream quality to maximum. Continue? Click → Yes / No.
Clicking yes would change client setting maximum with direct play / direct stream on.
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That’s essentially how I managed to set-up Tautulli. The common use-case to outright stop every single transcoding stream simply wasn’t good enough me, because I don’t want to stop users transcoding, and that lead me to doing a little research (with help from the Tautulli developers) into an alternate method and this is what we came up with:
3 Constraints
- Transcode Decision = transcode
- Initial Stream = 1 (1 = True)
- Stream Bandwidth < 4000 (optional)
This will still kill the users stream and display a message, BUT, it gives the user a choice to continue without changing any settings. My idea was to aggressively remind the users to change their settings without stopping them from playing items.
There’s a setting linked to Initial Stream called Continued Session Threshold, which I have set to 18000 seconds (5 hours), but you can set this to something more / less aggressive. So, what happens is pretty simple, if the user plays something for the first time in 5 hours, their stream will be stopped and they will be issued a warning:
Your quality has dropped below the optimal viewing limit. To avoid this error, head to your client settings and change “Internet Streaming Quality” to “Maximum”. Alternatively, you can wait 5 minutes before trying again to ignore this error for 5 hours.
It’s also important to note that while experimenting with this setup, the kill stream script would sometimes make the item they were trying to play hang in Plex for up to 3/4 minutes after the client has displayed the message. This was causing some issues with being able to just read the message and play the item immediately, which lead to telling them to wait 5 minutes which isn’t ideal, but if they actually change their settings they won’t need to wait. This issue made it a little more aggressive than I initially intended, but, beggars cant be choosers haha.
I also setup an extra notification agent to send me an email within the same constraints, and so far, almost every users that’s been hit with this error only ignored it first couple of times before deciding it would be quicker to change the settings to max. This isn’t an ideal solution by any means, but this is a lot more useable than killing every single stream.
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Count me in. I’m only trying to share with a small handful of friends and not only did one of them bail because the quality was garbage and they were too lazy to change the settings, but the transcoder experience was extremely poor. It took forever to buffer, sometimes not even playing properly at all just repeating the same section over and over while loading my modern 6 core CPU to 100% with only 2 users. Not to mention wasting my PCs resources which I need since I’m not running a dedicated server here.
So my solution was the same as many others here just forcing direct play and things have been much happier even though I’m sure there would be playback issues on a lot of devices (h265 not being supported in web apps for example).
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I’ve just started with hosting a Plex server, and I’ve instantly come up against this problem. Users external to my house are not willing to change quality settings, or find my libraries to pin them. Everyone ends up streaming at 720p when we BOTH have symmetric gigabit, which is criminal. Then they are disappointed and leave.
Commercial streaming services have set very high expectations, and when Plex doesn’t meet them, Plex loses out entirely.
I’m now setting up Jellyfin to run in parallel.
I do wonder if there isn’t a significant minority of dev staff who agrees with the posters on this thread, but can’t get buy-in from those in control. To them I say, offer to run an A/B with metrics, do a beta program with our suggested server-side setting. Whatever the specific objections, if this single simple setting drives customers away, forever, you need to have the humility to change.
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Any chance we could get an update please @elan?
The silence is deafening us.
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Could the constraints be met even if the user has changed the setting to Maximum? I know there are times when transcoding can’t be avoided.
Unfortunately, the constraints can still be met in some cases, even if they have their settings set at maximum. But this error can only show after 5 hours of inactivity, and in cases where transcoding is needed, this won’t stop them from watching, they just have to wait 5 minutes to ignore the error. I tried super hard to make the message they receive super understandable in that respect, by expressing that changing their settings will help them avoid the error haha.
For my setup, I even added ‘Duration (sec) < 60’ as an extra constraint just to make the window in which the user will receive this error super small and only work when they’ve started something, not resuming something.
As I said, it’s not ideal or perfect, but it’s waaay smarter than any of the existing methods that just block all transcodes. Thought it would be worth sharing haha.
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paid for plex pass but slowly switching all my users to emby for this. pathetic it has taken plex multiple years to figure this out.
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I’m really sorry, but I don’t have much to report. We are still working on it, currently blocked on a few upstream things. Hoping to unblock it shortly.
(Yes, I’m fully aware of how long it’s been, and I feel terrible about it.)
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Good to know that it’s still on the agenda. Thank you.
