This is not about turning off transcoding across the board. Transcoding is fine when necessary. It’s not fine when the only reason it’s happening is because of a bad default configuration.
Just had to deal with this again over the weekend as a family member updated all their Roku devices. Video wouldn’t even play until I set the streaming limits to original. What a disaster!
Is there a solution anytime soon? This is really annoying.
Yeah, this is incredibly annoying to deal with.
I can’t simply add a user to my server, especially if that user is not that tech savy it’s always like this: “hey, sign up for plex here” “ok great, now give me your username” “ok great but nooooow, before you can actually watch properly here is what you have to do: you go here, then click here, then here” posting screenshot to the user because they can’t find it in the UI “then here as you see on the screenshot” “what? you still can’t find it, ok here i made this pdf explaining everything”. linking the pdf on nextcloud or something “yeah i know its annoying” “yeah i know you just wanted to watch a movie in peace” “ah you finally found it great, enjoy” … “what? still not in fullhd? why?” “oh you are watching on your streaming box, oh you have to do that again” “yeah really you have to do that again” “yeah idk why, it is how it is” “yeah i don’t know where that is on you client you gotta search for it” “Somewhere in the settings” … minutes later… “ah you found it, great enjoy your movie” "oh it’s too late now, you have to go to bed 
"
I am certain many admins in this thread go through the same sh*t on a semi regular basis.
@elan Is that the user experience you had in mind for plex? Because that is the reality right now.
No, which is why we’re working on it.
I’m glad to hear you guys are working on this. The struggle is real.
To make matter worse…this has been requested for years. I don’t even add new people on my servers for this very reason…too much unnecessary work just to watch movies/Tv Shows.
Users really should have less control over the server. They might have access to several and arent going to adjust their settings accordingly.
I have a ton of 1080p HEVC files that have a video bitrate of between 2-3 mbps. I catch even my most tech savy friends transcoding this to 10 mbps AVC, even though their clients supports directplay of either format.
People resorting to transcoding in order to preserve cellular data, may in fact increase their data usage with this botched feature.
I have just resorted to turning off transcoding entirely again. PMS cant be trusted to make sensible transcoding decissions, and neither can my friends.
How this is still not a thing is absolutely mind boggling.
As many have stated before, a lot of plex users are not tech savvy.
Having to explain to them that for every client they use (Phone, Android TV, Web), they have to adjust the setting to have the default quality of the file and not get that 2 mbps stream is just ridiculous.
Glad to see that they at least seem to be working on it. Hopefully it won’t take another year before we hear from this.
There’s active work occurring on this front. Won’t be a year 
Just my $0.02, what should happen when a user first connects to a server, before they even select something to watch, is a capabilities check and then a bandwidth check. Once something is selected to watch, if direct play is possible and the bandwidth is there, boom, direct play. If the bandwidth isn’t there or buffering occurs later, a bandwidth check is performed, and transcoding begins at the bitrate necessary. If the client detects after a few minutes that the video is buffering at greater than 1:1, it can up quality a notch. If it eventually gets to the point where buffering is less than 1:1, it’ll drop down a notch. It wouldn’t be perfect, but even Netflix auto quality has occasional issues.
skipped a few posts, but +1000 for something functionality to control this.
multiple new users, end up ditching plex after a few days, because i can see on their streaming that it defaults to really really bad quality.
I assume it is due to automatic quality not working 100% due to various problems. Issue is → it stays at that quality for a fuill 2 hour movie, without even attempting to go up. I am 100% certain that server and client bandwidth is sufficient (heck even 5mbps will give an acceptable stream, but 10 times that is available)
server side control will be really nice!
alternatively, when a user logs into a new device, let him select the remote stream quality and give them an option to disable.
PLEASE PEOPLE → THE STREAMING CLIENT BASE DONT UNDERSTAND TECHNICAL SETTINGS AND ARE VERY LAZY TO GO SEARCH FOR IT.
off i go to try for the 5th time to explain to a very good friend that there is a way to view better content
I hope when this gets implemented (it should be dead simple) that they allow automatic as an option for us to select as well. Hell, I don’t even mind people transcoding all the time I just hate that it defaults to the shittiest 2 Mbps default it can :(.
Right it’s clear that this streaming brain or whatever has no impact on the remote user as they all default to Crushing the CPU transcode regardless of what the player, bandwidth etc is using. If we could at least set the default for our, I mean plex users that we happen to personally know, it would make a big difference. it wont happen though. I dont say that negatively like “boo never happen” I say that as it totally doesn’t align with their goals of the client, pushing their streaming services etc. We just aren’t going to get that kind of admin control of the user. Once they accept our invite, they are no longer are users in any way.
but wouldn’t we have to first ask them all to turn on preroll videos?
You can allready turn off transcoding entirely. I find the Plex transcoder to be pretty useless anyways so for me thats a viable option.
I see lots of people arguing that the current approach with static 2 mbps bitrate is somehow a balanced approach or a best of both worlds type deal. Seriously people what are you smoking. Name one scenario outside of a small mobile phone where any of the major video streaming services use 2 mbps. Also thanks for completely ignoring the suggestions made by many here to add some kind of client server negotiation feature where both parties can specify a min and max setting. You know akin to the automatic quality feature everybody else is using.
That’s not the point here. The original post was not about forcing a server to stream the original source but rather to get the best possible quality. If the client can’t support the format that means whatever option features a resolution and/or bitrate that provides an image quality that is equivalent to the source.
There are plenty of good things to discuss, and multiple conversations have been redirected here. I agree that I’d like more server-side control of multiple factors.
You referenced the original post. I encourage you to go read it again. It was just that - forcing the server to stream the original source and avoid the pain of transcoding.
No, it was about letting the server owner choose original as a default, not about forcing or disabling transcode.
