@DaveBinM already answered this for you.
So as I understand it, the goal is to have Quality Suggestions for all clients and that this recent Remote Streaming Quality settings change to 12Mbps 1080p is just a temporary solution for those clients that still use it?
He did. But there weren’t any updates about its implementation anymore after several months. So it doesn’t hurt to ask about it again, does it?
The answer isn’t going to change until Plex implements quality suggestions on other platforms. You’ll know when that happens. Plex will be bragging about it.
it will never happen unfortunately. the business model is based on plex controlling the client (or admin not having controls over the client/people we share with). that’s their target audience for the ad supported, streaming tidal wave etc. .
Be cool If they sold a premium PMS version where these controls were in place (instead of murdering my cpu with 720/3) I would definitely pay for it.
Plex could always set default to Maximum, and then server owners who don’t want this can set a bitrate limit in their settings.
Not pretty but it’s an idea.
Just to add, since the 12Mbps change was rolled out i’ve hardly seen any of my users transcoding which is nice
The newly implemented default of 1080p at 12 Mbps is proving to be an unsatisfactory solution, whereas 720p worked better for me. Here’s why: I had the ‘kill_stream.py’ script activated on Tautulli, with triggers based on these conditions: transcode decision = transcode; video resolution = 1080p; stream resolution ≠ 1080p. Consequently, my users switched to streaming at the original quality. This has led to a situation where many movies are now transcoding due to their higher bitrates. I’m unsure how to address this since transcoding becomes necessary in certain cases where a device lacks support for specific codecs. I’m optimistic that a more effective resolution to this default setting issue will emerge soon. It’s perplexing that such a long time was required to simply adjust the default setting.
I am afraid there won’t be a real solution because Plex insists it is a user decision which quality to stream instead of a server decision. I understand why Plex advocates for that design decision, they prefer to keep the users as Plex users instead of they being our users. But they forget that WE, the ones running the servers are the ones who know what streaming quality our servers support. So the only way they could implement something that works in the way Plex wants is by having some sort of smart decision, but it is complicated to implement and Plex has shown they are incapable of implement something like that.
Not sure if this is a known issue with Quality Suggestions but everytime I switch to the suggested quality, I lose the playback menu while the media is playing. Thoughts?
Did they say it is a ‘user issue’ with the inference was it was our users choice as the intended reasoning?
That’s funny if so. The people we share with are their target audience for their stream everything from the plex hub or watch ad supported whatever, so our controls over the end user client are always going to be few. They don’t get any money from us ( I wish they would’ve at least tried to monetize the server owner first).
I’ve accepted that fact, it’s simply the direction the chose business wise. At this point id be happy if they would simply raise the default or even better setting it at the max. unless your users are only going to watch on their phones. the low default settings means it’s easy for the end user to play anything (even if the quality sucks) and it’s on us as the server owner to ensure we can handle the intensive transcoding. But starting at 720/2 or 720/3 is unnecessarily low default and it’s been there for some time. I’ve communicated this out as much as possible to friends and family that use mine, and the ones that raised it, amazing how many more direct plays you get when the bottleneck is removed. Least that’s been my experience.
The default is “Max” on every platform, that already received the quality suggestion feature.
On every other platform the default is now.12 Mbps 1080p.
I might have missed it in the latest messages or release notes, but is transcoding to 2 Mbps still expected in the browser?
Maybe you are in “Relay” mode.
Yes, the official position from Plex is that it is a user side decision and not a server side decision.
I totally agree the defaults were too low, so I never understood why they insisted for so many years that giving the user a bad experience was something acceptable. They of course insisted as well that the user could go and change the parameter, showing they do not know their users. Most of our users are relatives that have no idea about technology, changing a parameter hidden in hundreds of other parameters is not something simple. Most they don’t even understand them meaning of 10mbs and how that affect the quality of the video. Having to go through the phone with your 70 y/o aunty to change that parameter is something complicated. And the only way to detect the problem was when the auntie spawned unneeded transcoding and the owner of the server realizes it. Otherwise the aunty was watching crappy quality all the time thinking that is what was available.
Yes, having to keep an eye on the active streams and remind my users every time they use a new device to change the default quality to original/max is extremely annoying for both me and my users. At the very least, make it possible for the user to change it across all devices (new and old) on their account. That way, it is still in control of the user, but they do not have to change it on every new device.
Don’t think so, he could just change it. So some sort of 2Mbps default still exists.
Yet another vote asking for this easy-to-implement common sense feature. This is such a dumb default that gives both users and server owners a terrible experience. Plex, get off your butts!
Why can’t remote streaming quality be original as the default setting?
It’s so annoying having to tell everyone to change the setting for every single device they log in on
MOD EDIT: Moved your post to this feature request. You can peruse the existing discussion add your vote if you wish. - @FordGuy61
This is a decent solution, but another step in a good direction would be the removal of the resolution in the remote play options. I have plenty of files that are say 2 mbps 1080p, but because the setting is 4 mbps 720p it would transcode the 1080p to 720p, use more bandwidth needlessly. The player would end up being a 4k tv or something. The file could have easily played in the original quality at 2 mbps if it were not for the 720p requirement. Now with the 12mbps 1080p, the same is true of 4k files. Most of my 4k files are x265 10 bit encodes and well below the 12 mbps limit, but the resolution means i have to ask my users to set it to 20mbps 4k just to get a direct play rather than a 1080p transcode.
There is no 720p requirement.
A 2 Mbps 1080p file will directplay with the limit set to 4 Mbps.