Default All Clients to Max Internet Streaming

Feature Suggestions
1706

Going to add my feature request here since it is similar but opposite.

I have clients that either I have no direct contact with or simply ignore/incapable of adjusting their device’s quality settings …auto quality last I checked is still buggy, especially for people with internet speeds that may vary, and auto suggest ends up with people screwing up their own settings unnecessarily. I tell my clients to turn both of those features off!

So scenario where this is an issue is with households that have slow internet speeds …like AT&T budget dsl. Caps at 12-15mbs. should be plenty fast …if this household isn’t running more then two 4mb streams at the same time! Even when they are only using one stream …someone else in their house might be on netflix or watching youtubes.
Much of my content is now x265 …so less of an issue but actually kinda adds to the problem. since from their perspective plex seems to work most of the time …but some TV stations and my older content I haven’t converted yet goes way over 4mbs …and when they stream that it causes buffering issues. Not only for that stream but then i see a 2nd device set way too low because the one set too high is hogging the bandwidth!

So feature I would like to see is simply the ability to override an individual client’s quality setting caps. (They could possibly still be allowed to set their cap lower? …but not higher? or allow server to set an upper and lower cap?)

This would be much appreciated …and I may start a new feature request thread for it …since this one is little different and years old.

1707

Then maybe you should tell Plex that it is impossible to do. Because Plex have tried to implement it, the problem is that it doesn’t work as expected, if is full of bugs.

1708

Plex absolutely doesn’t try to implement something like the streaming providers do.
They use DASH with preencoded chunks for every quality possible.

Quality suggestions work totally different.

1709

I am talking about the old “Automatic Adjust Quality” that is supposed to automagically decrease and increase the quality on the fly. Yes, true, it is “different” to what the stream providers do because they keep multiple versions of the same file. But in the practice it is the same, a configuration-less solution which is better for the non-technical users. That functionality would be GREAT and the FINAL solution, but unfortunately it has never worked properly.

Quality Suggestions is a new implementation that I guess will replace the automatic one because they probably gave up.

1710

Does anyone know what the status of the quality suggestion feature is - has it been implemented for all clients or only on Android so far?

The thread is too long to read through and I haven’t seen an announcement from Plex regarding this.

1711

Current app support:

  • Android TV (v9.31.0 or newer)
  • Plex HTPC for Windows/Mac/Linux (v1.48.0 or newer)
  • Roku (v7.9.3 or newer)
  • Smart TV supported models
2 Likes
1712

I have this issue as well. Pressing up/down seems to work to get to the overlay for some reason.

I really loathe the constant prompts for switching to a higher quality.

1 Like
1713

Really not a fan of this feature so far. The small amount of time I left it on, it just kept spinning saying it was testing connection speed and was automatically reducing quality on a setup that has consistently been streaming original quality for a year. Just let us force original quality by default ffs.

2 Likes
1714

That would be redefining the power relationship between you and the people you are sharing your server with. Maybe they have the setting lower because they need the remaining bandwidth on their connection for something else.

Having the client default setting to Max out of the box, and not making it something a server owner has any control over, would be better.

2 Likes
1715

Either would be fine with me. Regardless, there needs to be more done to prevent unnecessary and unintentional transcoding.

1 Like
1716

Respectfully, but a hard disagree from me and is literally the point of this entire thread: giving power to the server admins, especially if they want to stamp out needless transcoding of their more luddite family and friends.

I applaud the recent changes to default client app settings for quality, and remain hopeful there is pressure to allow admins to dictate what we’re allowing clients to experience.

At a bare minimum, Plex should provide clearer messaging to a client if an admin disables video transcoding, which instructs users to go into their Remote settings and set quality to Original/Max.
The workaround provided already (using Tautulli and a handy stream killer script)

Having said all this, there is some work required on admins’ part to be sure ALL the clients out there are able run DirectPlay/Stream of all of our content if you take video transcoding out of the mix. You have to make sure:
a) all your content is H.264 (265/HEVC will always transcode on a number of clients) and
b) only SRT subs (no ASS/PGS or other image-based subs) are embedded.

Here are the two scripts I created that help me identify and fix the above:

strippgs.txt (rename to strippgs.ps1 and run in PowerShell) scans your configurable media library and automatically converts any MKV that has non-SRT subs to remux (very quick process, usually ~1-2mins per title it finds). It also keeps a record of all the scans, so every time you run the script, it only looks for newly added media.

hevccheck.txt (change to ps1 extension as above) scans all your media to determine which titles are encoded in HEVC/H.265 and/or have HDR. Once you identify these files, your options are to re-encode in H.264 or just download a new non-HEVC copy.

Once everything is setup, the only errors your users will experience is if they attempt to watch any of your media below Original quality, and they will receive a much more hand-holding error message on what they need to do:

image
image706×367 27.1 KB

Good luck to everyone and thanks for this thread for great ideas over the years(!).

strippgs.txt (3.4 KB)
hevccheck.txt (2.6 KB)

2 Likes
1717

Similar to what a Plex employee said waaay back in the thread. I’d say it’s my server, my rules.

That said I agree that fixing the default would be good, but they seem to have something way more complicated in mind.

1718

That’s a long error message there. Tech illiterate people respond better to shorter messages so “Learn to use the app and turn your darn settings up!” would be my choice

1719

You underestimate my users’ desire to get Plex working again :slight_smile: The verbosity has helped in my case with getting friends and family to make the exact changes needed.

1720

which platforms are those? a quick glance and I;m seeing a few where that isn the case (doesnt mean more are, just a quick obasservation)., There could be other variables that impact this, but it
s also a little contradictory to the 5 +years thread where we begged, pleased to at least set our own default resolution. Most of us knew there was no way that would ever happen because it means we have some control of the end user/client.

After many many years of 720/3 something ‘better’ was being released- the auto adjust based on available bandwidth. I tested it awhile back and it wasn’t great but admittedly it was very new and I havent tried since.

Im probably missing something but after 5 years of that massive beef/thread and the time put into the auto adjust solution (which seemed like it was taken pretty seriously) how does that fit in with default max for everything?

Again, there may be variables I’m missing but those pieces dont seem to align.

I manually set mine to max awhile ago and it makes all the difference in the world but bandwidth is a very big variable and far from static.

Thanks for answering my questions.

1721

or let us set the default for our own hardware in the interim seems reasonable

1722

definitley not in relay. Im not speaking to myself but the people.currently using it/

1723

ha ha. that is a very generous way of phrasing it.
The problem is and always will be Is that we will never have any control to help our end user or god forbid save some CPU cycles,

All of us on the forum now- they make no money from us. We are the audience delivery system to their never ending stream of ad supported, tidal, tv store etc. Those are their customers they’re trying to monetize. I dont say this being defeatist, it’s simply fact. They obviously need money (for god knows what reason they never once tried to monetize the server owner after the Plex pass) and are going to seemingly desperate lengths-

Hard to see this as being anything but a negative

Social Media users are being served with DMCA notices via Plex

1724

The problem is Plex doesn’t detect the end users bandwidth like other streaming apps do, I’ve seen the option in PMS settings with (Beta) next to it but that doesn’t seem to have any actual functionality with my testing on 4G mobile connectivity.

It’s a fairly universal feature across streaming apps which most users are completely unaware of because it works in the background. Streaming quality often changes without them noticing in households with lower download speeds on apps by Netflix, BBC, Amazon etc.

1725

My understanding is the logic now works like this for clients that support the new approach:

  • Prior to remote content playback, the client tests the bandwidth to the server (or uses a recent test if one is available)
  • If the bandwidth is higher than the predicted bandwidth of the file then the client chooses to DirectPlay/DirectStream the item (assuming the client is able to DirectPlay/DirectStream it), otherwise it requests the highest transcode option that will sit safely under the bandwidth limit.
  • During playback, if playback buffers multiple times, the client will suggest to the user to lower the bandwidth of playback (If the user choses to do this, I don’t know if it retests, or simply picks a lower transcode tier).
  • Also during playback, if the file is not DirectPlaying, it periotically checks the bandwidth to the server, and and if it has significantly increased since the start of playback, the client will prompt the user to increase the bandwidth of playback (I think only if there is enough to DirectPlay, not to larger transcodes, but I’m not sure?).
  • For all of these suggestions, it is up to the user to accept them and change playback by pressing the button on the suggestion dialog.

The new logic is in SmartTV clients (including consoles), Roku and AndroidTV clients, but isn’t yet support by AppleTV clients, and I don’t believe it is supported on mobile clients or the Web (or maybe web is supported, wording of the settings is different there…)