I run the latest PMS on a 2010 Mac Mini. My ATV3 is connected to a TV via hdmi and I get stereo analogue audio via. bose Cinemate connected to the TV ( no 5:1, Dolby, etc …). I would like to Direct Stream videos ( mkv, MP4, etc …) or Direct Play them. I don’t want anything transcoded except possible audio. What do I set PlexConnect to? Auto or Direct Play in the transcoder settings? What about allow Dolby audio in PMS on ATV. Will the ATV3 downmix this to stereo or is this done back at the PMS?
There used to be Direct Play, Direct Stream ( remux) and transcode. The settings seems to not have an option for Direct Stream. Do I have to edit Settings.cfg?
@roidy
Thanks. If I enable 4 then on the Apple TV will I have to set Dolby Digital Out to “on”? I don’t have a Dolby capable audio system.
I don't have a Dolby capable audio system.
Sorry.... I thought you were trying to get Dolby 5.1. If you just want stereo then you don't need to set anything. Don't do the setting in the picture and don't set Dolby Digital Out to "on" on the aTV and everything should be either transcoded or down-mixed to stereo for you.
If you leave transcoding to "AUTO" then compatible videos will be direct played while MKV will be remixed etc.
I am also trying to figure this out. I have two (as far as I can tell) very similar files. Yet when I play one it is passed through, while the other causes Plex on my Synology to transcode, forcing the CPU into the high 90's.
Can anybody shed any light on why these two files act differently? The higher resolution file plays directly while the lower resolution forces transcode. I have Dolby DTS enabled on the server, Transcode is set to Auto / 40Mbits in PlexConnect on the ATV,
Those screens don’t give any information like video bitrate or number of reference frames 
My first guess would be the transcoded file has a high number of reference frames. Anything with more than 8 ref frames or that is encoded in high 10 format will be transcoded.
I'm not an expert on this - I assume that by high 10, you're referring to the H.264 MPEG-4 AVC (part 10) (avc1) reference on the screen? They're both using this encoding, yet one file causes transcoding and the other does not. How does that correspond to your last statement?
You assume wrong 
No, I’m referring to High 10 Profile (Hi10P, 110) 10 bit files, it’s mainly used by people who encode anime, but I’ve see some TV Shows and Movies encoded with it as well. High 10 profile isn’t playable on a lot of hardware, and certainly not on the aTV, hence Plex transcodes it. I’m not saying that your problem is High 10 encoding, as I said my first guess would be the number of reference frames, but you haven’t provided any where near enough information on the files to diagnose it
Just look at the files information in PMS and post the number of reference frames for both files, my guess still stands that the transcoded one has more than 8.
Yup - you're right. Just learned about reference frames - and recoding below 8 took care of it. Thanks man :D Now I need to read up on High 10.. Oh well, you never get too old to learn..
Glad you got to the bottom of the problem :) As I said, high 10 isn't that common outside of the anime community, and most of the time it's going to be the reference frame count that's too high.
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