Emby is the way to go
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This should just be “Disable transcoding on specific library” Would fix this as well.
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Not for Everybody. Many people, myself included, have the 4K included in the same library as the rest of it. That way you don’t have to KNOW what movies you have in 4K. Instead, you just play the movie you want, and if it is in 4K, cool, bonus.
I currently have 20,000 ish movies, and 600 or so are 4K. To organize all of that and remember it all in separate libraries wouldn’t work well. I’m not able to remember everything THAT well.
So really, the only good solutions, are to either:
Disable transcoding of 4K content
properly recognize if people have 1080p equipment and play the 1080p version instead
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Then it should be a disable transcoding on specific resolution and/or file format
Maybe some would like to disable it on 1080p as well but not 720p 
EXACTLY what needs to happen!
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What about disabling displaying of 4K content or 4K libraries on certain devices, like how netflix and amazon only displays 4K media on capable devices.
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Or this. Really, the best solution, is the automatic one. Like you said, and I said earlier. If you have a 1080p or lower device, don’t even try streaming the 4K content. Stream the 1080p version instead automatically.
Hugely disappointed to find this thread instead of the answer as to how to change the default/disable any transcoding from UHD BR source (or other HDR). Seems like a very simple change to do what Emby has done forever, make you select the version you want if there are more than one, or simply make a server side switch to allow for disabling all transcoding form 4k/HDR sources (only allow direct stream). Could also make it a client side where it defaults to only selecting 1080 /non HDR and you have to enable it if you want it to happen on that client.
Right now the only way my remote family members realize it is a 4k source is if it starts buffering and failing (and looking wonky). Then they have to go in find where the options are and select the source. Huge PIA given that we want to transcode from UHD source exactly 0% of the time. The only reason this hasn’t been even more of an issue is that most of the UHD discs has digital rights so they can just default to Vudu as Plex experience is too hit and miss for them, partly for this reason.
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I was disappointed as well. I’ll give Emby a try.
Disappointed this hasn’t moved anywhere or any comments from Plex Staff…
Emby also has the ability to restrict folder access to certain users and maintain a single library.
I like the idea around Device Detection which is already built into the platform, sounds like a simple script to block higher resolutions no?
So has Plex weighed in here on this yet? As I just got a 4K TV"TCL 55R617", I bought the cheapest 4K Ultra HD HDR10+ I could find in Walmart, Alien for $19. Used MakeMKV to get a 55GB mkb, I kept all the audio tracks as I was unsure at this date which ones I could use. I used Xmedia Recode to do a HW transcode to a 1500 kbs H.265 file, that took over five hours. So I don’t want to have Plex try to do on the fly software, or HW transcoding. Nether my AMD FX 8350, nor my Nvidia RTX 2080 Ti is fast enough to do on the fly trancoding of 4K. My current ideal is to keep the original 55Gb file for at home use only, the 4K 1500 kbs for remote 4k, and a 1080 1500kbs for remote clients that can’t do 4k. The problem will come with getting Plex to understand what I want it to do.
Ps the AMD FX 8350 is fast enough to do 1080 software transcoding on the fly, and the RTX 2080 Ti is fast enough to do 1080 HW trancoding on the fly.
Ummmmmmmm, don’t know about the AMD card, but the 2080ti is more than fast enough to do hardware encoding on the fly of full 4K remuxes. My GTX 1060 can do 3 4K remux encodes on the fly… You sure you have your hardware encoding set up correctly?
Side note, don’t do it, lol. Plex does not map HDR to SDR AT ALL, and it looks like complete garbage, no matter what. But your hardware is MORE than capable of physically DOING what you’re saying, is why I am confused.
On Plex weighing in? Nope. Just patiently waiting forever. Never getting a solution to something they claim their software does, and has claimed it does since I paid for the lifetime pass 5 years ago. Meaning… I doubt it is ever coming.
Some way to prevent Plex from transcoding HEVC to H264 when an H264 copy exists is a must feature. I keep 1080p and 4k Copies of everything but my CPU keeps getting hammered by 4k to h264 transcodes anyway. I’d love a option to disable transcoding on 4k files. Better selection algorithms on the back end should be in place as well. Disable transcoding for any HEVC file would work. Something, anything, PLEASE! I’m not maintaining multiple libraries for this stuff. I already have trouble keeping up with the tags so my collections are clean I’m not tagging everything twice because Plex is stupid about selecting the source file for trasncoding.
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The CPU does most of the work in transcode so I assume you have a beefy processor. 1060 is no way good enough to take the load off a medium duty cpu for a single UHD Blu-ray on-the-fly transcode. Of course for most, they want a media server to be a secondary, cheaper/lower powered device and not have to be their main PC (especially if it is a gaming system, you don’t want the hit while you are taxing it)
And yeah, HDR is a whole other reason why we want to not have it defaulting to transcoding a UHD.
8700K, yes. But again, even when transcoding MULTIPLE 4K files at once, my CPU is never over 10-15% usage. Which is normal. The GPU spikes up in usage, depending on how much is being done and how much is already in the buffer. But a 1060 is more than enough. You’ll just have to trust me on this one, as I literally have this set up as my daily driver… I know how it works… I’m going to stop here though, as this isn’t part of this request forum.
But none the less. Off the point. PLEX, PLEASE ALLOW DISABLING 4K TRANSCODES! It can’t be that hard! Again, ESPECIALLY since you have it listed as one of your features already, and have since I signed up years upon years ago! How can you claim you have a feature you don’t have!?
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The only real option to disable 4k transcodes I have found is to install a custom script in tautulli to abort 4k transcodes and tell the user that 4k transcoding is disabled and to manually choose the HD version. it is not perfect, it does not always seem to kick in, but it is all we have that I have been able to find so far.
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Interesting, interesting… Might be looking into this one here!
That sounds like a better solution in a feature request…max transcode resolution/bitrate. I.e. if I have a 1080p and 4k copy of movie x, and I set maximum transcode level to 1080p, a user who can’t direct play 4k will be forced to the 1080p version. As a whole it would be nice to be able to autoselect versions based on direct play/stream ability vs best quality.
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Agreed. Built in features would be best. I don’t think they have commented on why these features are not there, but I would sure like to see them.
I would love to see this feature as well. I have multiple users on my server and some of them don’t manually select the 1080p versions of movies and trying to transcode 4K HDR to SD or even 1080p is ridiculously intensive on my CPU. I have 1080p versions of all my movies yet Plex doesn’t choose those versions to stream/encode when they make more sense.
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