I run plex with this configurations:
Server : Win10 last version
Client 1 : Android 8.1 smartphone (pocophone F1) over wifi with last Plex Android client
Client 2 : Chromecast over wifi
Client 3 : Android 8.1 box (H96 Max X2) over 100M LAN ethernet with last Plex Android client
Client 4 : same H96 but with Plex plugin for Kodi
For clients 1 and 3 parameters are the same (max bandwidth, etc).
The result is that any movie (about 1000 movies in the database) plays fine and without transcoding for clients 1, 2 and 4 BUT are all transcoded 720p for client 3.
Iāve read all this thread and I do understand the necessity of transcoding to be able to give the best user experience whatever the client is and I support the dev team for their great job. But I do not understand why the Plex server/Plex client3 does the wrong choice thinking the client is unable to play without transcoding as client 1 (same software config) or client 4 (same hardware config) are seen as able to play the same movies without transcodingā¦
For the time, on the H96 I use the client 4 configuration, better than nothing, but not ideal : complexity to go in the Plex plugin (for children) and unable to cast from a smartphone to the H96, as it seems that casting from an other android device activates configuration 3.
I am not a video streaming expert and there is certainly a good reason for this behavior, but which one? or is there a bug somewhere? or maybe the H96 platform is not recognized and defaults to the lower as the Pocophone is āregisteredā (and the kodi plugin is old and doesnāt negotiate the same way)? or something else?
Is there a way to have the same behavior for client 3?
Anyway, I am lost, I paid for Plex at that time I was using the Chromecast and but now, moving to the TV box I am a bit disappointedā¦
Are you using a usb to ethernet adapter? If so, then you are seeing the bug I mentioned above. If not, then please start a new thread and provide logs after playing back something on this device.
Just tried something: unplugged the Ethernet wire and activated the WiFi. It did not transcode!
It seems that the H96 has an internal Ethernet over USB or that the bug you mentioned is bigger than you thought and impacts more hardware architectures.
For the time I will use WiFi, bur one of the reasons I switched from the Chromecast the the Android box is to reduce the WiFi load as high WiFi traffic tend to make my internet box instableā¦
I finally had the time to dig into this. Plex has a built-in āOptimizeā function that does what I need (I use the āOriginal Qualityā setting). For TV shows, I can optimize the entire show (all episodes) easily. For movies, I need to optimize them individually. With my NUC, Iām averaging 5-6X transcode speed, so I can do about 50 movies a day. This wonāt be too bad.
When I started ripping these movies, the names I used didnāt exactly match the Plex naming convention, but I still got about a 90% match rate. When Plex Optimizes the files, the output matches their naming convention, and thereās no chance of a future mismatch. I consider this to be a nice step forward, and a valid reason to use the Optimize tool.
After all the transcoding is done and verified, Iāll probably delete the original (effectively duplicate) files, just to save space.
Now I just need to find a tool that can rip my Blu-Ray disks at a high bitrate (Iāve got plenty of disk space). Any suggestions?
Use MakeMKV to rip your Blu-rayās. It keeps them at the original quality. All it does it take the video, audio and subtitle portions (you can choose which audio and subtitle tracks you want to include) and puts them into an MKV container. It doesnāt touch the video, so itās at the same bitrate as the movie was on the Blu-ray. You can then run the file through handbrake or ffmpeg afterwards if you want to reduce the bitrate.
The interface is a bit of a pain (compared to WinX DVD Ripper), but it works and the result is perfect on my PC. After I get a few movies ripped, Iāll transfer them to my file server and see what Plex does with them.
I have 40TB of usable storage allocated for Videos (1/4 used), GigE (wired) to my TVs, an AP that supports 802.11ac, and I donāt watch my videos unless Iām at home. Why would I want to reduce the bitrate?
If any of the videos arenāt H.264, Iāll convert them at as close to the original resolution as possible, but thatās all Iād want to do.
If the user is on a metered connection then it is 100% their responsibility to be aware of how much bandwidth they are using and how much they have remaining. Does netflix say āOh, well I bet a bunch of people have limited bandwidth so lets just give everyone 2mbps quality by defaultā? Of course not, if they did theyād lose an absurd amount of users who are suddenly perplexed as to why the quality everything they are watching has gone to trash. Anyways, my point is in terms of user experience auto quality should be the default for new clients/users.
Also, having the default at 2mbps is not only frustrating as a server admin, but Iām sure many many users wonder why the quality of what they are watching is so awful. Moviefan.Plex, why are you assuming that the average consumer (who is not maintaining a plex server, only using a plex client) would have intuition to adjust video quality? Especially when no tutorial/UI explanation for first time clients/users. Like one of those things where it highlights each part of the UI, explains what it does, then you hit next (or skip the entire thing).
But what I really find the most annoying out of anything relating to plex quality drama is that, there was a solution/workaround for this. It was by setting a hidden server setting āforceAutoAdjustQualityā to true, and then it would make every auto quality client use auto quality regardless of their quality settings. However, sometime in the past 3-6ish months, this was secretly nerfed and now it no longer works. Funny thing is, this setting still technically works fine. But now there is an HTTP header that was added which acts as a bandaid and forces the max quality to be the users setting WHILE still using auto quality. Itās actually kind of funny, I honestly I donāt know why you didnāt just remove the server setting forceAutoAdjustQuality. But instead went and added bandaids on the client side.
Iām not familiar with that setting, but I donāt see how that would help in your case. For the auto adjust quality feature to work, it transcodes the video. That seems like the opposite of what you are trying to do.
I came here because while my Debian Plex server had no problems with transcoding, and I enjoyed it, with 1080p/h264 stuff, trying to transcode 4k/265 blu-ray rips would literally crash my server, not just the transcoder, but the actual Linux box so that I could not even ssh into it.
It would be nice to have a per media transcoding setting on the server side, or even better, plex should detect your server hardware and decide on a per media basis based on the codecs it uses, whether it can be transcoded or not and disable transcoding for the media that the server is not strong enough to transcode. (based on only 1 client at a time).
Since thatās not available now, Iāll just have to move the transcoder binaries and disable transcoding for everything, which is a shame because I really wanted to keep the transcoding capabilities for the 1080p/h264 media I had in my library.
What I find troubling here is the expectation of the dev team for people to āmanage their mediaā and not load them to Plex if there are transcoding issues. That is completely at odds with how people operate.
Itās been a year and still no way to completely remove transcoding.
Iāve read this entire thread and the same thing always gets repeated.
Why wonāt you let your users deal with the difficulties of direct play? There was a time where I could just remove the transcoder and it did wonders on my network setup, everything was a direct play and my CPU was free as a bird, I NEVER needed anything more.
When you removed this possibility, somehow, and the transcoder needs to be there, youāve rendered PLEX unusable for me unless I spend money that I do not wish to spend and Iām left in the limbo of trying to look for another app and itās highly frustrating.
Itās not fair. Transcoder needs to be at any userās discretion. Stop shoving it down our throats.
Hello,
i looking for an option to disable transcoding completely. All devices that can not play x265 should not. I do not want to be told that this is completely unnecessary. I just want to know where this option is hidden.
Ty
Has the bug with ethernet via usb dongle been fixed? If not when can we expect a fox to this? Thank you
Should I follow another thread to know about whether or not this is resolved?
How about adding a player setting, Transcoding ON/OFF? I know my HW doesnāt need transcoding, why do I need to edit all kinds of playback settings when I can just turn off transcoding and all my media will play just fine.
