Bleh, yeah, looks like I’m gonna have to drop Plex as well. The server side transcoder is unwanted in my case as well, running through all the posts it seems like I’m better off moving on to another product that doesn’t chop it’s own legs out.
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Also dropping plex because I cannot turn transcoder off when I need to. 265 is small, and the new industry standard. The quality is better too. Why would I want to give that up?
Not giving users what they want is never a good idea, even if the user is wrong. They argue that if turned off people will forget to turn it on, but a reminder could be built in to display a message if this ever happened.
What you guys fail to realize is that if you get your media in a format that can direct play on these devices there will be no need to transcode (bandwidth aside). It transcodes because the device CAN NOT play the file as is.
So by asking to turn off the transcoder you are asking to not be able to play your media or to fix your media mistakes.
If Plex is transcoding because you don’t have enough upload bandwidth to serve remote clients then you need to stop remote use that causes transcoding. Also change the clients that use ABR to not use this feature.
FFS,
Y’all are free users, you aren’t paying for anything but still wanna complain?
Make it worse by announcing “I’m gonna drop plex”.
Geez, man up and just go already. Nobody’s gonna miss ya and the mods won’t have to deal whith the whining.
@ChuckPA ,
Just started out with PLEX and noticed this ‘issue’ that people are referring to. I definitely understand the need for the transcoder and respect that; however I run on a NAS which doesn’t handle H.264 transcoding well, or any full video transcoding for that matter.
The thing I am running into is that I made sure the media is compatible with my Chromecast (with minimal conversion work as noted in your documentation - only video container changing and audio conversion at worst) and it will DirectStream properly and extremely well, but the Android App has no option to prefer DirectStream (but it does this extremely well without much resources).
Part of the problem is that there is a ‘Home Streaming’ option that states ‘Videos smaller than 20 mbps 1080p will play at original quality.’ but 1080p lossless videos are typically (at least the ones I have) >20mbps anyway so it never comes into this option.
Basically is there a chance that an option like ‘Prefer DirectStream’ or ‘Prefer Original’ can exist regardless of bandwidth requirements (obviously if bandwidth can support it)? And can this option exist for other than ‘Home Streaming’?
Right now every time I try to play a movie it automatically sets it to “Convert 20mbps 1080p”, I have to wait for the transcoding to start and pause after playing 5 seconds to buffer (for some reason changing the quality immediately has no effect and does not get picked up by PLEX - I saw this issue noted earlier in this giant thread - it has to start the transcoding process first before it will recognize the change to original quality), then go into the settings and change it to ‘Playback Original Quality 27.9mbps’, and then it works from there on out. Basically I would like it to ‘Playback Original Quality’ by default instead of defaulting to convert; or even just remember my preference for next time; or even still let me change it without having to wait for it to start transcoding before having to make a change.
Maybe when hitting play the ability to select the desired quality first?!
That alone would be fantastic. It may be enough to ‘fix’ the ‘issues’ people are having with transcoding… obviously playback original would not exist if it isn’t supported and people can stop ‘crushing’ their cpu’s by realizing it requires transcoding.
Is this a possibility?
Thanks.
I’m a paying customer and I have no problems with complaining about something that doesn’t work for my money. Even moreso, I feel obligated to say why I’m not giving any more money to a business so that they can determine whether my money is worth working for in the future.
The solution here is a simple one, allow me to disable a “feature.” I can direct play every video in my catalog, but Plex still wants to transcode so the end result is Plex not working.
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I was alerted to some ‘activity’ in here today.
With regard to you saying you can DirectPlay everything in your library but you say it insists on transcoding: can you help me find out what’s wrong? I sold my old DS1813+ (Atom D2700 CPU) about year ago. There is no way in H*** it can transcode anything. That said, I prepared the media so it would DirectPlay 58 Mpbs, 2160p HDR with 7.1 audio to the Samsung (4K). It played flawlessly over wifi. Plex did not try to transcode it. If it had, it would have failed miserably and likely melted the thing.
I sincerely think there’s something not being understood about what it takes to stream audio /video.
If you’ll work with me, and it’s broken, I will see it gets fixed and hopefully end this discussion.
Regarding the ability to turn the transcoder off, I understand the logic. There’re aren’t many options in PMS as it is and if you had any idea how many times I need to tell someone “Turn it on” or “Turn it off”, you’d understand it from my perspective (at least). The goal is “Point & Shoot” . You should never be bothered with it.
If you can give me the XML of an item which you know will direct play, the playback environment, including:
- XML of the item being played
- Subtitle usage (Yes/No)
- Make, model, and year of the player (if a TV)
I’ll look at it and tell you what I think.
Then, if still needed, A 60 second sample of any file which should DirectPlay but doesn’t will allow me to a) confirm it does or does not and b) if it does not but should then attach to the bug report so it can be fixed once and for all.
@ChuckPA
I’ve been looking for a fix to to this for a while, as I pre transcode all of my media before it goes into my storage. When it gets transcoded while syncing or playing to a pc it’s certainly curious. I can go to web browsers and visit an nginx server hosting the raw file and it immediately streams flawlessly.
nice HandBrakeCLI -i $ORIG_FILE -o $NEW_FILE --encoder x264 --vb 1000 --format mp4 --optimize --large-file --aencoder faac --arate 48 --mixdown dpl2
You should be able to take any video you have, use this to convert it and see the same behavior.
Also, please allow syncing of subtitles as raw files, not embedded as they never line up exactly anyways. At least that way I can manually offset them on the client if something is off. Embedding seems like such a weird “feature” as well 
I can’t address Feature Requests for subtitles here.
Regarding embedded subtitles; those are inserted and timed by the production studio. While it may seem ‘weird’ to you, if the subtitle stream is embedded, the timing is exactly where intended in the video file. Embedded subtitles whether text or image format, is how it’s always been since day 1 of DVD’s.
If there is a playback timing issue, there are two possible scenarios:
- What the studio deemed as ‘Correct Timing and duration’ isn’t optimal for you. (I’ve experienced this myself. Some are too short)
- There is a problem with the playback rendering.
I can help get playback rendering problems fixed in Plex. I can’t impact anything about what the studio may/may not have provided in the source material.
Also, in all this, please take the file’s source into consideration. Did you rip it yourself from your physical disc or did someone else rip and then perform some other processing beyond that initial rip. If your file is 20+GB, you might have the actual rip. Anything less and I can almost guarantee you it’s been ‘processed’. That ‘processing’ is where errors creep in.
Read this whole thread just now… essentially I think the option we need is to disable transcoding of hevc… if we have that option the world will be happy again. I definitely don’t like the idea of killing transcoding fully…
Wow, putting a “case” together to justify having an Option in Plex to turn off/on a “forced” feature lol I’d like to see the case that “forces” everyone to have this option on without being able to turn it off.
The Thread does not state to get rid of transcoding all together, only TO GIVE USERS THE OPTION TO TURN IT OFF!
Geez, bro’s - you’re killing your future customer base …customer dont have to put togther any business case or examples to have a choice for a feature…if forced, their choice is to go to another platform and advise otehrs how poor Plex is in their response to customer service.
Paid or not, Plex wants people to pay? Give them the options, not forced features.
(Plex: where is your product manager? Do you even have one? lol)
** Case in point:
- I play a video on a laptop via LAN + remotely (SFTP via 50mb u/d connection) = Smooth play (VLC/PotPlayer, MPC, etc.)
- I play the same video via Plex webpage (via same connection) = pausing constantly (no Vid transcoding, but alas Audio transcoding…wtf?)
- I play the same video on Plex Media Player app (via same connection) = pausing constantly (transcoding vid + audio - wtf?)
How is it that my laptop needs transcoding when via a normal media player it doesn’t?
I was going to go lifetime, but unless there is a choice to disable or enable transcoding feature all together…then my choice will be to go elsewhere
People just don’t understand that the FFMPEG core is wrapped heavily in Plex. It’s used for all kinds of things. Without it Plex isn’t much more than a fancy webserver.
This is like purchasing a Hybrid Car then complaining to the manufacture why you can’t turn off the motor or engine only using the other full time. That auto is built to use both, not just one and the system are all optimized for that specific purpose.
It’s not much different for Plex. As it has been said numerous times over and over in this thread and else where. REDO your media so it will playback on all of your devices and you won’t need transcoding and the problem is solved.
Turning off transcoding just leaves you with a system that can’t play the media. Your media WON’T somehow just play on it’s own without the transcoding since it’s incompatible with the client (or it wouldn’t need transcoding in the first place). Make your media compatible and a large part of your issue is fixed. Then just turn off feature that specifically use transcoding like on the mobile clients auto adjust bitrate.
Try renaming the Plex Transcoder in the main Plex directory and see how well your Plex server works from that point forward. This is essentially what you are asking Plex to do by removing it. Things will either play or fail depending on the compatibility of the files.
That makes no sense to me. Post after post on here have commented that their clients CAN play these files w/o transcoding, via dlna or other, yet when played via the Plex client it THINKS it needs to transcode. There seems to be a huge disconnect in the discussion here. Is there an FAQ somewhere that describes how you should have your media encoded to allow it to be direct played on various clients?
I understand, however, that if I am trying to play an HD mkv on an ipad over wi-fi that it may need to be transcoded. I came to this thread with a somewhat different question - once a client has transcoded that file - is there a way to permanently save that as an optimized version so it is there for future use? I have tried to pre-create optimized versions specifically for this and still found my server transcoding them upon request anyway. My kids recently both downloaded the same movie to their ipads (for off-line use), and of course it transcoded it twice. It would have been great if the first transcode would have been saved and then simply reused by the second request. Rather than optimize my entire library, it would be great if it occurred as requested. I’m going to assume that’s not currently possible unless someone can tell me otherwise.
Yes you are missing some information. Devices handle things differently. The same device may very well play back things differently depending on if it’s attached via USB, is DLNA or is streamed. The device will know a file is local if it’s DLNA or attached via USB where is has no clue where the file resides when it’s streamed.
The DEVICE ITSELF is the determining factor what it will or will not play via any of these methods. So if the device doesn’t support the format of the file when Plex is streaming it and you turn off transcoding you have a file that IS NOT PLAYABLE.
HENCE why I and others keep saying this.
The real question is not about a setting on disabling transcoding
It is about being able to play a media without transcoding
I have plenty of medias encoded in VC1 and with subtitle which Plex insists on transcoding even though DirectPlay is set to ON and Quality to Original. I even use a Windows 10 Client on x64 architecture (that can have all possible decoders) as test case.
Kodi can play those medias perfectly (obviously without transcoding), Plex can’t (it tries to transcode and then playback stops every 20 sec.)
If on the same device Kodi can play it, why not Plex?
What specific client are you using?
VC1 is probably the worst possible choice of video codec to have you files in. It will almost always cause a problem during playback since it’s a “single core” codec vs being able to use all cores for H.264.
As has been said far to many times in this thread. Create files in the correct format that WILL DIRECT PLAY and you will get rid of your problems.
This is a case mostly of user error.
This is an Intel NUC 7i5 BNK with Windows 10
This is not important if VC1 if the worst choice, this is still the choice of many studios when publishing Blu-Rays, and video players have to cope with that reality. VLC and Kodi have no problem with that, playing a large number of formats is mostly what has done their success. Users have no time to reencode files to please a particular player, they will just choose a player that works
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How do I do this on PS4? Thanks!
Hello and sorry if this was asked.
On a QNAP HS-251, which is totally NOT able to transcode + a LG B7,direct play works perfect even on 4K HDR.
BUT, if I enable subtitles (be it external or embedded) transcoding begins.
So if my setup is able to use direct play, why does it transcode if I enable some stupid subtitles, makes no sense.
Thank you
I’m a plex pass holder, from the early days. Every once in a while I still search for a way to make my plex server stop transcoding (it has an Intel Atom processor so can’t transcode anything w/o severe delays)
Couldn’t it automatically determine if it even has enough CPU power to attempt transcoding? Mine NEVER succeeds when it tries (it tries for my 1080p home videos usually) So, I always have to click the Roku * button or click around in my web browser client to assign it back to Original and then it always works without any incompatibilities or slowdowns…
