Well, it depends on your definition. If you define ‘streaming’ as ‘sending video data from one host to a client’, then yes, you’re streaming. But then in that case, using Kodi to play media files off a network share is also ‘streaming’.
Alternatively, if by streaming you mean “having a server process stream the data to the client in real time after performing some translation of the original file”, then when you DirectPlay in plex, you are not streaming - the server merely shunts the bits, as-is, to the client, which deals with them as it is.
Sure. So clearly the fact that you haven’t had the problem means it never happens? What’s the point you’re making here?
And that is the exactly point here. You don’t need to have media in any format for DirectPlay to work, as long as the client can play it. That is exactly what DirectPlay is.
But you’re clearly not seeing the point here, and refuse to accept it because you’ve never seen a problem with Plex failing to DirectPlay media that doesn’t need transcoding. So I’ll leave it. Have a nice evening.
The point of this entire thread is that Plex makes errors when it deems media as needing to be transcoding. If Kodi can play it across a LAN without transcoding, then (ignoring subtitles and audio codecs) the same file should be DirectPlayable in Plex too. However, sometimes, Plex gets that wrong - so for some people it would be nice to be able to override that decision and say “only ever directplay, and if the media isn’t suitable, tell me and I’ll go fix it”. 99% of the time, the media would play just fine (and if it doesn’t, Plex could just improve its player to be as good as, say, Kodi.
What cracks me up about this thread is all the people saying “I’m fine with it transcoding, so this feature request is invalid”. If you’re fine with it, maybe don’t comment at all, as this thread is utterly irrelevant to you?
The point I’m making is I have a Shield an ATV 4K, PMP and most recently an LG TV
In each case the most extreme files direct play fine. The only exception being the ATV 4K doesn’t like .mkv files.
So at a hit of 0% CPU it converts the container to .mp4
I really can’t be bothered trawling through to see what client your using so I will take your advice.
Good luck with your feature request. Oh wait it isn’t.
This is a great idea, I bet you are not the only one experiencing this.
The Server should be more customizable about transcoding. It has a limit for simultaneous transcodes but that is not enough, not all users should be treated the same way and the server owner should be able to decide who can transcode and who can’t.
Nope, Kodi playing a file off a network share is NOT streaming. This would be a local file handle. The program (Kodi) has access to the file so it get randomly access the file any way it wants. Streaming is using streaming API/Protocols usually through web sockets via a webserver or hosted web server embedded in an app (like Plex). When you stream files the files have to be in a format supported by the streaming protocol as well as be something the client can use.
Surely even when you access your file with a file handle (local) the program still needs to support the format of the file. You can’t play H.265 files on older computers for example because they don’t have the muscle. You can’t get a Roku3 to play this file either even if you inserted a thumb drive with the file on it. File formats are still important but to a far lesser degree because it’s much easier for a “local” program to play things then when it’s hamstrung having to abide by certain rules of an API/Web socket specification that dictates the rules and formats allowed.
If Plex is making wrong or bad choices then by all means open a thread and document what is wrong so the devs can fix them. Plex can’t fix a problem it doesn’t know about. However comparing how Kodi plays a file when it has direct access to a file and how a program MUST work when using streaming protocols may not be the same.
Here’s an example: Suppose you have an H.265 file with Dolby 7.1 sound track in it but your client of choice doesn’t support the 7.1 sound track and there is no other sound track available. You might “assume” Plex only needs to transcode the sound portion of the file but since the device requires HLS it won’t support the H.265 in HLS so Plex must now transcode both the audio and video in order to create a format it can deliver to the client using a streaming protocol.
OR it would have to just reprocess the audio of the WHOLE FILE discard the current audio and remux the new audio with the old H.265 video into the MP4/MKV FULLY then it could allow direct download (viable format for the web service) for the client. The difference it that it could take 5 minutes to process meanwhile the client is sitting there spinning and no one would wait. Plex has to deliver the file within seconds so it can’t do this and needs start delivering some footage to the client which makes it have to use a format that can be streaming while other parts of the file are being built at the same time which is HLS segmenting. But since HLS doesn’t support your particular H.265 format in the local file it has no choice but to transcode the whole file.
That is just a simple example of how things can go very wrong, very quickly even though the file plays file locally (where the program can randomly access streams inside the file and convert on the fly). Different ball game when streaming due to protocols and what is supported by each protocol and weather the native format of the file is streamable to begin with.
Plex didn’t create these standards. The powerhouse companies that “rule” the net did. But if Plex wants to stream things properly to devices/software written to the specs it has to work with the specs/APIs/Web Socket standards.
No, not at all. We TOTALLY UNDERSTAND the request and wish is was doable, BUT knowing how it MUST WORK, we understand what can and can’t be done. When people keep saying things similar to “Kodi can do it” type thing it’s clear that those people don’t understand how it MUST WORK.
If you don’t know how it has to work, you have little chance of making sure your files will play back properly without the need to transcode in the first place.
I normally don’t like referring people to try other products but will make an exception here. I’d suggest you install and try Emby with your media collection. You can run both Emby and Plex on the same server (I do).
I make this recommendation for two reasons:
Emby allows you to turn off transcoding for any user (user specific setting).
Emby allows you have clients access files directly on your home network as long as you create network maps with the same drive letter the server uses. Example your movie folder is on drive H on the server and TV Shows are on Drive N then you create network maps so the clients can access drives H & N. As long as the client can access the file with the same “path” as the server you can play files back using local file handles bypassing Emby as a middle man.
Both of those are things asked for in this thread. Not all Emby clients support this but the computer based ones do as well as the Kodi integration. You will lose some functionality such as if you stop playing a file Emby won’t be able to resume for you because it has no idea where you stopped or if you played the whole file (it handed the play process off). Most people I know that run Emby don’t use this features because they prefer the transcoder be in the middle when needed. They again do the same as with Plex and keep the files in a format that will play without the need to transcode in the first place so it plays on all devices properly.
The hubris exhibited by the Plex team is something to behold. This is precisely why I have not and will not pay for a Plex pass. What does it get me? They certainly don’t take the wishes of the user into account. In some ways it works incredibly well, but then there are areas with an absurd lack of options. I can’t transcode on my server, whenever it tries the playback constantly stalls as the server struggles to keep up. It would be a vastly better user experience if it would just indicate that transcoding is not supported on this server since it DOESN’T WORK.
Then there is the complete lack of flexibility in adding/maintaining content that is not found or properly identified by the scrapers. It works very well for certain things but for anything off the beaten path, Plex is the worst I have ever used.
If Plex was open source it would have been forked years ago into something far more versatile.
But it does work very well for people who follow directions and use the proper setup. When you are the exception, that usually is a good indicator of where things could use improvement.
Plex
Plex works great for it’s meta data matching as long as you follow their guide for naming which is mostly the same as used by other software packages as well.
When you follow the proper advice things work very well. Deviate for the advice and proper setup and Plex will fight you at nearly every turn.
Plex isn’t open source however and just being open source won’t make it better (usually not).
There are other open source media streaming packages and non of them compare to Plex. Just think, Plex started from the same code base that is now Kodi. Plex went commercial and now streams. Kodi is still open source and local use only without a server/client relationship or ability to stream to clients.
Kodi had the big advantage with a large open source user dev base and compare it to Plex. Open source has it’s places but doesn’t mean you get better or more flexible software.
Yeah, blame the user, like I said, hubris. Even the mighty Apple doesn’t reach that level.
As for transcoding not working, the server is simply not powerful enough to do so effectively. It would be great if I could simply disable it and then it would work great for my needs but nope, they refuse to provide that simple and widely requested feature because they know best. Hubris.
I do follow the naming conventions but some content does not lend itself well to this. Every other media management software I’ve used has a method of bypassing the scraper and adding content manually, box set collections and compilations for example. The fact that “the Plex dance” is even a thing suggests that something is seriously broken. Yes it works great IF you follow a very narrow path they want you to follow but there is very little flexibility.
Plex is similar to Apple in that the software released does work. Unlike Apple Plex doesn’t control the hardware. If you run the software on a computer/NAS without enough power to transcode, you will have problems.
So you know the issue/problem is your hardware isn’t powerful enough to properly run the software using the files you supply. Seems like you have identified the problem. Why not fix what’s in your control?
You can setup Plex to use a few different sources for matching or turn them off.
Plex provides a method to do this as well. I’ve got about 11 K movies and 39 K TV episodes and sometimes have to resort to fixing meta-data myself.
If you have to edit your data often then you aren’t using the naming conventions. Plex does a great job on 99%+ of the media I’ve put through it. I’ve got one of the larger libraries and if Plex has matching/identify problems I’d be one of the loudest protesters!
Again, I’d suggest testing Emby on your setup. It allows you to turn off transcoding across the board or on a per person basis. Of course if the video requires transcoding and it’s turned off the user gets an error and the video file won’t play. You would still need to supply “direct playable” files with Emby as well if not using transcoding.
Another possibility is to pick up a used $50 (or less) video card like an nvidia 750 and let Plex use Hardware Transcoding which would support 2 streams. Unlimited on an ATI card but they usually cost a bit more used.
You know the problem (slow computer) and have several ways to solve the issue on YOUR SIDE. Wanting the publisher to change their software which works great for those with proper hardware isn’t a viable business decision for them to do.
Sure brah I got you np. Just gotta use this completely undocumented and near impossible to find hidden server setting (classic plex amirite?) called “TranscoderCanOnlyRemuxVideo”
Just drop TranscoderCanOnlyRemuxVideo="1" in Preferences.xml and you’re good to go.
It won’t magically make things play that wouldn’t without transcoding. Many clients give a bogus message when you use that settings as it’s not well tested.
No, that setting will make the transcoder only able to remux media, meaning it is basically like direct streaming, you only are changing the container of the media (more info here: https://support.plex.tv/articles/201097958-remuxing-files-to-mkv/). If you try to play a video at a different quality or anything that goes beyond the scope of remuxing it will error out saying it failed or something along those lines. I haven’t used this setting in a long time, tried it out once to see what it did but that’s pretty much it.
The original question/request was for a way to “Disable Plex transcoder totally” which this setting does. Playing without transcoding is a completely different story, since you basically have to just pre-transcode all your media ahead of time to a universally supported format so it can be direct played 100% of the time.
I imagine this setting could be especially useful to make any users using the default plex quality settings error out, so they have to change their settings to be good/smart before they can play. For some reason plex defaults to like 2mbps quality, which is absolutely absurd IMHO. Because anything above 2mbps will be transcoded to 2mbps… like really?
Although, the best most awesome hidden setting is definitely “forceAutoAdjustQuality”. Literally the best thing ever especially when you don’t want to have to tell all your friends/shared people to go and fix their default settings. I don’t know why it isn’t already available for configuration in the server UI. Heck, it isn’t even documented and it’s hidden like some kind of easter egg. Auto quality is such a great feature but it never activates since people have to set it themselves and let’s be real, the average user (mainly friends/family you are sharing to) doesn’t even know that there is a quality setting.
Everyone keeps mentioning “pre-process” in the Plex discussions, but no-one actually tells you where or how to set this option? Where do you go to setup pre-processed transcoding? Like most others, all my my media are MP4 files, which are playable on all of my devices.
Not talking about audio only, but movies and TV series.
I’m not going to go back read through 3 years of post on this topic but I do need some help and from the last few posts I haven’t been able to find a resolution.
Why is not possible to stop the transcoding of any files?
I have just bought a new 4K smart TV for which fully supports Plex, I can play a 1080p film and zero transcoding happens on the server. Play a 4K film and the transcoding requires 100% of the CPU and makes the video unwatchable because it stops/starts.
My PC may not be powerful enough to transcode the file but I don’t actually need it to be, it just needs to push the file out.
I have taken a copy of the exact same file on USB and connected direct to the TV and it plays no problem so I know it’s capable of supporting the file in its current format.
I don’t care about other devices that might need help with certain files I just want it to work correctly for the new TV.
I’m also not interested in Remuxing files etc especially when it shouldn’t be necessary.
Come on Plex!..just add the option to force direct play for specific sources or for all.
Why not build the ability into the client to prioritize Video Codec and Audio Codec? Take the burden off the server of deciding for the client…Similar to the agent priority? Then icing on the cake would be to have check boxes to enable or disable direct play, direct stream, transcode of each codec.
This isn’t a setting in Plex. What we are referring to is using a format that will just play perfectly in Plex on your devices in your home (external might still require a transcode if you don’t have adequate bandwidth available).
This means to convert/format your media before Plex ever knows about it.
One such possible format is
MP4 Container
AVC/x.264 video codec
2 channel AAC Audio track as the default
any other audio tracks such as DTS, Dolby, 5.1, 7.1, etc after the default 2 channel.
Pull subtitles or use SRT.
Go back and read my posts from the last couple of weeks. I covered this in depth. Nutshell view is that Plex is a web server at heart using streaming protocols. Clients speak “web protocols” and the formats that play nice via web are far different then when you play files back locally.
Local files can be randomly accessed, web files are “streamed”. Apples and Oranges.
I cover this in more detail in recent past posts.
Thanks for the pointer, I have read some of your posts but the only thing I got from your messages was to use another application (emby) to direct stream.
I’m fairly technical but do not claim to understand the protocols used for streaming video etc.
I’m struggling to understand why the same web server (Plex) is capable of streaming a 1080p format file without transcoding but a 4K file is not possible?
I assume Plex does not use a different protocol to stream different video formats? or maybe it does?
You’ve suggested that its technically not possible which would be most disappointing and I should imagine impact more people as 4K is now main stream but many people will not have high-end PC’s with the capability to handle the transcoding for 4K
Are you able to confirm if Plex is looking into this as an enhancement for a future release or is it just a case of not using Plex for 4K or spending thousands on a new PC?
So what does a prioritize do? Either the media is in a format the client can play or it isn’t. If the client CAN play the file the burden is taken off the server. The format of the file doesn’t matter if the client can play it.
