I'm a newbie and I have been looking for info on the transcoder settings in PlexConnect. Could someone explain the following PlexConnect transcoder settings to me:
Transcoder-action: Auto, Transcode, DirectPlay
Transcoder quality
Remote bitrate
The reason why I am asking is because, occasionally, I am experiencing lag and buffering issues on atv in the last half of video files and I was wondering if and how these settings would or could have an effect on this? For instance, should lowering the quality and bitrate have a positive or negative impact?
I can have lag multiple times when watching a 700Mb mkv or don't have any lag at all with a 14GB(!) mkv file. I do not have any issues when watching on my iPad. I also don't have this issue when accessing Plex through DLNA directly from my TV (over wifi). I am transmitting wirelessly from a Mac i5 through a latest generation Airport Extreme (reception on all devices is at full strength).
Your iPad may have a better wifi chip or signal in its location or it may already be requesting a lower quality version of the file. I would suggest placing the ATV near the router and hard wiring if to test if it’s a network issue.
Remote bitrate: this is the peak bitrate the ATV will use accessing shared PMS’s outside of your LAN (if it is higher the PMS will transcode it to a lower bitrate)
Transcoder quality: as above but for your local PMS’s (you can play with this if you have a wifi signal that isn’t strong enough)
I want to know more about how does Transcode is done.
For example... I have multiple MKV ranging from 20mbit 1080p to 4mbit 720p files.
If I set PlexConnect to 10mbit 1080p. What does the PMS do to 4-8mbit 720p MKV files? Does it transcode to HIGHER to 10mbit 1080p? or does it leave it along as the default bitrate and resolution?
Related question - if transcoding does happen to be required for reasons other than bitrate (lets say burning in subtitles for example), and the actual media bitrate is lower than the transcoder quality bitrate setting, will the transcoder pick min(actual-media-bitrate, transcode-setting-bitrate), or the max, as the transcoding bitrate target?
