Feature Request - Transcode from Closest available resolution, rather than source file if optimized versions exist

[alexwitherspoon]

Hello Folks!

I currently store 4K content in 265/HEVC, and some of my clients play it directly which is great. For all other players I attempted to reduce load by using the PMS feature to optimize the source media into 1080P versions. I was hoping that any new clients that connected that required transcoding would use the nearest quality file as it’s source for the transcode, but PMS currently selects the main source file.

Is there any way PMS could be a bit smarter about picking the ‘nearest’ better quality file available rather than always the source independent of the client?

Here is an example:

Without expecting the client to be smart - if the client requests 720P - The server could then know it has a 4K and 1080P version available (which it does) and could pick the version that is better, but closest to the 720P version requested as the source file for a transcode operation, which should lower load in many instances.

[Funky_Boss]

As I start adding some 4k content to my Plex server, I’m very interested in this also. I added my first 4k movie this weekend, and it direct plays great on my 4k TV through the Nvidia Shield client. But on my other TVs, that have Roku, I get that it needs to be transcoded. But even on my new Intel i5 8600k based PC, it takes 100% of the CPU the whole time it’s transcoding.

So I chose the “Optimize” option and watched it churn away transcoding it for “TV”. But it gets to about 40% and then fails, with messages about being out of memory in the logs, even though I had plenty of free memory left on my machine. So that didn’t work. Like you mention here, I can re-rip the BluRay version to a lower bitrate, but how do we tell Plex to use that one for all non-4k clients?