When I first started my homelab one my first installs was Plex. Being able to take all of our dvds and put them into a collection for the family made me feel awesome. However there were some things that I was starting to struggle with. The big one like most was transcoding. While sure I could always put it into 264 sometimes it’s not always optimal. Now days movies come in all types ( ) - family members are stubborn and don’t always understand.
Will device transcoding ever be looked into where it’s a higher one time but only for the server owners? I have no issue putting down for a better user experience overall - family members? Not so much
While I may only be a past user, I look forward to the changes that Plex is making and hope for a fruitful future. Maybe one day I shall return
I just seen the announcements for the upcoming future of Plex and have
thats not the case if you have plex pass anyone access the library your sharing also gets those features when accessing your media (not sure if it applies to plexamp). I have several friends and family members it never transcode always direct stream. Make sure they set the quality to original/maximum for remote and local viewing. I turned transcoding off as most devices support 264x/265 as they came out in 2004/2013 respectively.
Software vs hardware accelerated transcoding is a server function. It is tied to the server owner account. It does not matter if the person streaming the content has a Plex Pass. Plex has always worked this way since they introduced hardware accelerated transcoding.
If the server owner does not have a Plex Pass, then Plex will transcode video in software (*).
If the server owner has a Plex Pass, then Plex will transcode video using the GPU (if the GPU supports the video format and Plex is configured to use hardware acceleration).
(*) Some devices to not require a Plex Pass to use hardware accelerated transcoding. See Special Devices section of Using Hardware-Accelerated Transcoding.
) - family members are stubborn and don’t always understand.