Forced Transcode on old iPad / Cannot Direct Play

Plex Players
1

Server Version#:1.43.2.10687
Player Version#:2026.9.0(1704)

I have an iPad Air 4 that is running the latest iOS. I’ve always relied on direct play as most of my videos are either h264 or h265. For some reason, direct play stopped working. I’ve checked the settings and direct play is still enabled, but it simply refuses to do so.

There are other apple devices like iphones that do not suffer from this issue so I presume this may be related to iPadOS?

2

I would start by looking at the dashboard to see what it shows as far as what is it transcoding to what.

The server logs should have more info on why it decided to transcode as well

3

ok, after having a closer look I need to change what I’ve said. Turns out my iPhone 15 Plus also cannot direct play video.

Any video stream of h264 or h265 sent to my iphone and ipad are transcoded and cannot be direct played. Audio seems to be unaffected.

Looks like this:

Video

1080p (H.264) (hw)

1080P (H264)—Transcode (hw)

Audio

English (EAC3 5.1)

Direct Stream

It’s only affecting my mobile devices. My family member’s mobile devices (android phone, latest iphone etc) aren’t affected and they can direct play just fine.

Funnily enough, using a third party app fixes this issue.

What do I need to look for in the log file?

4

generally you want to search for MDE Media Decision Engine. which helps decide if something needs to be transcoded t the time stamp you hit play

5

I found this. This is the only reference to MDE i can find.

hasMDE=1

MDE: Cannot direct stream video stream due to profile or setting limitations
MDE: VIDEO TITLE: selected media 0 / 306077

Video: Direct Play is disabled
Video: media must be transcoded in order to use the hls protocol
Video: no direct play video profile exists for http/mp4/hevc
Video: no direct play video profile exists for http/mp4/hevc/aac
Video: Direct Streaming is disabled, so video stream will be transcoded
Video: no remuxable profile found, so video stream will be transcoded

changed some info here in case..

This doesn’t make sense though. I’ve checked my app settings on both ipad and iphone and directplay is enabled…

6

…reinstalling the app fixed it. Guess it was bugged after an update?