My plan was always to rerip all my blurays from mp4s to mkv just because it’s an exact copy, its faster, and subtitles are there. The more I’ve done this, the less the movies plays. When I click play, the movies take forever to start or just error out all together. Are devices that weak or is my server the problem? It seems to almost always play no matter the device if its an mp4. Looking for suggestions.
If you need subtitles, then these full BR rips are very likely transcoding when you are playing them back.
Subtitles are in a pixel-based format on discs (VOBSUB, PGS)
but most Plex clients,
(if they can handle subtitles at all)
only understand text-based subtitles (SRT, TX3G).
Only Plex Media Player and OpenPHT as plex clients can handle the ‘bitmap’ subtitles.
Which Plex clients are you using?
On what kind of device does your Plex server run? What type of CPU does it have?
@roadzy said:
My plan was always to rerip all my blurays from mp4s to mkv just because it’s an exact copy, its faster, and subtitles are there.
That’s gonna be one big ass file. If you server/network/device can’t handle this then Plex will need to transcode. And all BD-DISC I’ve seen use the VOBSUB, PGS subtitle format AND at the moment require transcoding.
The more I’ve done this, the less the movies plays. When I click play, the movies take forever to start or just error out all together
It might not be able to stream though your network because of bandwidth requirements or your server can not keep up with the transcode and just fails.
Are devices that weak or is my server the problem? It seems to almost always play no matter the device if its an mp4
Probably a coincidence because your MP4 files are most likely small enough for your server to process it, your network to stream it, and your device to play it.
@OttoKerner said:
If you need subtitles, then these full BR rips are very likely transcoding when you are playing them back.
Subtitles are in a pixel-based format on discs (VOBSUB, PGS)
but most Plex clients,
(if they can handle subtitles at all)
only understand text-based subtitles (SRT, TX3G).Only Plex Media Player and OpenPHT as plex clients can handle the ‘bitmap’ subtitles.
Which Plex clients are you using?
On what kind of device does your Plex server run? What type of CPU does it have?
I’m using Plex on an Apple TV2, Xbox One, Tivo Roamio, Tivo Mini, iPhone 7 and iPads/Minis.
I was just given an old Dell T3500. It has 4gb of ram and a 2.53 GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon. I believe the CPU is this: W3505 – 4M Cache, 2.53 GHz, 4.80 GT/s Intel® QPI. I found a list of CPUs i could upgrade down the road to but I’m wondering if it is the bottle neck.
Mp4’s play on more clients and from my experience more consistently!!
I have srt files with the media .
I think you are making things difficult for yourself! 
@NewPlaza said:
@roadzy said:
My plan was always to rerip all my blurays from mp4s to mkv just because it’s an exact copy, its faster, and subtitles are there.That’s gonna be one big ass file. If you server/network/device can’t handle this then Plex will need to transcode. And all BD-DISC I’ve seen use the VOBSUB, PGS subtitle format AND at the moment require transcoding.
The more I’ve done this, the less the movies plays. When I click play, the movies take forever to start or just error out all together
It might not be able to stream though your network because of bandwidth requirements or your server can not keep up with the transcode and just fails.
Are devices that weak or is my server the problem? It seems to almost always play no matter the device if its an mp4
Probably a coincidence because your MP4 files are most likely small enough for your server to process it, your network to stream it, and your device to play it.
For my testing to fix this, I’m only focused on hard wired devices.
@spikemixture said:
Mp4’s play on more clients and from my experience more consistently!!
I have srt files with the media .I think you are making things difficult for yourself!
What is your ripping process? I just liked the mkvs because it was ripped in 15-20 minutes and then I’m done. Doing stuff to get it to mp4 takes hours. I’m open for suggestions.
I now remember why I ended up going with mkv. Different movies that had burned in sub titles were missing when I used handbrake. I’m talking about the subtitles that you don’t turn on. With mkv, they are just there. I think Argo has them, Wolverine.
@roadzy said:
I was just given an old Dell T3500. It has 4gb of ram and a 2.53 GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon. I believe the CPU is this: W3505 – 4M Cache, 2.53 GHz, 4.80 GT/s Intel® QPI. I found a list of CPUs i could upgrade down the road to but I’m wondering if it is the bottle neck.
I am pretty confident that this is indeed the bottleneck
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Xeon+W3505+%40+2.53GHz&id=1265
Under 2000 passmark points. Many modern Corei3 cpu’s have more power than this.
You will need at least 4000 overall passmark points
and over 1350 passmarks point for a single cpu core (this is crucial! Don’t look only after the overall performance rating.)
Althoug I recommend you to use a more powerful cpu of course to have power for more than 1 transcoded playback at once.
When you rip your BRs, you can extract the ‘forced’ subtitles and convert them into SRT format.
Then you could continue with your current mp4 files.
Movie Title (year) - 1080p.mp4
Movie Title (year) - 1080p.eng.forced.srt
Or you let Cayars’ script loose on your fresh rips.
https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/comment/931888/#Comment_931888
I think it has a way to handle subtitles.
With a CPU that weak you’ll have to create material that Direct Plays. That means you’ll not only have to ‘spend hours’ re-encoding, you’ll have to fiddle with sub titles to make them UTF-8 Format and make them external srt file for MP4s. You can have them embedded sub tracks in MKV files, but they’ll still need to be UTF-8. It’s unclear at this time which container your devices will Direct Play. If they can only play MP4 files, that’s the container you’ll have to use. This is something you’ll have to find out.
The bottom line is you’re going to be doing a fair amount of fiddling - one way or another.
Cayars scripts or the Handy Handbrake Guide in my signature will do the same thing - the thing you need to do. It just depends which road you want to drive on to get to the same part of town you want to end up in.
MakeMKV is fast because it just takes the base video, audio and sub title tracks from disc then wraps an MKV container around them. The problem is those streams it packs into that MKV - and possibly the MKV itself - won’t Direct Play on your Devices in some (many/most/all/) cases.
You’re obviously going to need a few other programs.
Xmedia Recode will ‘convert’ PGS/ASS/Other sub title tracks in MKV files to UTF-8 (SubRip). This operation is pretty fast if that’s all you need to do. Copy Video/Copy Audio/Convert Sub Track - easy. Xmedia Recode will also Convert Audio formats if you need to, but luckily Audio Transcodes are pretty easy for Plex and your CPU - so you can probably let your server transcode audio.
http://www.xmedia-recode.de/en/download.html
MKVToolNix will allow you to strip sub title tracks out of MKVs with the embedded MKVExtract program that comes with MKVToolNix. This will be handy if you’re using MP4 Files - 'cause you’ll need those subs to be UTF-8 (that you should convert to BEFORE you extract them) srt files for Direct Play with MP4 files.
https://mkvtoolnix.download/
Handbrake will ‘Burn’ those offending sub titles into the video totally negating the need to fiddle with sub title tracks or files. I need Forced English Sub titles at all times because I don’t speak any other languages. I don’t need to be able to switch forced subs on or off - I just need them on - so Forced Subs are Burned in with Handbrake - problem solved.
Unfortunately, for you, this is going to be a time consuming process due to your under-powered CPU. Fortunately there are some ‘tricks’ you can employ to speed up the process - at least a little. The Advanced Section in Handbrake should be used and you should leave all the settings at their ‘Defaults’. The best bang for the buck in the speed department is probably ‘Reference Frames’. Handbrake’s default is 3 - make it 1. The result will be your file is going to be a little larger - at this point that should be the least of your worries. If it takes the rest of your life to encode a file, you’ll never live long enough to watch it, so it’s size won’t matter… lol.
Anyway…
You have some work to do. Develop a plan, invent a way to Direct Play, invent ways to make it all happen as efficiently as possible and get to it.
Thanks for the replies. These are super helpful information. I have another computer that I was unsuccessful to get OS X on and just put windows on. It has this CPU (https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+FX-6200+Six-Core&id=259). The reason I was trying to use OS X is because my first plex server was on os x and my 3 tb drive is formatted in that format. I don’t have another 3 tb drive to transfer and reformat and transfer back. Without a doubt i’ll be moving the plex server to this windows box. How does plex do when the storage would be mounted off another computer?
@roadzy said:
How does plex do when the storage would be mounted off another computer?
While it is certainly possible, I wouldn’t recommend it.
If your computer has a case big enough, put the drives directly in to it.
‘Automatic library update’ works only in this constellation reliably enough.
@roadzy said:
For my testing to fix this, I’m only focused on hard wired devices.
I would not do this. Wired devices will work much better then wireless, IMO anyway. You don’t want to build upon this and find out later that none of it works off of wifi. Just saying.
@OttoKerner said:
If you need subtitles, then these full BR rips are very likely transcoding when you are playing them back.
Subtitles are in a pixel-based format on discs (VOBSUB, PGS)
but most Plex clients,
(if they can handle subtitles at all)
only understand text-based subtitles (SRT, TX3G).Only Plex Media Player and OpenPHT as plex clients can handle the ‘bitmap’ subtitles.
Which Plex clients are you using?
On what kind of device does your Plex server run? What type of CPU does it have?
@OttoKerner said:
If you need subtitles, then these full BR rips are very likely transcoding when you are playing them back.
Subtitles are in a pixel-based format on discs (VOBSUB, PGS)
but most Plex clients,
(if they can handle subtitles at all)
only understand text-based subtitles (SRT, TX3G).Only Plex Media Player and OpenPHT as plex clients can handle the ‘bitmap’ subtitles.
Which Plex clients are you using?
On what kind of device does your Plex server run? What type of CPU does it have?
That’s not quite right. The nvidia shield tv can direct play vobsubs and pgs in mkv.
@roadzy said:
My plan was always to rerip all my blurays from mp4s to mkv just because it’s an exact copy, its faster, and subtitles are there. The more I’ve done this, the less the movies plays. When I click play, the movies take forever to start or just error out all together. Are devices that weak or is my server the problem? It seems to almost always play no matter the device if its an mp4. Looking for suggestions.
The nvidia shield tv will direct play your Vobsub and pgs subtitles in mkv.
If you happen to have one of those sh**ty $200 game consoles - you’re golden.
I’ll let you guys in on a little secret…
If Plex abandons Shield like they have AFTV there’s going to be a whole LOT of former Shield Cheerleaders gone ‘Murderous-Rampage Beosh’ around here - and it can happen overnight.
Converting image based subs to UTF-8 is simple, easy and fast - not to mention free.
@Afullmark said:
The nvidia shield tv will direct play your Vobsub and pgs subtitles in mkv.
There is a caveat:
It will only do so as long as the playback mode is Direct Play.
And that is only happening, if you can ‘bitstream’ all audio formats to the AVR.
If you disable bitstreaming (because your AVR either doesn’t support all of them or you just have a regular TV without support for all the audio formats) then the playback mode will be ‘Direct Stream’.
And then the Shield suddenly doesn’t support ‘bitmap’ subs anymore.
That’s why I didn’t include it into my recommendation above.
@OttoKerner said:
@Afullmark said:
The nvidia shield tv will direct play your Vobsub and pgs subtitles in mkv.There is a caveat:
It will only do so as long as the playback mode is Direct Play.
And that is only happening, if you can ‘bitstream’ all audio formats to the AVR.If you disable bitstreaming (because your AVR either doesn’t support all of them or you just have a regular TV without support for all the audio formats) then the playback mode will be ‘Direct Stream’.
And then the Shield suddenly doesn’t support ‘bitmap’ subs anymore.That’s why I didn’t include it into my recommendation above.
If using plex app, yes. With the kodi addon, no. If you use kodi with the plex addon then you can still have image subtitles without transcode, with kodi doing audio decode.
@OttoKerner said:
@roadzy said:
I was just given an old Dell T3500. It has 4gb of ram and a 2.53 GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon. I believe the CPU is this: W3505 – 4M Cache, 2.53 GHz, 4.80 GT/s Intel® QPI. I found a list of CPUs i could upgrade down the road to but I’m wondering if it is the bottle neck.I am pretty confident that this is indeed the bottleneck
PassMark - Intel Xeon W3505 @ 2.53GHz - Price performance comparisonUnder 2000 passmark points. Many modern Corei3 cpu’s have more power than this.
You will need at least 4000 overall passmark points
and over 1350 passmarks point for a single cpu core (this is crucial! Don’t look only after the overall performance rating.)
Althoug I recommend you to use a more powerful cpu of course to have power for more than 1 transcoded playback at once.When you rip your BRs, you can extract the ‘forced’ subtitles and convert them into SRT format.
Then you could continue with your current mp4 files.Movie Title (year) - 1080p.mp4 Movie Title (year) - 1080p.eng.forced.srtOr you let Cayars’ script loose on your fresh rips.
https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/comment/931888/#Comment_931888
I think it has a way to handle subtitles.
I tried he script and the mp4 files is still 25gb! Was the point of the script just put it in a different format or to shrink it in size?
Also I was curious what people do with 5.1 or 7.1 audio ? Do you have to have a specific type of format to have that?
@roadzy said:
I tried he script and the mp4 files is still 25gb! Was the point of the script just put it in a different format or to shrink it in size?
You should read the accompanying forum post(s). The script is configurable and you should absolutely adapt it to your particular needs.
Also I was curious what people do with 5.1 or 7.1 audio ?
They keep in the file if they have a client which can play surround sound. For all other types of lcients the server will automatically mixdown during playback.
Some other users let the script produce a second audio track in stereo. This has some advantages because the stereo track is already reduced in its ‘dynamics’ and better suited for small speakers and/or lower volume settings.
