Problem: Getting “This server is not powerful enough to convert video" on Plex Web
The video does not start playing - I get the error message immediately. I have previously successfully played the video that I get this error for. The video is 1080p (HEVC Main 10), AAC 5.1, SRT External.
None of the hardware has changed, and I don’t think the server and player software has been updated. I tried turning off the subtitles, but that made no difference. This video plays correctly on Plex for Roku. Perhaps I made a server and/or a player setting change, but I haven’t found any support documents that tell me what the default settings are so that I can start over.
Any ideas?
Thank you.
Francis.
Server Version#: 1.22.3.4392
Player Version#: 6.7.24.7009
Check if video transcoding is disabled in Settings → Transcoder.
The CPU listed in your profile, i7-3635QM, cannot transcode HEVC video using hardware accelerated transcoding. Your system may be struggling to transcode HEVC 10-bit video in software, as doing so is more computationally intensive than transcoding H.264 in software.
Web browsers, except for Safari, do not support HEVC video. Therefore, the Plex Media Server must transcode the video to H.264. Roku does support HEVC video, so the video is most likely direct playing or direct streaming (i.e. not transcoding).
If watching on a Windows PC or Mac, consider using Plex for Win/Mac. It is superior to a web browser as a Plex client. Plex for Win/Mac direct plays HEVC video, including scaling 4K to lower resolution displays and tonemapping HDR to SDR. It also direct plays most audio formats.
If you want to dig into the details, set your server for debug, not verbose, level logs (see Reporting Issues… linked below). Play the video, let it fail, wait ~1 minute, then pull the log files. Open Plex Media Server.log in a text reader/editor. Look for lines with MDE: and TPU:. MDE = Media Decision Engine. They’ll give info on why things are transcoding. Lines with TPU will show what encoder/decoder is in use. See “Using Hardware Accelerated Streaming” to see the list of decoders/encoders used by Plex.
Thanks for the detailed information. I’m hoping I don’t have transcoding on, but I do often need subtitles. The good news is that it might be an isolated problem - for HEVC videos only.
I created this thread because I have been having other unexplainable problems with videos that worked before, and I am confused.
