Looking forward to testing this when I get home tonight! Awesome news!
@jmckee said:
@cayars said:
Could they not use h.265 in the HLS stream so the video wouldn’t need to be transcoded?That I do not know, it is just my guess at what happened. And if it is something that simple I am sure it was just overlooked. And once Moussa has time I am sure he’ll look into it a bit more to find the exact cause.
(Hope that makes sense I’ve been messing with your auto-conversion script on my linux box and starting the process of converting most of my TV Show episodes so my brain is a little fried today)
I know h.265 is a protocol that can be used in HLS and ffmpeg supports it BUT what I don’t know is if Xbox one support HLS/265. I’ve never checked.
Good luck with the scripts. BTW the constant rate is set to 20 by default. If you prefer 18 or some other number shoot me a PM or post in my thread and I’ll show you how to change it.
Carlo
Steamed this just fine to the XBox one with no transcoding no matter which audio track I picked:
Input #0, matroska,webm, from ‘xxxxxxxx.S09E17.mkv’:
Metadata:
ENCODER : Lavf57.21.100
Duration: 00:18:58.01, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 2845 kb/s
Stream #0:0(eng): Video: hevc (Main), yuv420p(tv), 1920x1080 [SAR 1:1 DAR 16:9], 23.98 fps, 23.98 tbr, 1k tbn, 23.98 tbc
Metadata:
ENCODER : Lavc57.21.100 libx265
DURATION : 00:18:57.637000000
Stream #0:1: Audio: ac3, 48000 Hz, 5.1(side), fltp, 640 kb/s (default)
Metadata:
ENCODER : Lavc57.21.100 ac3
DURATION : 00:18:58.003000000
Stream #0:2: Audio: aac (LC), 48000 Hz, stereo, fltp (default)
Metadata:
ENCODER : Lavc57.21.100 aac
DURATION : 00:18:58.008000000
Same with this one:
Input #0, matroska,webm, from ‘xxxxxxxx.S01E02.mkv’:
Metadata:
ENCODER : Lavf57.21.100
Duration: 00:41:14.33, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 2921 kb/s
Stream #0:0(eng): Video: hevc (Main), yuv420p(tv), 1920x1080 [SAR 1:1 DAR 16:9], 23.98 fps, 23.98 tbr, 1k tbn, 23.98 tbc (default)
Metadata:
BPS : 4914882
BPS-eng : 4914882
ENCODER : Lavc57.21.100 libx265
DURATION-eng : 00:41:14.222000000
NUMBER_OF_FRAMES: 59316
NUMBER_OF_FRAMES-eng: 59316
NUMBER_OF_BYTES : 1520063893
NUMBER_OF_BYTES-eng: 1520063893
_STATISTICS_WRITING_APP: mkvmerge v8.2.0 (‘World of Adventure’) 64bit
_STATISTICS_WRITING_APP-eng: mkvmerge v8.2.0 (‘World of Adventure’) 64bit
_STATISTICS_WRITING_DATE_UTC: 2016-01-13 07:54:58
_STATISTICS_WRITING_DATE_UTC-eng: 2016-01-13 07:54:58
_STATISTICS_TAGS: BPS DURATION NUMBER_OF_FRAMES NUMBER_OF_BYTES
_STATISTICS_TAGS-eng: BPS DURATION NUMBER_OF_FRAMES NUMBER_OF_BYTES
DURATION : 00:41:14.285000000
Stream #0:1(eng): Audio: ac3, 48000 Hz, stereo, fltp, 640 kb/s (default)
Metadata:
BPS : 126683
BPS-eng : 126683
ENCODER : Lavc57.21.100 ac3
DURATION-eng : 00:41:14.307000000
NUMBER_OF_FRAMES: 57992
NUMBER_OF_FRAMES-eng: 57992
NUMBER_OF_BYTES : 39181743
NUMBER_OF_BYTES-eng: 39181743
_STATISTICS_WRITING_APP: mkvmerge v8.2.0 (‘World of Adventure’) 64bit
_STATISTICS_WRITING_APP-eng: mkvmerge v8.2.0 (‘World of Adventure’) 64bit
_STATISTICS_WRITING_DATE_UTC: 2016-01-13 07:54:58
_STATISTICS_WRITING_DATE_UTC-eng: 2016-01-13 07:54:58
_STATISTICS_TAGS: BPS DURATION NUMBER_OF_FRAMES NUMBER_OF_BYTES
_STATISTICS_TAGS-eng: BPS DURATION NUMBER_OF_FRAMES NUMBER_OF_BYTES
DURATION : 00:41:14.332000000
Stream #0:2(eng): Audio: aac (LC), 48000 Hz, stereo, fltp (default)
Metadata:
BPS : 126683
BPS-eng : 126683
ENCODER : Lavc57.21.100 aac
DURATION-eng : 00:41:14.307000000
NUMBER_OF_FRAMES: 57992
NUMBER_OF_FRAMES-eng: 57992
NUMBER_OF_BYTES : 39181743
NUMBER_OF_BYTES-eng: 39181743
_STATISTICS_WRITING_APP: mkvmerge v8.2.0 (‘World of Adventure’) 64bit
_STATISTICS_WRITING_APP-eng: mkvmerge v8.2.0 (‘World of Adventure’) 64bit
_STATISTICS_WRITING_DATE_UTC: 2016-01-13 07:54:58
_STATISTICS_WRITING_DATE_UTC-eng: 2016-01-13 07:54:58
_STATISTICS_TAGS: BPS DURATION NUMBER_OF_FRAMES NUMBER_OF_BYTES
_STATISTICS_TAGS-eng: BPS DURATION NUMBER_OF_FRAMES NUMBER_OF_BYTES
DURATION : 00:41:14.327000000
Seems from the above tests it’s just HEVC/DTS that’s the issue now, in that it transcodes to H.264/AC3, rather than Direct Streaming the h.265 video, and transcoding the audio only.
@Micro666 that seems to be the conclusion I’ve come to also.
Glad testing is going well for most of you! As for the transcoding issue, unfortunately direct streaming HEVC streams to the Xbox One is not possible at the moment. Currently the server doesn’t support a HLS stream containing HEVC, but I am hopeful this will be possible in the future.
So to be perfectly clear, if your media contains a HEVC video stream and a compatible audio stream (AAC/AC3) it should Direct Play. Otherwise it will transcode down to a H.264 stream.
Hi Moussa,
Many thanks for letting us test out the Xbox One / HEVC compatibility again.
Fingers crossed the server will be updated to support HEVC within an HLS stream sometime in the near future. Most of my content is HEVC/DTS, with the odd HEVC/AC3 video, so looks like I’ll be transcoding for a while, or converting my video collection to use AC3.
Is HEVC within an HLS stream something that has been added to the list of future work for the server?
It’s likely that the HEVC/DTS issue is something that would affect the Windows 10 app too. I’ll test that and report back on the Windows 10 app thread.
Thanks,
Micro666
Thanks for re-enabling this …
Works just fine on most of my HEVC/AAC files. As I thought it would 
Please leave it enabled, as it does do the job (at least in my case)
Plex for Xbox One is getting better and better in 2016 !
Just wanted to add my thanks as well, most of my files are HEVC/AAC and the quick test I have done shows these all direct-play fine making it the perfect player for me!
This is nice! I can finally recode some of my space-hogging shows that I rarely watch to x265 instead.
There is a funny thing I noticed though, even files with no audio track seem to get transcoded.
The particular one I tested was an MP4 container, x265/HEVC video, and no audio track. This is rarely a problem so it doesn’t really matter, though.
I’ll just add my +1 since I reported difficulty playing before. MKV\MP4 + HEVC + AC3 plays fine.
Are you keeping it on? Or is it just for a short while?
Just tested it on a couple of TV shows and a movie that I encoded with a .mkv container and it direct plays just fine! I’m very happy so far with this.
I know hevc is not where it should be, but when I encoded some of my stuff to 265 and in 264 then did a video comparison on my 70’ TV. They were not noticeable.
So for the size difference if you will be keeping this on I will go back and encode some of my bigger series and longer movies.
Why did we lose this support?
@Terry Cinemas said:
Why did we lose this support?
What did you lose? I just direct played an HEVC stream with no issue.
@jmckee said:
@Terry Cinemas said:
Why did we lose this support?What did you lose? I just direct played an HEVC stream with no issue.
I‘m glad to hear about this. I will take test this evening when I back to home.
@jmckee said:
@Terry Cinemas said:
Why did we lose this support?What did you lose? I just direct played an HEVC stream with no issue.
What’s weird is… I direct played an mkv container hevc no issues but when my brother plays the same file remote into his Xbox it transcodes the video
@Terry Cinemas said:
What’s weird is… I direct played an mkv container hevc no issues but when my brother plays the same file remote into his Xbox it transcodes the video
I would check the log to see if maybe a bit rate limit is being applied or something else possibly triggering a transcode (Such as subtitles or unsupported audio like DTS). Although, I would find it unlikely with HEVC to have a manual bit rate selected occasionally the app will default to a bitrate other than original that will trigger a transcode.
Nope, it’s something else. My entire library is now transcoding on my PC. Tested two of the same files I played last night that were direct streaming on my XB1 and they are now transcoding on my PC. 
Ok, now it’s working again. I just played the same file that was just killing my PC and it is now direct streaming to my XB1. Tested another couple of movies and they are all working fine now. Could it be related to the XBox live issues or maybe Plex people turned it off?
