Got a new laptop and installed Ubuntu 17.04, which comes with Handbrake 1.0.3. It appears that anything I encode with this version of Handbrake requires transcoding for playback. The slightly older 10.0.1 on my older laptop running Debian is fine, as is the even older pre 1.0 version on CentOS7 on my desktop at work.
I have used the same settings in Handbrake on the two different laptops, and other than the older laptop says it was encoded with Lavf53.32.100 while the new one says Lavf57.56.101, I can see not difference between the files; that is they are both plain MP4 files with a stereo AAC and 5.1 AC3 sound track. Very slightly different bitrates between the two files which I will but down to the different versions of the video encoder between them. However the bit rates are WAY below the connectivity between the server (CentOS 7 latest with Plex 1.7.6.4058) and any of the clients which includes ones connected with wired 1Gbps ethernet. The source is the same MKV extracted using MakeMKV latest. The clients are a mix of a Webclient on the new laptop, a Roku box and the android client on a Samsung Tab S2 9.7, all exhibit the same behaviour. That is playing seems to require transcoding which the server (being Atom based) simply does not have the grunt to do. All the clients are set to maximum quality (original where possible).
For reference the files are from season one Outlander Bluray discs. This is my first attempt at doing Blueray (new laptop is the first device I have owned with a Blueray drive) but I don’t think that is relevant. The tablet and laptop can play the MP4 just fine when copied to them, the server is way more bandwidth than the ~4Mbps the video is encoded to (720p). I am in the process of repeating the experiment with a DVD just to double check and will report back. However I am confident it is something to do with Handbrake and need a solution, as I don’t want to keep my old laptop around for encoding videos.
As a side note it would help IMHO if the plex log files said “Transcoding XYZ because ABC”.
