How can I determine what part of my server is giving me the error "your server is not powerful enough"

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I’ve got a server 2016 dual xeon e5-2620v4 processors with 64GB ECC memory… It has two raid cards in it - both with two raid 50 drives equaling about 36TB of usable space. Even at the most taxing of times, there is always more than 100MBps write and read speeds. I only seem to get the “your server is not powerful enough” message on my ios devices. My roku stick (AC) and my nVidia Shield TV box both playback the videos fine - even UHD videos. But I have a hard time playing anything movie related on my Apple TV 4, or our ipads. I’m wondering if the Apple TV is trying to direct play/stream it, but it doesn’t support the TrueHD tracks of the bluray mkv rips so it chokes? We like to watch with subtitles on as well, and sometimes that seems to help and other time sit seems to hinder, but it might just be the luck of the draw. I don’t think iOS supports TrueHD (at least not on the ATV4 (it’s not the 4K model).

Anyway - I was hoping to find some log files that might be showing a reason why we’re seeing this message. Ram is still 80% free on the server, CPU barely hits 20% during a transcode, and hard drives can copy huge files to and fro without slow downs so I’m sure those bases are covered and behaving well. I’m guessing it has something to do with the iOS factor, but wanted to know more and how to fix it?

Just got word that my parents have a hard time with the same error message playing back video from their 4K apple TV too. I don’t want to strip off the audio tracks or reconvert all the videos to make it more iOS friendly - it’s a powerful server and should be able to transcode it to the iOS needs on demand… so what am I missing here?

Edit: Forcing transcode to 20mbps doesn’t seem to help the situation. I setup Emby on the same server and it seems to play fine on iOS Apple TV… so is there just a bug with the Plex app on iOS?

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You can get server logs in the help settings on your server. Look at Plex Media Server.log after hitting play on a file.

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From what I remember, this message is shown (also) when the max number of transcodes that you allowed on the server is exceeded (regardless whether the server is really in trouble or not).
If you have set this to 1, the second client that requires transcoding will get such a message.
You might want to check this setting in the Server/Transcoder menu…

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It is set to unlimited. And no one else is using the server when this has happened too. I have the feeling it’s something else…

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I wouldn’t hold your breath with this. I’ve had many issues with Plex transcoding 4K content. And have been basically told its not supported if encoded with TrueHD (Android TV)

You’re probably better off trying to find another way too play your media. Plex is dead when it comes to 4K unfortunately.

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Curious - why are you trying to transcode on an Android TV? We just direct play it with or without subtitles as the android can handle it much better (playback subtitles without transcoding). So our 4K content playsback fine from what I can tell… thoughts?

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