I’ve recently started adding some 4k blu-ray rips to Plex, and it’s kind of thrown a wrench in the smooth day-to-day operations of my Plex server. I don’t mean playback when it can be direct played - that seems to work just fine with 4k. The problem is all of the times it might want to transcode.
Currently I have 8 or 9 4k movies, and if I ever try to play them remotely, or if one of my friends tries to play them (remotely), it basically hangs forever. For each of these movies, I’ve ripped a 2nd copy at 1080p quality - basically a regular Blu-ray rip. Those work fine, and transcode fine. But Plex doesn’t use them unless specifically told to use them.
Ideally, I wish Plex would, before starting a transcode, look for an alternate version at a lower quality and try to direct play that, or transcode that, but I’m guessing that’s a pipe dream. Any chance in the future I can get a checkbox that says “Don’t allow 4k content to be transcoded?”
So basically at this point, I am telling people “Oh, that movie will probably fail to play if you try it. Make sure you change the selection to play the Blu-ray version instead; that one works.” I find that to be kind of annoying, especially since if I try to sync any of those movies, it of course tries to transcode the 4k copy and hangs or dies, and you don’t have the option of choosing which version to sync.
So my question is : What are other people doing to get around this? One of my co-workers says he runs a 2nd plex server that just has 4k stuff on it, and doesn’t share that one. Honestly I might follow suit. I am in the middle of experimenting with my nVidia Shield as my new Plex server, and I have the two running concurrently. Is there any better options for making plex work “as it should” (meaning not dying and crashing anymore when trying to transcode the huge rips).
for local 4k playback, nvidia shield is the best simplest option.
for everything else non-4k, the best thing to do currently is create a separate 4k only library.
I have separate movies-4k and a tv-4k libary from my non-4k libraries.
Yes it is more work, but it is best for your own sanity and for your users.
You can simply disable those 4k libraries on your shared users so they don’t even see the 4k and then your plex will function as smoothly as it ever had.
I want 4K content so I can play it at home on my 4k television and receiver. it works great like that.
When I’m not at home and playing off my phone, though, I don’t want my server to choke and die trying to transcode it down.
The whole time I’ve used Plex, I’ve taken the attitude of “rip it at the highest quality so it looks good on the big screen, and let Plex take care of dumbing it down for remote clients.” I’ve always had a powerful box, and it’s always worked great that way.
The point is that now, with a 4k version floating around in the library, it won’t work anymore without manual intervetion. I already ripped a 2nd copy at a lower quality (1080p). But Plex won’t use it automatically, even when it could realistically transcode that for my friends. Direct Playing 4k over my home internet connection just isn’t happening, and many friends have old Rokus or other non-4k devices anyway.
So, to make it continue to function correctly for everyone, it seems we need to hide the 4k content from anything that can’t direct play it.
I have over 300 4k Remuxes.
I also have a 1080p copy for those I share my server with. You definitely want a seperate library for the 4K stuff.
As you have discovered storing both versions in the same library is a really bad idea.
