So, I use the “Killstream” script in Tautulli for such things. It allows you to display a custom message when it kills the stream. A little information; my entire library is x265, Browsers, and PS3/PS4 do not support x265, everything else I have encountered does just fine.
So, for Browser playback I’ve simply put “Browser not allowed, use Plex Client”
For PS3/PS4 Playback I’ve put “PlayStation Doesn’t Support Playback, play on a different device”
and for all other instances of transcoding I put “You’re transcoding, call me to fix it”
Since the implementation of that practice, I setup the script temporarily (ran it in super strict mode ie no transcoding of any kind) for about 2 months. Everyone got with the program within 2 weeks, but I let it run a little longer to catch any other devices that they hadn’t setup correctly. Then I removed the “All other transcoding” message, because lets face it, someone streaming over cellular may need to lower the bitrate from time to time. And now, I am happily at 97% Direct play month over month.
Thanks for the heads up. That doesn’t work for me, now I get server isn’t powerful enough to trans-code. Where as previously it just used to chug.
So I’ve had this problem for some time and to be honest it drives me away from Plex. I am a Plex life pass member. I originally started with an app called Playz an app on my LG TV but then moved to Plex.
So I have:
Synology NAS DS412+ Plex server
LG TV
Plex App on the TV (have it set to original video)
Playz App on the TV
If I use the Playz app the videos are NEVER trans-coded. Subtitles are fine if I use them.
If I use the Plex app the videos are trans-coded due to what I think is because they have sub titles in then?
I don’t understand why Plex does this. It’s clearly not a video or audio issue since Playz plays the video perfectly even if it has subtitles.
Its very disappointing a $2.50 app performs better.
Apparently, by deselecting the Transcoding option, by selecting the maximum possible remote bandwidth and by adding something like 30 MBPS bandwidth (yes, I had to do those three things) Plex has stopped transcoding on my Pi 3. I hope it stays this way, otherwise, its useless.
The Playz player uses their own subtitle rendering engine for subtitles. The Plex app uses the devices native player which may not support subtitles or specific types of subtitles.
I’m curious why only video transcoding is being made optional? I was hoping ALL transcoding could be disabled so that PMS forces the file to the user as it is on my server. For my HD audio streams, the transcoding process messes with a Pre-Processor’s ability to recognize it as DTS-HD, TrueHD, etc… This is the number one reason why I use Kodi inside my house and not Plex. Kodi lets me configure audio for exclusive-mode pass-thru to pre-processor, and once configured…it just works. Maybe I’m doing something wrong (or it has since been fixed since I last tried), but I have yet to ever have my audio gear correctly identify the Plex audio streams, while they are always correctly identified in Kodi. Here’s hoping you extend the toggle switch to audio as well…
The only mainstream plex device that passes through truehd is shield, and it should direct play pretty much anything provided it and the required 4K receiver/tv are configured/setup correctly.
Htpc can pass truehd with the right hardware and pmp.
My statements above were for my HTPC (but not server where content is hosted). On same device, I can get Kodi to pass-thru to Pre-Pro no issues, Plex does not. Would be interested in knowing what setting in my HTPC Plex App config is responsible for this. I have gone over the app settings many times with no luck. For some reason, it always wants to transcode audio (see below):
This setting won’t do that. If the client can’t handle a spcific codec, it will just fail. We left audio transcoding since it doesn’t require a lot of cpu power.
If you want to see what happens if you try forcing the file as-is, in the Plex for windows client itself, go to the settings \ enable show advanced \ debug \ direct stream. Disable that setting.
I just discovered this thread since I have a Windows Plex server but I am running Plex on a Odroid C2 which has enough power to play HEVC streams natively. But when I tried to play them the server was doing transcoding and choking on it. I then download PMS version PlexMediaServer-1.18.7.2438-f342a5a43 which has a setting now to disable video stream decoding and then in the Plex client on Kodi there is a setting to playe HEVC streams. It plays them but the client now seems to have issues in that I can’t skip forward and when I press the OK button to bring up the play menu, it displays briefly and then disappears. Perhaps the new server has some bugs?
Elan I’m a bit confused you’d ask this question. Do you really think the solution is to watch who is playing what and “call them” to have them switch quality levels? This misses the use case on many levels.
I created a feature request to be able to Toggle transcoding at user level.
Don’t hesitate to vote for it if you need it too ;).
Mod-Edit: replaced the link; this was a redundant feature suggestion… time for spring cleaning. Link is now pointing to a set of merged requests on the same issue.
I have non tech savvy users that transcode 4k files down to 1080p for no reason. I have duplicate files (4k & 1080p) specifically for people like them…but confusion ensues when I try to explain to them how to use the “Play Version” setting. I don’t understand why you won’t just give us a feature to turn off transcoding for certain clients. I also don’t understand why we can’t set the default resolution to the max on a server level. Do we run our servers…or do our clients run our servers? I can’t tell with this program.
