I’m starting to quickly expand my library of 4K media (both TV and movies) and ideally I’d like to eventually merge my 4K media (currently in separate libraries) into my standard 720p/1080p libraries. Currently it doesn’t seem like Plex handles version selection very well. I’ve tested putting multiple copies of a movie in my movie library like so:
Movie (year) - 2160p.mkv
Movie (year) - 1080p.mkv
My testing shows that with quality set to original, Plex will always choose the 4K version for playback. 95% of my clients do not have the hardware to support 4K playback so the 4K version gets transcoded which of course looks terrible.
Is there any plan/roadmap for Plex clients to be able to choose the right version of media for playback based on the clients connected hardware? Without this kind of intelligence, I don’t see anyway to successfully merge my 4K media with my standard HD media.
there were some recent updates that were supposed to improve this, I don’t remember if it was on the server release notes or for some specific client(s).
all that said;
it seems apparent to me, that we (you, me, and everyone else) should continue to keep 4k content separate, if for nothing else than to avoid unnecessary transcoding to remote and/or non-4k clients. (even if you CAN transcode, it doesn’t mean you SHOULD)
it seems apparent to me, that we (you, me, and everyone else) should continue to keep 4k content separate, if for nothing else than to avoid unnecessary transcoding to remote and/or non-4k clients. (even if you CAN transcode, it doesn’t mean you SHOULD)
Yea, I have no desire to have any of my 4K content transcoded by me or my users even though I can support 9 of them simultaneously.
I would assume that would imply ROKU and any other UNO devices.
I would further assume that once the UNO-fication of all clients are rolled out, that the ‘intelligence’ will improve.
This also ties in with improved support for multiple qualities (720/1080/4k) and multiple versions (theatrical/extended/directors/unrated/etc) of content.
lol! Yeah, that would be great! Let’s hope DC Comics will be fixed too.
I guess we can denote this in the filename [Director’s Cut - A Real Director’s Cut].
given a movie stacked with 2 files:
Movie (year) - 2160p.mkv
Movie (year) - 1080p.mkv
non-4k or non-hdr plex client should direct play or transcode the 1080p version. (even 4k/hdr clients that are transcoding for any reason ie remote bw limit ?)
While 4k/hdr direct play compatible clients should simply direct play the 4k/hdr version ?
That setting is based on the quality for transcoding. If you use “original”, then yeah it will pick the 4K version to transcode from.
If you want to play something other than the 4k version, you have to manually select “play version”.
Yea that’s the problem. My users and clients have to be set to original quality in order to get the full quality of my 1080p versions (which is 99% of my media) and prevent lots of transcoding. Most users have no idea there is even a 4K version and when they hit play on a movie that has 2 versions they are going to get the 4K version, transcoded down with terrible quality. And even if I had my users set their quality lower, they’d then have to manually change it again when if they want to play the 4K version. I need some way to default to the 1080p/720p versions and have users manually select the 4K version. Otherwise I’d need logic in place where Plex is smart enough to know that the client is not capable of playing 4K and thus chooses the 1080p version regardless of playback quality selected.
As it stands there’s just no way for me to have 4K and and 1080p/720p versions in the same library.
Has there been any update on this? I hate to split up my library between 1080p files and 4k files because I also add the movie extras to my folders. I would like to keep everything in one place and not have to flop between the two to get access to 4k and the movie extras.
For now I have merged my 4K media into the same folder as the rest of my media and I use a Tautulli script that prevents any streams where the video itself is transcoding. If the overall stream/container or the audio is transcoding it’s still allowed).
@kint0 This is this script I use. It has a good amount of info on what parameters you can use. In Tautulli you go to Settings > Notification Agents, create a new agent and choose Script.
On the Arguments Tab under both Playback Start and Transcoder Decision Change I have this set:
–jbop stream --username {username} --sessionId {session_id} --killMessage ‘Transcoding of 4K content is restricted. Please adjust your video playback quality setting to “Maximum” or “Original” or manually choose the non-4K version from the item play menu"’
You can set the killMessage to whatever you’d like.
