How to switch off direct play for MKV

Plex Players Gaming Consoles
1

Before the recent update that introduced the direct mkv playback and music access for Xbox One I didn’t have one jot of trouble with playback from my Xbox One.

Since this new update I struggle to play any 1080P content. Sometimes it plays for fine for 10 minutes or so then it resorts to dropped frames or worse a ‘playback error’ screen.

I have tried reducing the output from my iMac server (down to 8mp 1080P) but no luck. My other option is to reduce the quality from the xbox app to 720P but there is a noticeable difference in quality and defeats the object imo.

I have turned off the ‘direct play’ feature from the app settings on the Xbox but still there’s intermittent pausing.

My only workaround lately is to hook my iMac directly to my TV and play from the second screen. If I’m to continue doing this I don’t think I need to carry on being a Plex Pass subscriber

Is there any other way to turn off this direct play feature from within my iMac/ server settings?

I should point out my devices are hardwired so there aren’t any wifi troubles.

Thanks for any help.

EDIT: I’m playing a 1080P TV show at the minute that’s stuttering and in the activity summary from my iMac it states transcoding is (Throttled) and video/audio is direct stream. So it appears direct play is switched off? If so how am I still getting poor playback?

EDIT 2: Perhaps I’m jumping the gun. This article suggests throttling is a good thing. https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/203064726-If-a-transcode-is-throttled-is-that-bad-

2

Hi, just some points

  1. When your server states direct stream for audio and video then direct play is indeed disabled (since you did this in the xbox one app, this is right)
  2. Basically Direct play is a good thing, because the server has less stuff to do. You only have to disable it when there really is a problem with a video (but this should be isolated incidents where xbox thinks it can play a file but acutally cannot play it)
  3. When Audio/Video transcoding is throttled, there shouldn´t be any performance issues, as it seems your server is too fast to transcode everything and has some time to “throttle” it. It just means your device is playing the already transcoded video and until it catches up with your server, the server is idling.

Now to the standard questions:

  1. Is your connection wired or wireless (the latter could cause issues here)
  2. Is the problem with every 1080p video (movie / tv series)
  3. Please enable logging via the xbox app and then post PMS Logs from the time, the stuttering/error is happening
3

In having the exact same problems. I thought it was network issues. But it worked seamlessly in the past. It doesn’t always even have to be a high quality show to experience the issue.

I’m wondering if it’s something either

A)App related
B) server related - I changed PMS a number of times and still same issue so not this
C) Xbox os related. I’m on the preview…

4

Thanks for the info.

To clarify i’m using a wired connection. There now seems to be stuttering on 720 and 1080p content.

Here’s the log list from attempting to watch a 720p TV show. Hope I’ve posted it right, seems an awful lot of information for something I had on for less than 5 minutes and gave up on because it refused to play.

5

It definitely seems to be a resolution issue. I’m watching a 480p concert at the minute and it’s not stuttered or failed once.

All my hardware is hardwired. Streaming quality is 8mbps 1080p (any lower and picture looks naff) and transcoder quality is set to automatic - both I’ve reduced since experiencing the stuttering since the last major update that added music integration to Xbox One.

I’m not sure what else to try.