Server Version#:v1.24.5.5173
Player Version#: 8.28.0.30077
Android Version (NOT UPDATED) 8.2.3
After discovering v1.25 PMS doesn’t HW transcode, I downgraded to v1.24.5.5173 and rebuilt completely from scratch. This is on my Shield which I has not been upgraded to Experience 11
I thought it was HW transcoding as I tested 1 h.265 movie and it had no issues remotely streaming to my iOS device. Upon further investigation, other titles show HW transcoding is working, but I get infinite spinning in the player for both my iOS device, and Google Chrome on my laptop. It will do that regardless of remote playing, or direct playing. The reason it attempts to transcode playing on my laptop is that the resolution on my laptop is 1080 and cannot natively display 4k content (at least that’s my theory).
When I play the same content on my network with 4k capable screens, they play just fine because they don’t have to transcode.
Wondering why transcoding shows it’s working, but then gives infinite buffering and a blank screen on the player?
PMS 1.24.5.5173
Playback via WEB-Firefox (app.plex.tv) does not work for me, hen playing 4K videos that need to be transcoded.
Only the spinning circle comes and nothing else happens.
That’s exactly what I’m experiencing. I get spinning circle in Chrome, Edge, and IE. Also on the iOS app. It’s only the large 4k content that’s giving me problems transcoding.
I could have sworn it was working properly when I was running PMS v1.23.x
I’m tempted to try downgrading yet another version, but I end up spending so much time to do so.
Yes, I believe the Shield is powerful enough to transcode a 4k title. At the moment I can’t test it because of the issue you started this thread with, but I’m almost certain I’ve done it in the past. I seem to remember being frustrated because I couldn’t keep it from transcoding. In the earlier days of 4k HDR playback on Plex, the goal was always to get it to direct play.
Seems I need to be the one to yet again rebuild PMS at a v1.23 build and test, since I’m not getting feedback here to confirm/dismiss my hypothesis that v1.24+ has fundamentally broken transcoding insofar as the hardware isn’t keeping up with 4k transcodes.
I realize my use case is probably very obscure compared to normal usage, and even I very rarely would have use for remotely transcoding 4k content, but that was a primary reason I bought the Shield TV Pro. If I can get HW transcoding to efficiently process 4k by downgrading to v1.23, that’s what I’ll do.
Have you disabled HDR tone mapping? I have the 1.24 with android 9 update and hw transcoding it’s working with h265 4k hdr if i disable the tone mapping.
