This should just be the installer downloaded from the plex site – not plex from the windows store app. It should function the same as the web client and allow you to select the playback quality.
I have the correct Windows app and the same options as you. But when I choose 1080p or even 720p, the file continues to direct play since the bitrate is higher than the file. The only way to get it to transcode is to choose a resolution with a lower bitrate.
I hate to be that person but there’s also the chance we both have bad hardware.
Ahh! don’t say that! I did originally test on both my NUC and an i5-13600k with the same issue, so I really hope Intel doesn’t have that bad of QC - very unlikely.
I also completely forgot I disabled direct play/stream manually in the desktop app settings:
Aside from us having similar taste in movies,
I’m considering you have a hardware / firmware / cabling / HDMI port issue.
Folks are very quick to complain about PMS creating artifacts in their playback and this is the only case I know of.
I would first go the NUC Firmware route.
Next I would change HDMI port in the TV
Next I would use a different cable (even if HDCP 1.x rated) to see if i’ts a mechanical problem.
I can confirm my NUC is running the latest firmware, it’s actually a 12th gen with Intel Iris XE gpu so it’s had plenty of time to burn in.
Intel NUC 12 Pro Kit NUC12WSKi7 BIOS: WSADL357
Normally if I don’t see anyone else commenting about an issue, I assume it’s a me problem, but this one is really weird. Because this is running on Proxmox within an LXC container, there’s no cabling / HDMI port requirements to check. @ChuckPa , are you testing for those artifacts via the plex web portal player?
@Traveler885 , I believe you’re running a similar setup on a NUC via Proxmox - have you had any similar issues?
I use Plex 99% for music and Plexamp. So can’t help on video quality issues. Lip sync is bad on my AppleTV 4K, which makes it totally unusable. I have a Sheild, but almost never use it.
@rozzly
I had no idea there was an option to turn off Direct Play/Stream on the Windows app. I prefer Direct Play so it never occurred to me the option existed.
I turned off Direct Play/Stream and can confirm that the pixelation does not occur in the Windows app when transcoding 1080P HEVC to 1080P H264.
@ChuckPa
I don’t have a NUC so there’s no firmware update for me. My Plex Server is a custom built computer and the motherboard has the latest bios. This problem isn’t actually an issue for me as I don’t use the Web app nor do my users. I just ran the test to help OP confirm the issue.
When I said I have the latest bios, it means I’ve updated my UEFI bios, not that it can’t be updated. My latest UEFI bios was released on 03/16/2023. Sorry for the misunderstanding.
@ChuckPa, I never did ask - With your lab system, what hardware are you using, what OS, and are you running PMS bare metal, virtually, or containerized?
Chiming in here to say I have the same issue, i5-13500 (uhd770), updating the GuC firmware from the intel github helped but still not gone. Mostly happens with HEVC to H264 transcodes.
Running virtualized Ubuntu 22.04 on kernel 6.3.1 under proxmox with kernel 6.2.11. My bios was latest until this week when they found that gigabyte app issue.
I found another thread for jellyfin with the same issue on 12/13th gen cpus and they determined it had to do with the “Intel Low-Power H.264 hardware encoder”.
We run everything native on our hosts. Virtualizing / containerizing add unnecessary complexity. The machines are dedicated as PMS servers. The more you wrap it in plastic / tinfoil, the easier it is to break.
My home lab is where I use ESXi for a few test / development distros.
I have a proxmox i3-7300 (NUC7 - babynuc) with Ubuntu 20.04.5 LTS. It plays flawlessly.
Virtualizing / containerizing might add unnecessary complexity; however many users virtualize / containerize because it typically doesn’t make sense to dedicate hardware to PMS, especially if you’re running a 13th gen cpu – but to each their own.
I’d like to get this issue at least replicated on the support side - there is definitely something wrong to be investigated. So far I’ve been able to replicate this via Windows bare-metal with 13600k and via Proxmox on a containerized deployment.
I have a proxmox i3-7300 (NUC7 - babynuc) with Ubuntu 20.04.5 LTS. It plays flawlessly.
I haven’t had any issues on older CPUs - I have a 6th? gen laptop next to me that runs PMS on windows no problem, this issue is specific to 12th/13th gen Intel CPUs (UHD 770) and 12th/13th gen Intel NUCs (Intel Iris XE).
This machine, while dedicated to PMS, is not how I run my personal server.
I have several other packages running as native installs.
I/we’ve worked very hard to ensure PMS is well behaved on the host.
All PMS library files and drivers are contained within /usr/lib/plexmediaserver/lib.
Host-specific device drivers are under Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server.
We did this because the same Linux binary used on Workstations is also used in the native NAS packages and in the Docker container. Each NAS presents a unique runtime environment. NAS vendors have a higher / tighter standard for how apps behave. You might be surprised to learn an image (for a docker container) is packaged in much the same manner as a NAS
As for replicating the issue, I’m not able to:
root@plexqa-av1:/home/chuck# cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep ‘model name’ | uniq
model name : 13th Gen Intel(R) Core™ i5-13400
root@plexqa-av1:/home/chuck#
Windows is a separate animal because transcoding is done entirely different.
I also can’t advise on Windows in any way (I don’t use or know it)
I can provide you this test file if you wish since it’s a known good test file.
@ChuckPa , sure, please link me to the known good file and I’ll give it a try. Does the file have any kind of subtitles included? On the samsung TV app, this issue appears to be limited to subtitles.
Any chance you could get proxmox on the 13th gen system to test?
Play the Jellyfish first. It’s H.264 and the most basic transcoding test with 10 bit
Play the LG demo
Proxmox on anything other than my personal BabyNUC i3 KabyLake isn’t going to happen.
ProxMox isn’t supported so Plex won’t. ProxMox is the Hypervisor not the OS. It would be like saying Plex supports VirtualBox or ESXi. Makes no sense.
If you disable all the Proxmox drivers which try to ‘grab’ the GPU and pass the full GPU through to the VM, the Iris/XE (UHD 770) will work in a Ubuntu VM just as it does on KabyLake.
Maybe unnecessary to some, but it’s exceptionally useful for MANY many people. PMS is idle 99% of the time, so it makes zero sense to dedicate hardware that just wastes power, space, and a network port. Running it on Proxmox, for example, saves me money and much better for the environment. It’s a win-win. More complex, sure, but it’s the superior choice for many.
I said that containerization and virtualization adds unnecessary complexity.
Docker is a namespace wrapper . It creates an artificial runtime environment.
VMs create (enumerate) virtual hardware on top of the existing hardware. The translation from virtual to physical costs CPU resources.
Those translations for every single thing the app inside the environment costs resources / performance. With a well behaved application, which PMS is, it’s unnecessary. That’s all I’m saying.
Had my VM crash last night during the nightly maintenance. Looks like during a video thumbnail generation. This is something I ran into a lot back on older GuC firmware, but the first time I’ve had it happen in months.
I still get artifacts here and there as well.
