Server Version#:1.14.0.5470 on sinology DS2413+
Player Version#: latest client on amazon firestick
I have 2 firesticks and can easily play 2 1080p movies with subs at the same time. Synology cpu is no loaded at all.
Now all my tv show episodes have been encoded in 576p from original 720p to save nas space and as soon as I play an episode on only 1 stick, NAS cpu goes to 98% load … so no transcoding is happening on full res movie, but I guess the server is upres’ing the 576p episode. Can this be avoided as my receiver is perfectly capable to doing the upgres ?
In Plex app, set Display Information = On. During playback, bring up the on-screen controls (pause, etc). Look in upper left corner. It will tell you if audio/video is being transcoded and provide a reason.
What does it show when you play one of the tv episodes?
It appears I encoded using h264 version 5.2 recently. No idea when I started using that release.
Re-encoding will take time. I tried an old episode which was encored with an older version : no transcoding.
For H.264 1080p 30fps, encode at High@4.0. For 576p 30fps you can drop down to High@3.1 if desired. Encoding at a higher level than necessary doesn’t buy you anything and can cause compatibility problems.
Keep reference frames at 4 or less. Some clients have problems with a high number of reference frames (From reading old threads, it seems Rokus had issues with reference frames greater than 4. Not sure if that is still the case.).
Does plex record the h264 level in it’s data base ?
I just replaced 2 “affected” episodes with re-encoded ones, and plex still reports de level is 5.2.
If I add a new episode, there is no issue.
I have unfortunately hundreds of 5.2 level episodes. No idea how to fix this.
Yes it does. You need to perform the Plex Dance when updating files. Basically, you remove the old files, update the system, put in the new files, update again.
The purpose of this is to remove all cached metadata and xml data for an item that Plex usually keeps. This helps when you want to “start from scratch” for particular item
move all files for the media item out of the directory your Library is looking at so Plex does not “see” it anymore
And I do not need to re-encode the episodes with handbrake. changing level with tsmuxer does the job.
I could batch that (needs tsmuxer to extract the video track, mediainfo to get the fps from original file then mkvmerge)
That fact that switching from level 5.2 to level 5.0 without re-encoding works and video plays find on fire tv stick proves that plex could actially work with 5.2 : tsmuxer only rewrites the level value in the header.
I have not found yet how to change the default apps setting.
I have only 2 plex clients … both amazon firestick (not the 4K one), so if my tsmuxer trick works, I do not intend to re-encode. I’ve now change my handbrake preset to use level 4.0, but for all the episodes I’ve encoded for the lest 3 years, they are all in 5.2
My dunes player can play anything I throw at them, including blu-ray iso or file system images, and I have over 170 of those, so not about to give up on dune
