Server Version#: 1.19.5.3112
Player Version#: 5.1.0
Tizen 5.5
If have a MKV with lots of subtitles embedded which seems to be a problem regarding direct play AND direct stream. Neither of which trigger, it always transcodes audio and video. I don’t know if this is a limitation of PLEX or Samsung, however it should at least direct stream and demux every unused subtitle stream on the fly. Transcoding seems like an error here. Maybe this is fixed in later versions of PMS but I cannot update at the moment.
It is a limit in the firmware of your tv.
Samsung is informed about it, but it is quite unlikely that they will do something about it.
So as a workaround, Plex will Direct Stream or Transcode if the number of streams exceeds a certain number.
Because if it would send the file unaltered (“Direct Play”), playback would fail.
This might be due to another bug with these clients: if you select an audio stream which is not the first audio stream in the file, video and audio may drift apart during playback.
As a workaround, both video and audio will be transcoded.
Work is being done to improve this situation.
Yes, there was a forced subtitle track activated (SRT). Deactivating it results in direct stream of video and transcoding audio (ac3 > aac) even though it should pass-through to my receiver (but I guess PLEX doesn’t know that).
Not an ideal solution since I need the subtitles for foreign spoken parts, but at least I know how to solve the problem of video transcoding (temporarily). I hope there will be some development on these issues, as you already reported.
EDIT: I was able to update, so this was now on the latest server version 1.20.3.3483
I’m not sure how to activate pass-through of audio streams. Or whether this is possible at all on these devices.
Have you looked in the preferences of the Plex app on the TV?
Tizen 5.5 devices have some bad player issues. Specifically, files with more than 30 streams fail to direct play and must be direct streamed, and DASH playback stutters like crazy and must be played over HLS. However, if a video is direct streaming over HLS, direct playing subtitles causes issues with drift, so the subs need to be transcoded. Congratulations, you’ve hit the bug jackpot!
Your best bet, is to drop some streams so there’s less than 30 in your file, and that should allow you to direct play video and subtitles.
I have this issue as well on my 2020 Q70T, Tizen 5.5.
Did a comparision with my brother who has a 2019 Q60R on Tizen 5.0. We played the same high bitrate mkv with external srt sub on both our plex clients/tv. We have the same settings. His playback went on fine other than it Direct streamed instead of Direct Play. No issues at all. However playback on my setup both video and audio are being transcoded with a lot of buffering in the playback. AC3 to AAC and 4K HEVC to 4K H264. Playback info shows same error as solitaryreign reported: “stream count exceeds 30 streams”.
And yes, I play the second audio stream (AC3 instead of TrueHD).
If I turn off the subtitles (ext srt) the video track will Direct stream and and the audio will still transcode (AC3 to AAC). Playback is free from buffering and the server load is acceptable, but obviously without subs.
Fingers crossed we’ll get an update soon.
How can I check if the file has more than 30 streams?
