That might be an interesting distinction! Video modes might get changed.
Is there a difference between how it behaves “big” and “FULL SCREEN”?
Agree, I did not mean to imply that plex is vlc nor netflix. The other thread is mostly about the poor performance of the plex windows app ui on laptops with intel uhd chips. playback is just a side effect of that.
@chilisquid you mentioned that your friend can stream with no issues.
With my setup, the server is not great at transcoding, so i’m getting slight jittery quality on anything > 720 (post transcode), but works great if the client can stream in “original” quality.
Have a look s at:
- what streaming quality is your friend getting and what’s yours on the affected device
- if your device is using server-side transcoding, what are the transcoding settings, try adjusting the profile
- try using “make my cpu hurt” on the server
- try “optimizing” the videos (aka get plex to pre transcode them)
Hope it helps
Actually that may trigger the client to switch between 1080 and 4k, and it’s possible that the server might struggle to transcode 4k.
Try getting the client to stream in “original” (should work with h264/h265 mkv/mp4 files). You may need to adjust your streaming settings to “maximum” (under plex media player -> quality) or be in your “home network”
There is no transcoding. All transcoding is disabled at the server
The server doesn’t send raw video stream over the net. it’s still sending a compressed stream. When you talk about heavy lifting, that’s transcoding. Transcoding is only necessary when there is insufficient throughput over the network to stream a steady clean picture. then the server has to decode and reencode at a slower bitrate. I’ve disabled video transcoding at the server and set quality to original (as the default) at both ends. I can do a speedtest to the ISP gateway behind which my server resides (12 thousand miles away) and I still can get 100mbps steady. My ISP service at my server location is fiber 200mbps up/down. So I don’t need to do any transcoding because most of my files are around 3mpbs.
But that’s besides the point, I’ve downloaded the files to my client, nothing is streaming over the internet. It only takes 2 minutes to sync a 2gb file from my server to my plex-for-windows client.
So in this scenario, plex for windows does nothing more than decode a local file, just like VLC and WMP … and it was still giving me judder
Slight difference. It is an clear progression of increased judder as you enlarge the screen size and finally go fullscreen
The server does not transcode to 4k. The client and the graphics chip of the client platform do the work of rendering the video larger than it’s original 1080p resolution, on a 4k screen. Its not really increasing the resolution, it’s just increasing the amount of screen pixels per source pixel, this isn’t transcoding, it’s merely interpolation.
don’t forget, the source file is already synced/downloaded, nothing is coming over the wire from the server.
So whatevs dudes
As you can see from reading this thread, I had two computer-on-a-stick devices running windows. I was having trouble with both. Here are the benchmarks
https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/31705295
https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/31699296
The device with intel celeron N4000 and UHD 600 graphics was a minisforum S40. It was the one giving me the most trouble. And today it died on me. Only used it for about 2 weeks. sent it back to amazon. SSD crapped out, wouldn’t boot, couldn’t even do a reimage.
And tonight, the older device with core m5 and UHD 515 graphics is performing better, no judder. So I’m gonna give up on this for now.
Hey that’s kinda nice - it gives you an answer, and you don’t “have to” keep troubleshooting it now. 
Maybe it was just broken all along. Overheating? Underpowered? But it makes me less interested in it as a compact HTPC streamer.
uh, actually it does. When two apps perform the same task, e,g, decoding and rendering a local video file, and one performs flawless and the other judders when interpolating to 4k, you can reasonably conclude that one program is better than the other at performing this task.
yeah, stay away from it. you can still get a decent small form factor fanless PC for this purpose that actually works. just look here mini-pc Archives - Liliputing
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you misunderstand, I am not saying they can’t be compared, or that doing so won’t potentially help identify files with problems (or apps with problems), only that they comparing them, is like comparing apples and oranges.
both are food, and you eat them, but they are otherwise very different, even if they provide some of the same results or serve the same/similar purpose.
take all that with a grain of salt.
anyway, it sucks your device died, and that the whole judder problem wasn’t really resolved, hope things work better on your next device(s).
My bad, misunderstood your use case, I thought you were streaming from plex media server and thought the the client my try and do some funky dynamic resolution changes based on window size, hence recommending the original quality profile.
Too bad your device died, hope you’ll get your money back.
I may be wrong here, but if both vlc are written in c and we’re talking about h264 encoded videos they may be using the same libx264.c decode. That would make them quite comparable.
Of course the actual parameters passed to the lib can make a huge difference.
Decoding the stream into images is part of it. Getting them on screen is another part of it.
ok, so I bought a new piece of hardware, a Beelink U57 mini-pc.
This one has a core-i5 and 8gb of ram, Intel Iris Graphics 6100
SAME PROBLEM, dropped frames when I expand to 4k to fill the screen.
Here is the benchmark
Appears to be hdmi 1.4.
Does anyone else have this problem ? 
This other threads doesn’t talk about it as a windowed vs. full-screen issue, but check this out.
Plex Media Player 3.0 feedback - #49 by ddefauville
Stuttering on Plex for Windows - #87 by ddefauville
what is the playback frame rate?
HDMI 1.4 added support for 4096 × 2160 at 24 Hz, 3840 × 2160 at 24, 25, and 30 Hz, and 1920 × 1080 at 120 Hz.[65](§6.3.
according to this below, you need at least hdmi 2.0a for 4k/60/hdr
Version 2.0[edit]
HDMI 2.0, referred to by some manufacturers as HDMI UHD, was released on September 4, 2013.[112]
HDMI 2.0 increases the maximum bandwidth to 18.0 Gbit/s.[112][113][114] HDMI 2.0 uses TMDS encoding for video transmission like previous versions, giving it a maximum video bandwidth of 14.4 Gbit/s. This enables HDMI 2.0 to carry 4K video at 60 Hz with 24 bit/px color depth.[112][115][116] Other features of HDMI 2.0 include support for the Rec. 2020 color space, up to 32 audio channels, up to 1536 kHz audio sample frequency, dual video streams to multiple users on the same screen, up to four audio streams, 4:2:0 chroma subsampling, 25 fps 3D formats, support for the 21:9 aspect ratio, dynamic synchronization of video and audio streams, the HE-AAC and DRA audio standards, improved 3D capability, and additional CEC functions.[112][117]
HDMI 2.0a was released on April 8, 2015, and added support for High Dynamic Range (HDR) video with static metadata.[118]
The frame rate is only 24p
Regardless, I can play a local movie using windows media player or vlc, through the same hdmi port, in full-screen 4k and it plays perfectly.
I’m having better luck with plex media player 2.58
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