You mention an interesting point here. You are saying that I should choose the tracks/subtitles/video settings before launching the playback ? I’ve never done that. I’ve always hit the Play button, and after that, I choose the audio if incorrect, and try quality settings if, as it is frequently the case, I encounter plauback issues). I could try to make my selection first, at each media, right ?
I wish you had done the research first and found the thread I linked.
TLDR: 4K playback via Plex is a whole different monster that I have yet to tame totally in my 4+ years of streaming 4K content. I wish you luck and God’s speed.
Absolutely! This is probably a big part of your issue. If you are just letting it play and you have TrueHD and PGS or ASS subs selected it is going to start attempting to transcode and repackaging everything. Go attempt playing those files while making sure to set your options before you play the file, and let me know how that works.
2 Likes
Meh, 4K isn’t a problem if you have the correct client support and a sufficiently capable network. I actually have some users on my server that regularly remote stream 4K from my server with no issue. The biggest problems more often then not are a result of audio codecs and subtitles in my experience. 4K is prolific enough now that most stuff handles it without too much issue.
Oh, I agree, but I’ve been messing around with 4K well before the 4K Faq was around so I’m pretty capable now of troubleshooting my issues and I also have other ways of playing 4k Content outside of plex that works for me.
Hi @Blkbyrd , yesterday I did many tests, and they were quite positive ! The very large files for which I’ve included the XML were playing fine.
My observations are :
- during the tests, I’ve changed the Large Send Offload (tcpv4), which got things a bit better
- I bought plex pass to make use of my GTX 1650 Super card, which got things a bit better
- I deleted all the Plex preferences
- As for transcoding options, I used those :
Quality = auto
Buffer = diminished from 60 to 20
x264 preset = very fast
HDR mapping=true
Disable transcoding=false
Use hardware acceleration=true
Use hardware material encoding=true
… and things were still far from perfect
Then, I check the playback info, during playback. It was still to automatic transcode !
Here’s what I did that did the trick : I changed that to another conversion choise (eg. 1080p), and then, I switched it back to original quality. Then I stopped the media, and started again the playback. and NOW it was playing in original quality !
So, that makes me think if it could be possible that there was a glitch in the player(s) making the playback stuck in conversion/transcoding, and changing back and forth to original quality could really switch it to not transcoding ?
And as a final note, I was really impressed by the colors, the picture quality. I then suppose that on top of having playback issues, transcoding was degrading the image quality to a certain extent.
All in all, thank you for your help, after all those attempts, I finally managed to make things work well. In terms of numbers, now the media starts in 2-4 seconds, which is better than before.
As a final input for me here, after those very helpful advices up there, I would like to add another cause of the transcoding always-on, which I will report also in the appropriate thread.
After the last changes discussed, I still could see long delay while loading a media. When I was going to the playback options, I could see Direct play. BUT when I was then going into the More info (sorry, my plex is in french, but it is the last option in the menu), it was saying that it was transcoded, with the reason : cannot direct play. A workaround that I tried and worked : I changed the playback mode from supposedly Direct play to auto convert, and then I put it back to direct play. After that, I stop the playback, and then start it again and then, on both screens (Playback options and More info), I was getting Direct play. And also, it was obvious by the loading times and the much nicer picture quality that transcoding was indeed not employed that second time. So, I think there may have a glitch in the client, since a bizarre workaround like this one corrects the situation.
This topic was automatically closed 90 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.
