Hey all, been trying to figure this out for awhile now, any help is appreciated. All my media files are HEVC, all media file also have multiple audio streams (aac, eac3, truhd) with multiple channels and stereo as default. For some reason, with directplay set to AUTO, its saying direct play is disabled/not available. But from the looks of it, its just simply copying the AV and sticking it back in an MKV. I dont see specifically why its doing it so im not sure what to adjust. This transcode take almost zero resources, but its a bit annoying and would prefer the server not do more work than needed. When I set direct play to FORCE, it direct plays without issue and no transcoding needed.
I included both the logs of the same file when Direct play is set to auto as well as forced
Streaming Resource: Reached Decision id=20404 codes=(General=1001,Direct play not available; Conversion OK. Direct Play=3000,App cannot direct play this item. Direct play is disabled. Transcode=1001,Direct play not available; Conversion OK.) media=(id=27439 part=(id=32083 decision=transcode container=mkv protocol=http streams=(Video=(id=83865 decision=copy width=1920 height=960) Audio=(id=83869 decision=copy channels=6 rate=48000))))
Product
Plex for Roku
Player
Roku Ultra 2.0
Quality
Original (4.8 Mbps)
Stream
Direct Stream
Container
Converting (MKV MKV)
Video
Direct Stream (HEVC 1080p)
Audio
Direct Stream (English - EAC3 5.1)
Subtitle
None
Location
LAN: 192.168.1
Bandwidth
24.7 Mbps
That’s because it’s no transcode but a re-mux (keywords in your log snippets are decision=copy and Direct Stream). Plex simply puts the tracks (as-is) in a different container. Most likely this is part of the automatic quality option being activated in your client; there’s probably some specific container adjustments to allow on-the-fly adjustment of the quality, e.g. if your bandwidth goes down because some other activities in your network.
Interesting, I guess the direct play not available was throwing me off. Which settings could potentially be causing it? The Transcoder quality setting is set to “Make my cpu hurt” because my server runs on an i9. This stream was also on the same network, if that makes a difference. Is there a way to see why its deciding to remux?
Thanks for the reply. Im trying to figure it out at home on my network to troubleshoot it. As far as the settings, the only ones I see that are editable on the client side are the local/remote quality with both set to original and direct play set to auto. Are there other settings that could be triggering the mkv to mkv remux without actually changing anything. Do you think turning on verbose and doing a test stream could clarify more? Thanks for answering when you have time, im just curious.
From what I can see, the Roku doesn’t have any other options. You can disable „Direct Streaming“ — but that’ll only result in the stream failing if it cannot direct-play … which in your case seems to be necessary. Verbose logs might contain some information but I’m not sure.
you where right, aac will play fine and if I switch to the TV app, the same multichannel will direct play without transcoding. Could this be something simple as updating the roku profile?
