How do I turn off automatic optimization? The server never did this before but lately I’ve been seeing (or hearing if you consider the cooling fans) my plex media server optimizing a new video file and then promptly deleting it after the optimization finishes.
I never use the optimized versions as the file is already at the quality I want to stream at. I have all the other features like thumbnail generation turned off to prevent my media server.
All the things I read suggest that Optimization should only be by request, but somewhere I have some setting that is triggering an optimize/delete behavior. Any idea where I should look?
When I hear the CPUs startup I go to the activity log and see a conversion activity going on. When I click that, it takes me to Optimized Versions page where I see the optimization in progress for the newly added video.
When the optimization finishes, I go back and see the Optimized Versions page and find its empty and then go look at the directory where it should have been saved, the “Plex Versions” folder in the same directory as the original, and there is no directory or file.
I also do “find” using a wildcard of the name across the zfs volume for the file, but to be honest, I don’t know if the optimized versions end up with a name similar to the original, or if there is a temp location that isn’t on my zfs volume.
I have those set to “Never” in the Library tab. There is that single “hero” or “splash” image they show that must come from somewhere, but transcoding the entire file to get it seems wasteful. I wonder if its that wasteful.
Yeah, hence my confusion. The job appears there unasked for and then the results of the process, and the job, disappear.
Just because I wanted to see what a user requested optimization looks like, I launched one using the “Optimize…” feature on a video. The job actually fails with the error “Converted files cannot be written to the server’s disk”
My guess is it really is doing something else but its incorrectly identified as an optimization job.
