This is a follow up to this earlier thread. Based on further guidance from TP Link, they suggested I hardwire my Apple TV directly to the switch, bypassing my Google WiFi mesh router. The Beatles “Get Back” played fine.
I then began researching different routers and reached out to Synology (as one of their routers was recommended as a plus up from Wirecutter. I created a support ticket with Synology where I was seeking recommendations of their routers. The agent replied back with:
"Streaming video uses a tiny fraction of bandwidth relative to transferring even medium sized files. Unless something is separately wrong with the Google router, changing the bandwidth or having the router and NAS match likely won’t fix the issue.
"Generally speaking if you are transcoding video the issue is in the performance of the NAS. Transcoding is not required for video playback. The device that is used to view the video is what determines playback capability so any NAS can host 4K content. Transcoding is used when your playback devices are not capable of playing back the video format or audio/video codecs of your files. It can also be used to reduce quality or resolution for off-site streaming. When transcoding the video quality is always reduced so to ensure the best playback use a compatible playback device so no transcoding occurs.”
I then learned that Apple TV 4K does not support MKV, and the videos I have are all MKV, so they must be transcoding on the fly. So that got me thinking, I should look at one of the formats supported on Apple TV, convert “Get Back” to a supported format, and see if that solves my problem. Can anyone recommend a good video format supported by Apple TV that will yield quality video and audio playback? Maybe a question for the Apple TV forum…
Transcoding is only needed if the video or audio codecs are incompatible with the playback device.
Or if the bitrate needs to be reduced.
Or if subtitles need to be burned into the picture.
It will be shown on the Plex web Dashboard activity as such. https://support.plex.tv/articles/200871837-status-and-dashboard/
MKV has nothing to do with codecs. It is a container, which can contain different sorts of codecs – in theory both compatible and incompatible with your hardware.
If the container is not supported by the player, Plex server will change it on-the-fly. This process is not transcoding. It cannot be compared with transcoding, as it will only require a fraction of the processing power of real transcoding.
Such a change of container can be recognized in the Activity by the word “Direct Stream”. If both video and audio are marked with Direct Stream, it is a clear sign that a container change is being done.
If you want to find out why transcoding is applied, you need to inspect the server log files.
Activate “debug” logging (but not “verbose” logging!) in the server settings.
Stop and restart the server.
Then play the file in question for 1 minute.
Then fetch the server logs and inspect the Plex Media Server.log. Look for lines starting with MDE:. These and the surrounding lines can give you useful hints why transcoding was applied.
Thanks for clarifying. The reason I assumed MKV was a format is two fold: 1) my ripped films are all *.mkv and 2) when I use Handbrake for file conversion, it gives MKV as a format option:
And maybe both MKV and MP4 are both containers, but that is another conversation (I think).
What I’m trying to do is to play Blu Ray rips stored on my Synology NAS using Plex and viewing the rips on my Apple TV 4K. Doing so with Blu Ray and some DVDs gives me the “Your connection to the server is not fast enough” and based on what Synology told me in the first post here, I thought I needed to mess with the formats. So, my question now (without getting too deep under the hood) is what is the best format or presets I can use with Handbrake (if not MakeMKV) to achieve the best rips from DVD or Blu Ray disks to play on Apple TV.
Look at the Dashboard in Now Playing during playback.
What kind of connection is reported there? If it says “indirect”, then there is an issue with your home network, which is most likely the reason for the transcoding.
It was something with my network (it’s an older Google mesh router). I tested the Synology RT6600ax router and that appears to take care of it. I was able to view “Get Back” last night without this message reappearing:
