Hi, just got my self a new samsung 65" 4k tv (UE65KS7005XXE) and wanted of course to playback a 4k movie. Trying to playback the file Star.Trek.Beyond.2016.UltraHD.BluRay.2160p.HEVC.BT2020.TrueHD 7.1.Atmos from my newly setup of plex server on freenas corral in a docker image. I5 with 32 gb memory. up to 4 cores and 32 gb is allocated to the docker running.
When streaming i see that the network is on about 25mb/s, cpu core 1 is showing 70% in use, the transcode area is on its own ssd, the movie is on WD nas discs.
The problem is that i get a lot of buffering. it says in the plex server that its transcoding audio truehd to eac3, video: direct stream, and a message transcoding (throttled)
Since this is my first setup i have no clue what so ever where of if i have done anything wrong. anyone have a helping hand? tnx
What you’re doing wrong is trying to on-the-fly 4K transcoding. Few people have the ridiculous cash necessary for the hardware that can do that.
You need to pre-transcode your 4K content to something your clients can directplay without transcoding. This may mean storing separate 1080P versions.
@sremick said:
What you’re doing wrong is trying to on-the-fly 4K transcoding. Few people have the ridiculous cash necessary for the hardware that can do that.
You need to pre-transcode your 4K content to something your clients can directplay without transcoding. This may mean storing separate 1080P versions.
If you don’t want to “spend ridiculous cash necessary for the hardware” or “pre-transcode your 4K content to something your clients can directplay” then use Plex Cloud as it does an outstanding job of transcoding 4K content. I have various 4K UHD Blu-ray rips that I have sitting on my Google Drive that Plex Cloud transcodes easily & are play smoothly on all my various clients e.g. Roku 3, Amazon Fire TV 4K, web browser on Retina MacBook Pro etc. My favourite demo is watching the content streamed to my iPhone 6s Plus over 3G/4G cellular,
@nigelpb said:
@sremick said:
What you’re doing wrong is trying to on-the-fly 4K transcoding. Few people have the ridiculous cash necessary for the hardware that can do that.
You need to pre-transcode your 4K content to something your clients can directplay without transcoding. This may mean storing separate 1080P versions.
If you don’t want to “spend ridiculous cash necessary for the hardware” or “pre-transcode your 4K content to something your clients can directplay” then use Plex Cloud as it does an outstanding job of transcoding 4K content. I have various 4K UHD Blu-ray rips that I have sitting on my Google Drive that Plex Cloud transcodes easily & are play smoothly on all my various clients e.g. Roku 3, Amazon Fire TV 4K, web browser on Retina MacBook Pro etc. My favourite demo is watching the content streamed to my iPhone 6s Plus over 3G/4G cellular,
But, wouldnt the 4K support in the Samsung Tv get me the playback without transcoding? whats the point in having the 4k versions of the file then?
@sremick said:
What you’re doing wrong is trying to on-the-fly 4K transcoding. Few people have the ridiculous cash necessary for the hardware that can do that.
You need to pre-transcode your 4K content to something your clients can directplay without transcoding. This may mean storing separate 1080P versions.
the solution i was trying to setup was with 4k support in the smart tv and a 4k file i didnt need to transcode. or else there are rly no point in having the file in 4k resolution?
Try playing the movie with Plex Media Player or Plex Web client on a PC or Mac, just to make sure the movie is not corrupt.
Assuming it is OK…
The problem is not the video. The problem is audio related. Your client does not support TrueHD/Atmos, so it is being transcoded to EAC3.
However, transcoding TrueHD/Atmos does not work correctly with some client/server combinations. You’re probably falling into that situation. For example, the Amazon FireTV Gen2 has trouble with lossless audio - both dts-HD and TrueHD. Playing a movie with either type of soundtrack will result in buffering, stuttering video, audio dropouts, etc.
If the video has an AC3 or AAC audio track, then choose it instead of TrueHD.
If not, and you cannot find a version with an AC3 or AAC audio track, you can manually transcode the audio outside of Plex. There are many free tools available. I use Handbrake (transcoding) and MKVToolNix (muxing).
You can also use Plex Optimized Versions + MKVToolNix as a sort of “quick & dirty” way to transcode the audio and substitute it for the TrueHD/Atmos audio track:
- Make a backup copy of the movie.
- Read Creating Optimized Versions.
- On server transcode settings, choose Higher Speed and Ultra Fast.
- Create an optimized version of the movie. Choose Original Quality. This will create a new version with AAC audio instead of TrueHD/Atmos. The video quality will be poor, but that’s OK in this instance.
- Use MKVToolNix Multiplexer. Drag the original video and the optimized version into the Multiplexer window. Choose “Add as new source file…” when you drag in the second file.
- Check (select) just the original video and the new AAC audio tracks, then click “start multiplexing” at the bottom. OK to include chapters and subtitles if present in original video file.
- Load the resulting MKV file into Plex, replacing the original. Delete the Optimized version too, there is no reason to keep it.
FYI: Several demo videos are online at http://demo-uhd3d.com/ and http://www.demo-world.eu/. You may want to experiment with one of the demo videos first. Most are 1 - 2 minutes in length. It would be easier to test with a short video than waiting for an entire movie to transcode.
@sremick said:
What you’re doing wrong is trying to on-the-fly 4K transcoding. Few people have the ridiculous cash necessary for the hardware that can do that.
My 250 CAN$ I5 7500 transcodes 4k hevc on the fly in software. Once HW transcoding is ready, it should be possible to do multiple streams at once. Also, my main clients are ShieldTVs, so I’ll only transcode for my few remote users and the odd time I watch remotely… So I don’t think the issue is as bad as you make it out to be.
On a consumer level NAS? Sure, not smart. But on a recently released i5 or on Ryzen I don’t think it’s that big of a deal.
Freenas correl is buggy, pulled from release by freenas, and not recommended by them for anything other than tech preview… 9.10 is the latest stable
If you want to be on the bleeding edge without a firm grasp of what you are doing using beta/bloody releases… you are going to get bloody…
You clearly dont have the resouces required by plex allocated in your deployment.
