Hi guys,
I’m no Plex master, or any kind of a tech geek, so please excuse me if any obviously dumb stuff follows.
I cant get my system to play 4K movie files. I have a 55" LG3D 4K UHD TV in my bedroom, but to be honest the TV and it’s placement I don’t think matter at all, as I cant even get 4K movie files to directly on the iMac with its 5k 27" Retina display. Plex tells me the system isn’t powerful enough to play them. I cant get my head around what PMS needs to play 4K or what settings I need to use to enable these files to play.
The files I try to play are HVEC x265 10bit
I am running PMS on my iMac 5k (Late 2014)
Intel core i5 3,5 GHz
8GB Ram
AMD Radeon 59 M290X 2GB
My files are on 3 x 4TB WD My Cloud Nas drives and the router is a 3TB 2016 Apple Time Capsule via a Gigabit network switch, all connected with Cat 6 Gigabit cables.
I have another LG3D 55" TV in the living room, and 2 4th Gen Apple TVs on the network connected to the LG TVs plus and Xbox One and a printer. The Bedroom setup, Apple TV, LG TV and printer are all wireless via the Apple Time capsule. Also generally connected via wifi will be my iPad and iPhone . I include all this info just in case any of those things could possibly affect the issue, although as I said, as they don’t even play via a browser on my iMac… I’m pretty sure the PMS setup and my iMac specs are the issue.
Now I know my iMac maybe getting old by now computer standards, it’s just that it runs everything else I do so fast and so much better than anything else I’ve ever used I am mystified as to why its stuck on this issue?
HVEC x265 10bit <- You need to use Plex clients that can handle that, and what else you might be adding to the stream such as subtitles, audio codecs etc.
No, not dumb at all. Feel free to ask anything. Which client are you using on your Mac? If it comes down to a Mac issue I might as well move it to the Mac part of this forum. I seem to recall, if I remember correctly, that Mac’s can’t handle DTS for instance or such (it just isn’t available on that platform regardless of client) - so something like that can create a transcode.
I’m just opening PMS, it opens in safari and I can play the files from there, so I guess I’m not using a client at all, unless the client actually is safari in this situation.
As for the TVs which is where I want them to play, the connected 4th Gen Apple TVs are running the latest Plex App, but it probably doesn’t matter about them, because the Apple TV won’t play over 1080p anyway, that may change one day.
The LG TV is model 55UB850V-ZDrunning on the latest update (05.05.55)
using webOS 1.4.0-2330 (afro-Ashley)
and on it I have the Plex App for LG
version 2.12.1,
the webOS version showing on Plex “about” section says 3.10.19-32.afro.5
The LG TV also has the Netflix app, and via this app I am able to stream and watch 4K media made available via Netflix, recently like Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, and some movies, so if it can play that stuff off the web… why can’t it play files stored on the local network?
The reason as to why it is not working for you is (most likely) because your movie has something in it that your client does not like. When it does not like something in a file it asks Plex to transcode on-the-fly. This is great and what makes Plex Plex essentially, since you can share your server with several others and do not have to worry too much about “what does this movie actually contain in terms of codecs and such”. It is what makes Plex so easy to use for most people. What you’ve discovered though is that x265 isn’t “there” yet. Plex can’t handle a transcode of that codec easily since it takes such a tremendous amount of raw CPU power to do that. So when your client asks Plex to do this it can’t keep up.
Now. Playing stuff in a browser will most likely never work since that type of client (Plex Web) can’t handle much in terms of codecs and such. Playing an x265 file on your TV should work - but as I said earlier it isn’t as easy as “OK my TV supports 4K - so it can play anything!”. If you throw a PGS sub and some DTS HD Master audio at it, it will break down and ask Plex to “fix it” thus we’re back at square one again.
If you check your Plex Media Server.log for a line starting with “MDE” (after a failed attempt) - https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/200250417-Plex-Media-Server-Log-Files - it will tell you what triggered the transcode. That factor, whatever it may be such as earlier noted audio, subs, bit-level etc is something you need to reencode (do what you ask Plex to do on-the-fly, but do it beforehand) or get a different client that can handle more stuff (such as an Nvidia Shield).
If I bought a 4k blu ray player such as a Panasonic, they have a usb slot. If I played a 4k file from a USB would that work and would it play back the DTS audio?
Dont know if you’re still active, but I hope you are lol.
Any help is much appreciated. My tvs media player doesnt support dts and most 4k files you download are DTS audio, so it’s a real pain .
I have no idea what the particular bluray player will do with a 4k usb based file, but if I were to guess it would output pcm/stereo since your tv doesn’t support dts audio.
also, playing a 4k file from usb on a bluray player does not seem to have anything to do with plex so not sure why you decided to post on these forums?
