Playing direct play and then switches to transcode?

General Discussions
1

So two stream where playing, one transcode and one DP and another one joins and then they all transcode which puts too much loan on the server so they all pause. The third transcode drops out and the middle goes back to DP. What gives?

2

What devices did the clients use? (Roku, Xbox one, IOS etc…)
Was the subtitles enabled? Maybe they were burned in, but I doubt that seeing as you were saying the one of the clients was direct playing.
Also check your remote/local quality of the stream.

It sounds like you have 2 clients who just fully transcodes and one client having Direct Play. And that Direct Play changes mid stream to transcoding, sounds like the client’s issue. I have a Roku that does that.

3

Xbone, Roku and Fire TV. The Fire TV was direct playing and when the Roku joined it started to transcode.

4

I don’t own Fire TV, but I have tested Xbox One with Android OS phones, IOS, Samsung TV (2015) and Roku (stick + Roku 3)
I got them all to Direct Play, except Roku devices which are giving me a headache, they’re very sensitive and I did post a question in the Roku section of the forum, but thats another story.

  • Xbox One cannot handle “Soft” subtitles, not yet that is, and thats the limitations of Xbox One, if you start playing SRT subtitles (or any other subtitles) it must transcode the video to “burn in”

  • Android OS (tested with samsung S6+S7, Motorola Nexus model 2014, Note 6) perfectly direct play H.264 with AAC Audio.

  • IOS (Apple TV, Iphone 6S) basically mp4 container with same codecs as Android, perfect direct play

  • Roku Devices (and this where I got my problems with) messes up with direct play, and hates audio with AAC 6 channels.
    Either AAC for stereo (2 channels) or AC3 for Surround (5.1 channels).

Thanks to @ljunkie for providing a solution for Roku Devices, from his quote:

This sounds like the Roku bug in the 7.2 firmware. Basically if you have a movie over 4gb, at some point during Direct Playback it will fail and fallback to transcoding. Roku has stated they are aware of the problem, but we don’t have an ETA on the fix. A possible work around right now is to “Disable” Direct Playback, and make sure “Allow Direct Stream” is enabled. It’s not optimal, but it should allow the video and audio to be copied if compatible.

Now, I do not know if Roku is actually interfering with your Fire TV causing it to transcode from direct play or not, but that might be a long shot. Try @ljunkie method to direct stream on Roku. But i’m 70% sure its a client’s fault (Fire TV), you should also ask a question in the Amazon Fire TV section of the forum, see if they have similar problem having a stream of media going from Direct Play to Transcoding.

5

This should not happen. Streaming one file should not impact how another one is streaming. If you can provide the server log when you see this switch, that would explain what is going on.

6

Thinking it about it more could it have to do with network speed? If the third stream is pulling just enough that the Direct Play can’t continue and would be forced to transcode down to a smaller file?

7

Nope. Plex doesn’t do that.

8

I’m seeing this issue again and it’s affecting playback. People are playing movies direct play so no transcoding and someone else joins and then the DP all of a sudden is transcoding and they all start to buffer. Same movie, nothing changed except someone else has joined.

9

@MovieFan.Plex said:
Nope. Plex doesn’t do that.

So you saying plex will not change to transcoding if it can’t download at at speeds that direct play needs? Seems like bad design…

10

No. PMS does not have a mechanism to adjust bitrates on the fly like this. Again, only way to understand why this is happening is for you to provide the server log.

11

@MovieFan.Plex said:
No. PMS does not have a mechanism to adjust bitrates on the fly like this. Again, only way to understand why this is happening is for you to provide the server log.

I wouldn’t be PMS it would be the client. If it’s trying to pull down Direct Play but can’t because of speed would it try to lower the quality on the fly? HSL does this, not sure what plex is using though.

12

No, the client won’t do it either. The only reason playback will switch from direct play to transcode is if there is an actual problem with direct playback like the bitrate is too high for the device to handle so it crashed the playback. It will then switch to transcode but it will be at the original bitrate so there is no savings in bandwidth.