Well I thought I would post this partially as a question and also as a rant at PLEX for its very poor development and support when it comes to 4K content. It has been driving me nuts quite frankly with poor decoding support on the server side but now I have replaced my media players to play x265 content natively (4K Apple TV’s) and now I constantly get the error “This server is not powerful enough to convert this video for smooth playback”. I have also had similar issues with the NVIDIA shield but I have ditched it due to poor WIFI performance also.
I have configured the Apple TV app to “allow direct play”, set it to maximum quality. Content is set to “Play original quality” yet it still tries to stream the content every single time with every movie. I know the Apple TV can handle the content as I also just purchase Infuse 5 Pro and it streams it all flawlessly.
It is very disappointing to be honest because all the suggestions I seem to get with searching is modifying player capabilities on the PLEX server through config files. I would accept workaround for a free program but not for software that I am paying a monthly subscription for. This software should just work! Especially for a fixed set of hardware like an Apple TV.
Honestly I am close to closing my account and moving forward with other Apps because PLEX seems more concerned with stupid features like PLEX CLOUD than resolving many outstanding bugs in the core software.
The few that I have tried are MPEG-H HEVC 265 files in a MKV containers with DTS-MA / TrueHD audio tracks. I know PLEX can play them directly because I have done them with the NVIDIA Shield as you can set direct play per file and it seems to work on there. The AppleTV app refuses to direct play regardless of the system settings and my server can’t transcode due to PLEX not leveraging GPU acceleration (aside from the fact I don’t want it transcoded)…
Infuse plays them all fine natively on the AppleTV with no transcoding and SMB file sharing.
@orig3n said:
The few that I have tried are MPEG-H HEVC 265 files in a MKV containers with DTS-MA / TrueHD audio tracks.
Apple does not support DTS-MA or TrueHD audio so you cannot get it to direct play that file. Recode the audio to EAC3 and it should play.
I know PLEX can play them directly because I have done them with the NVIDIA Shield as you can set direct play per file and it seems to work on there.
The Shield will pass-through DTS-MA and TrueHD.
The AppleTV app refuses to direct play regardless of the system settings and my server can’t transcode due to PLEX not leveraging GPU acceleration (aside from the fact I don’t want it transcoded)…
What platform are you running PMS on? We recently released hardware accelerated transcoding, if your hardware is compatible.
Infuse plays them all fine natively on the AppleTV with no transcoding and SMB file sharing.
Infuse does not use the AppleTV’s native features. It decodes the video through software decoding, not hardware, which is what Plex utilizes. Apples and oranges.
Additionally MKV is not a file container that Apple’s API player will support. Not withstanding the HD audio show stoppers mentioned by @“MovieFan.Plex”, at the very least PMS has to remux from MKV to MP4. This would result in Direct Stream playback. For HEVC streaming Apple requires fMP4 over HLS. Plex dev is working on this.
@orig3n said:
The few that I have tried are MPEG-H HEVC 265 files in a MKV containers with DTS-MA / TrueHD audio tracks.
Apple does not support DTS-MA or TrueHD audio so you cannot get it to direct play that file. Recode the audio to EAC3 and it should play.
I know PLEX can play them directly because I have done them with the NVIDIA Shield as you can set direct play per file and it seems to work on there.
The Shield will pass-through DTS-MA and TrueHD.
The AppleTV app refuses to direct play regardless of the system settings and my server can’t transcode due to PLEX not leveraging GPU acceleration (aside from the fact I don’t want it transcoded)…
What platform are you running PMS on? We recently released hardware accelerated transcoding, if your hardware is compatible.
Infuse plays them all fine natively on the AppleTV with no transcoding and SMB file sharing.
Infuse does not use the AppleTV’s native features. It decodes the video through software decoding, not hardware, which is what Plex utilizes. Apples and oranges.
Are you seriously saying the AppleTV has the grunt to software decode x265 when my Quad Core 3.8 ghz i7 cant even keep up with it? It’s also having 0 issues using passthrough audio and sending them to my receiver.
According to latest reports, Infuse uses hardware recoding for 264 and 265 was implemented recently.
My server is running on Windows 7 Pro 64bit VM with i7 3.8ghz 16GB ram and 512GB SSD. There is an NVIDIA 1060 available for hardware transcoding but PLEX doesn’t seem to leverage it utilising VT-d passthrough, works fine for other rendering tasks. Storage throughput is 150MB/s to the storage array so I know its not getting hung up on data transfer.
I am not that fussed about using the Apple TV but honestly, I have been having nothing but issues using PLEX on my Apple TV, NVIDIA Shield and also my Samsung UBD-K8500 player. Have to keep using other apps like Infuse, Kodi etc.
@orig3n said:
Are you seriously saying the AppleTV has the grunt to software decode x265 when my Quad Core 3.8 ghz i7 cant even keep up with it? It’s also having 0 issues using passthrough audio and sending them to my receiver.
My comments above were related to the audio.
According to latest reports, Infuse uses hardware recoding for 264 and 265 was implemented recently.
That may be the case, so it is able to use hardware decoding for the video and software decoding for the audio. The Plex app does not do software decoding of the audio, so it has to be done on the server end. We did recently update the app to support HEVC, so make sure you are running the latest version. We are still finding some bugs when the audio has to be transcoded, but if the audio can be direct played, then the video should work as well.
Version 1.19 is now available
NEW:
Add direct play support for HEVC video codec.
My server is running on Windows 7 Pro 64bit VM with i7 3.8ghz 16GB ram and 512GB SSD. There is an NVIDIA 1060 available for hardware transcoding but PLEX doesn’t seem to leverage it utilising VT-d passthrough, works fine for other rendering tasks. Storage throughput is 150MB/s to the storage array so I know its not getting hung up on data transfer.
Hardware transcoding doesn’t work in a VM. See https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/115002178853-Using-Hardware-Accelerated-Streaming for details.
I am not that fussed about using the Apple TV but honestly, I have been having nothing but issues using PLEX on my Apple TV, NVIDIA Shield and also my Samsung UBD-K8500 player. Have to keep using other apps like Infuse, Kodi etc.
Each client is different, so I would recommend working on resolving the issues for 1 client at a time. If you can’t resolve the issues, it could be something with your VM setup.
There is an NVIDIA 1060 available for hardware transcoding but PLEX doesn’t seem to leverage it utilising VT-d passthrough
There’s your problem. Plex will only encode hevc using nvidia cards. You will still be doing software decode. If you have a 7th or 8th gen intel cpu, try passing through your intel gpu and setup the drivers properly. Then see if Plex will do full hw transcoding.
Will see how I go, has nothing to do wth the VM though, I can play games on it so the 1060 is running fine.
I completely understand about the platforms. I will only be using one in the future but non of them play nicely with PLEX except for 1080p or lower files which is why I have so many media players now.
@bjoroy said:
Apple TV won’t direct play 4K HEVC .MKV files. They have to be .MP4.
It plays them fine using VLC or Infuse using network shares. I know there is no transcoding happening as my server load is basically idling. This is the brand new 4K Apple TV which has HDR for menus etc.
Anyway I have been browsing forums and it is confirmed that hardware x265 decoding with iOS 11 and MKV containers. If you are saying it isn’t possible, how are other applications pulling it off with no fuss?
Anyway if its not going to work, I will just cancel my PLEX passes and move to something else.
If I’m not mistaken: Infuse and VLC are using their own video player, which can probably handle whichever format they chose to support. Plex uses Apples video player, which supports 4K HVEC but only in .MP4 containers. Hopefully there will be a workaround from the Plex team at some point…
Those other apps are accessing the file directly via SMB. Plex is streaming via HLS. When PMS is serving a HEVC stream to the tvOS Plex app, it can not Direct Play unless the container and codecs are supported by Apple.
The native Apple API player on the AppleTV does not support MKVs regardless of video/audio codecs used. It has to be remuxed into a MP4 container. In this scenario Apple requires HEVC Direct Stream to be fMP4 over HLS.
Further compounding the issue is the lack of support for passthrough or decoding HD audio by the Apple API player. This forces a full transcode in your scenario. The devs are working on this issue. Best case scenario—Direct Stream video and Transcode audio.
@orig3n said:
Will see how I go, has nothing to do wth the VM though, I can play games on it so the 1060 is running fine.
Video decoding for gaming and hardware accelerated transcoding are different things.
Not being used for gaming, its being used for video encoding. Anyway thanks for the replies, I think I will just move on to other apps as I cant be bothered with it anymore. I am basically sticking with 265 and 4K now since I upgraded the TV.
