Plex doesn't recognize videos converted to h265 anymore

Plex Media Server NAS & Devices
1

Server Version#: 1.42.2.10156

Hello,

I noticed a problem today when converting h264 videos to h265 using ffmpeg 7.1.1.

I recorded a video from tv. It’s in 1080p and h264 compression. If I move the file “the.voice.of.germany.S15E01.1080p.h264.mkv” to the video/tv folder on my NAS Plex recognizes it and I can see the episode on the start page.

If I remove the file and replace it with the converted version (the.voice.of.germany.S15E01.1080p.h265.mkv) Plex doesn’t see the new file.

The command to convert the file to h265 was:

ffmpeg -i "the.voice.of.germany.S15E01.1080p.h264.mkv" -map 0 -c:v libx265 -c:a copy -c:s copy "the.voice.of.germany.S15E01.1080p.h265.mkv"

I’m using this command for more than I year now to convert files to h265 and never had a problem with Plex recognizing the converted videos.

I can play the h265 videos without problems using vlc 3.0.21.

2

of course vlc can play the video, it can play almost anything. That dont tell you anything about the video.

Use MPC-HC or Media Player Classic to check if a video is ok as both of them only play files that are ‘correct’’.

3

H265 is the current standard for my library. It is processing new content without issue. Can you plex dance the file and then post a copy of your server logs?

4

Looks as if these are only available for Windows. I’m using only Linux, on NAS as well as on PC.

5

Tried to follow the instructions. The only modified log is the “Plex Media Server.log”, I don’t see any error messages after adding the file to the library again.

My guess is that the problem is caused by ffmpeg. I updated ffmpeg from ffmpeg-7-7.1.1-1699.10.pm.6 to ffmpeg-7-7.1.1-1699.10.pm.9 this night. Unfortunately I don’t have the old rpm, so I can’t go back easily. I’m currently trying to restore the files in /usr/bin from backup, but this is time consuming, as there where a lot of other packages like libavutil59, libavcodec61, libheif-rav1e etc. updated at the same time and I guess any of these might cause the problem. I found that packman.links2linux.de already has a new ffmpeg package ffmpeg-7-7.1.1-1699.10.pm.10, but this wasn’t deployed to the mirror servers yet, so I can’t install it at the moment. I stopped compressing the videos to h265 for the moment and will try again with the new ffmpeg package. Or I will try to switch to ffmpeg-8…

6

Are you rescanning the library after placing the new file into the proper folder? Plex should still scan the file and include it even if the file can’t be played.

If the scan isn’t writing, please provide your logs after the scan runs.

7

Found the solution… It has nothing to do with ffmpeg or other updates. Also not with Plex.

I’m using Linux. And I changed the umask for my user from 0022 to 0027. This means: no read permissions for “other” users anymore. And all files in /volume1/video/tv belong to myuser:users. If I copy the file from PC to NAS via NFS the file permissions are kept. And now Plex is not allowed to read any new file anymore.

The recorded files (in h264) have the permissions 644, converted files 640. So if I copy the original file to /volume1/video/tv/… Plex can read it. If I copy the converted file, Plex is not allowed to read it.

Now I just have to find a solution to give Plex read access to the files without changing the umask for my user back to 0022.

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