Media that would normally direct play on the same device (iPhone 12 Pro), are being forced to transcode before downloading for offline play. Assuming it is transcoding AUDIO, as the transcode for a 1 hour video is taking 5-10 minutes, but it’s transcoding regardless.
This should not be happening with direct play devices. In addition, after the transcode is “complete”, the download speeds are inconsistent. Sometimes shows take less than a minute on WiFi 6, while others it can take up to a half hour.
Note: No other users, schedule tasks, transcodes, or anything else is running in the background during this time. I run consistent iperf tests of 600Mbps on this access point, so it should have no problem serving the files quicker than this.
A restart of the plex server normally fixes this.
Any reason why transcoding is still occurring, despite both Video and Audio Quality set to Original, and Storage: Limit set to “No Limit”
Video(s) in question, will direct play from Latest 4k Apple TV, and iPhone 12 Pro just fine, and verified under Plex Status.
But when download is selected, it will happen regardless of the type of codec used. x265, x264, vp9, etc. Immediately after a download is started, CPU utilization from plex spikes up to 40-60%. Plex dash shows transcoding media under status.
Can you tell me what movie/tv show you were trying to download that transcoded? From your ios logs, the last thing I see is something called Intro to Astronomy and that did download without a transcode. Before that was an episode of Jersey Shore which also did not transcode.
Your server logs are not useful. You do not have debug logging enabled so it is not saving info on your download attempts.
Sorry, you did not state Debug logging needed to be enabled. And it is transcoding. Spawning multiple Plextranscoder processes, and creating multiple sessions. Looks like its transcoding VP9 codecs.
No, Plex only Downloads what is supported, otherwise it won’t play. Please provide specific details on the video and device if you think it should be supported.
It’s supported in software but the hardware still may not support it. Plex doesn’t use software decoding for videos so it needs to be supported by the hardware.
For that specific file, I don’t see why it would transcode it. Can you show me xml info from Plex? I’ll also likely need to see the logs from the 6T when you start playing this fie to see why the app wants it transcoded.
Does this help. I started playing the file via the 6T, then tried to download it. But now the download just queues and nothing happens… I’ve added logs from my ipad 3 also (logs created as download was happening), but taking ages to fully download. Let me know if I need to wait until the download has finished before running the log.
If you were streaming something while you also tries to Download, Downloads will take a lower priority to the stream. Depending on your server, this may slow way down. I’m checking your logs now, but keep that in mind when judging the speed.
Hmm. I don’t see you downloading that movie. I see it trying to download an episode of The Morning Show but that got cancelled.
Can you update the Plex app to the latest 8.25.1. There was an issue where Downloading and streaming the same thing could cause an issue. This was fixed but I can’t remember which version, but the current should have it fixed.
