Plex for Windows uses Direct Stream on FLAC files rather than Direct Play

[Hoggorm]

Server Version#: 1.32.1.6999
Player Version#: 4.106.1

One home user remote using Plex for Windows uses Direct Stream instead of Direct Play and I wonder why?

His quality is set to Maximum.

It appears as if the FLAC files are transcoded to MKV even though these are audio files only.

Any ideas what settings might be wrong?

[tom80H]

Direct Stream means the media is being re-packaged (for whatever reason) – there’s no transcoding involved. The audio track itself should be untouched.

https://support.plex.tv/articles/200250387-streaming-media-direct-play-and-direct-stream/

Do you get the same different behavior if you’re streaming the same file as your friend?

[Hoggorm]

Thank you for your reply tom80H

When I play the exact same file (logged into his home user account) it will Direct Play (see screenshot below).

We are both using Windows 10 and Plex for Windows app so the situations should be identical.

[DTR]

As tom80H mentioned it shouldn’t matter whether the file is direct playing or direct streaming, since the track itself should be identical, but if you wanted to investigate why Plex decided to repackage it, one option would be to dig into your server logs:

1. Make sure debug logging is enabled

2. Play the song that results in direct stream instead of direct play

3. Open ‘Plex Media Server.log’

4. Look for MDE: entries, and those surrounding it. That should give you the specifics as to why something is transcoding/direct streaming instead of direct playing. As an example, here’s a snippet showing that the client has a bitrate limit of 2Mbps set, and can’t play DTS audio:

   [17804] DEBUG - [Transcode] MDE: Selected protocol dash; container: mp4
   [17804] DEBUG - [Transcode] MDE: analyzing media item 814802
   [17804] DEBUG - [Transcode] MDE: XYZ: Direct Play is disabled
   [17804] DEBUG - [Transcode] MDE: XYZ: media must be transcoded in order to use the dash protocol
   [17804] DEBUG - [Transcode] MDE: XYZ: no direct play video profile exists for http/mkv/vc1
   [17804] DEBUG - [Transcode] MDE: XYZ: no direct play video profile exists for http/mkv/vc1/dca
   [17804] DEBUG - [Transcode] XYZ - video.bitrate limitation applies: 31013 > 2000
   [17804] DEBUG - [Transcode] MDE: XYZ: no remuxable profile found, so video stream will be transcoded
   ...
   [17804] DEBUG - [Transcode] MDE: Cannot direct stream video stream due to profile or setting limitations
   ...
   [17804] DEBUG - [Transcode] MDE: Cannot direct stream audio stream due to codec dca when profile only allows aac
   [17804] DEBUG - [Transcode] MDE: XYZ: selected media 0 / 814802
   [17804] DEBUG - [Transcode] Streaming Resource: Calculated bandwidth of 2369kbps exceeds bandwidth limit. Changing decision parameters provided by client to fit bandwidth limit of 2000kbps
   

[Hoggorm]

Thank you drahn,

I’ll do that.