Hello everyone,
“iamscum” (known to some of you for the mpv guide) now offers a dedicated Plex HTPC guide:
Plex is very user friendly on its own, but maybe it’s still worth for you to check it out.
It’s written for Plex HTPC on Windows, but should work with minor adjustments with Plex for Windows or other operating systems (as long as Plex uses libmpv for them).
Hi. I’m a recent convert to Plex HTPC. I’m also a relative newcomer to mpv. Even though I don’t use mpv to watch Anime I still used to use your guide 
I haven’t properly read your Plex guide yet (I’m about to do so now.) but I already know that I could have used something like this when I first started a few months back There are some fixes/workarounds of the disadvantages you mention.
Some autoprofile conditions might not work (e.g. filename, video-params) for stuff like deband or Dolby Atmos by file name
I spoke to another user who used subtitle names to get around that problem. I modified that to use the actual video title embedded within MKV.
Some external mpv scripts might not work
This is a problem but I get why some scripts don’t work. My main issue is how Plex messes up certain special keyboard presses when using a remote. Although I’ve found ways around that too
Included stable libmpv version lacks newer features
User @Mitzsch has created a Linux windows environment based on Shinchiro’s mpv build. It enables the build of the latest version of mpv along with special additions to fix issues with Plex HTPC.
OK just read your guide. If you don’t mind, here are some additional observations.
I 100% agree with your video recommendations. Above Maximum Quality it uses a sharpening shader which looks terrible in my VR headset.
You don’t need to enable exclusive audio. In fact I’ve found that mpv works for me more reliably when I don’t. I use SVP for interpolation so have no issues there.
Autoselect device can be a bit unreliable. I basically set it up for my AV receiver by default. When mpv doesn’t detect the receiver it falls back and works fine with my TV. I also have a script which enables me to switch audio output.
For the workarounds there are already some working scripts later mentioned in the guide. I’m gonna check the modified mpv build and might add that to the guide.
Edit: Releases · mitzsch/mpv · GitHub / GitHub - mitzsch/mpv-winbuild-cmake: CMake-based MinGW-w64 Cross Toolchain
Looks good, can add that as an alternative.
Reverting the shaders they add is more annoying than just a preset that freely let’s you choose (within the mpv.conf) which shaders you actually want. That’s the main reason why I recommend that one. “High quality” is also fine, but then you have to overwrite “scale/cscale”. I’m not sure which one they use for the higher ones, but it’s possible to see that in the logs.
It’s necessary for some audio setups (like mine) to get multi channels to your sound device (if you don’t want to use ‘audio-spdif’ or want it for all codecs). If you don’t have a surround setup, then it’s not needed (but usually won’t hurt).
If you have more than one audio source, yes. It makes more sense to set it up within the mpv.conf in that case. Can add that to the extended guide. But in your case it’s probably something different if it’s not detecting it at all.
Hi
I overwrite the default shaders anyway but if I didn’t then the difference between my choices and Maximum Quality is probably minor. Plus I also add a little extra unsharp masking which gets closer to the sharpening shader they use for Ultra and above, but without the massive aliasing and ringing problems.
Exclusive audio is not compatible with all devices and my VR headset is one of them. I also had major issues trying to get audio-spdif working with Plex HTPC so I don’t use it. Modern Windows uses wasapi which seems to work identically to exclusive mode for passthrough.
When I say it doesn’t detect the reciever, I’m talking about the default mpv behaviour. If the receiver is off then it falls back to 2 channel output which is exactly what I want.
Obviously this is what works for me in VR. It’s likely that some of my choices would be different if I was watching on another medium.
Maybe they use Ravu Zoom or Lite without AR for upscaling. The AR version is newer and iirc needs “gpu-next” (which isn’t the default of Plex). That could explain it. You can try the AR version, it’s mentioned in the extended guide. Or maybe just Ravu for a softer result.
I probably change the sentence in the guide and add a disclaimer like “if you encounter issues, rather turn it off” or something like that. I probably should retry how well it does handle my audio setup without exclusive mode. The last time was with an older version.
Ah, makes sense.
Hi
I have spent quite some time going through the logs 
They don’t use specialist pre-scalers. Although they do seem to pre-scale using standard shaders. I will probably ask some questions at some point about this. Also those specialist pre-scalers don’t work for the content I’m watching coz resolution HD and above. I’ve modified the FSRCNNX shader to work, but the picture quality I get is already great and I don’t remember it making any difference.
Yeah exclusive mode is a strange one. I spent a long time trying to get it to work until I read up about it. Then I realised that wasapi was enough anyway and exclusive only works on devices that recognise it.
Just installed Plex HTPC after many years of Kodi and the plugin PlexKodiConnect. But now I want a more dedicated front end system for Plex.
I have some files encoded with HLG hdr and the Plex HTPC couldn’t run it without a lot of stuttering. Then I turned off direct play and direct streaming and it worked fine. Possibly turning off HW acceleration also works. But then I came across your tips for tweaking Plex HTPC and one of the tips was to replace libmpv with the latest version. Voila, now I can have both HW acceleration and direct play/streaming. But then suddenly the menu no longer works, the one you get by pressing enter during playback. I need to get to the choice where to I can add subtitles etc. during playback.
Have tried older libmpv versions but with the same problem. Solution anyone?
Can’t recreate that issue right now, the menu works fine for me (but I usually press “Space” and then navigate to the audio/subtitle icon or in the options before I start watching an episode). Maybe that key is blocked by libmpv for whatever reason, you can try to disable it in the input.conf and Plex can use it again (if that’s the case). And if that doesn’t help, then it’s most likely a bug within Plex.
If I go back to the original mpv-2.dll it works again, but then playback stutters on certain videos. It’s the playback GUI that doesn’t show up when you press enter. Space works as it should, pressing enter twice pauses the video as it should.
I have the latest version of Plex HTPC. Is it possible to download older versions?
Found an older version of plex htpc. Had to revert back to version 1.38.2.3738. Now it works fine, but I would like to know how run a newer version…
I’m using Plex HTPC 1.50.1 with the latest libmpv and the menu works fine with pressing enter.
Embarrassed to say it but I had turned on the feature “hdr metadata passthrough” and it makes newer libmpv not work properly. Sorry for the fuss. 
You are not seeing the playback controls when having hdr passthrough enabled because of this unmerged commit in mpv. player/command: Added ability to scale overlay. by gbooker · Pull Request #10713 · mpv-player/mpv · GitHub
Thats one of the reasons why I keep a fork of mpv 
Hi.
It’s been a while since I looked at your original mpv guide and I commend the great work you’ve done with it. I went back to your guide to read up again on pre-scalers after I read some comments from an mpv dev. I chose nnedi3 which I modified to work with my videos. It uses a lot of GPU resources and I still don’t see any major difference on my screen. So I’m only using it on a lesser quality screen captured video.
Completely forgot to answer this, but can you explain what you mean by “fork of mpv”? I’m probably not quite into the terminologies here. Do you have a solution for this? HDR passthrough gives me a lot better image quality.
Fork in terms of code and github means “copy”. I keep a copy of the mpv code, that I have modified, for example with the linked patch. This is also public.
The solution would be to self-compile (build the app) => there I also have a “fork” of another code base. => GitHub - mitzsch/mpv-winbuild-cmake: CMake-based MinGW-w64 Cross Toolchain
If you don´t want or can’t build the app, you may want to try this build here, at the end of this post => Dolby TrueHD passthrough - modified mpv build - #149 by Mitzsch
I know it’s already a bit old, but it’s newer than the shipped mpv.dll.
I’m not thinking of Dolby TrueHD passthrough but HDR passthrough?
Why don’t you make new builds more often? 
Yes, I know but these builds also include those HDR patches, that’s why I have suggested using them.
Difficult question, as of now, I don´t have that much time, and building different versions, packaging + uploading them takes a while. Maybe I could upload some newer builds over the weekend…
Okey, but thanx. I will give it a try. And awesome if you fix newer builds. 
