Server Version#: 1.20.3.3483
Player Version#:8.8.1.21332
I’m having trouble with PLEX transcoding HDR 4K rips They are mkv files, 25-30 mbit streams. It transcodes to H.264 and AAC. I lose the HDR data and get a washed out image.
My equipment is a Non HDR Vizio 4K tv, a yamaha YAS-108 soundbar(compatible with DD, DD+ and DTS), OG Nvidia Shield. The shield is connected via HDMI to TV, TV outputs sound to soundbar via optical.
A couple of my movies will play fine, such as Despicable Me 3. It has a standard DTS audio track. All of my files with a Dolby TrueHD track transcode both audio and video, where I’d prefer if they’d simply transcode the audio. I’ve set the server to not transcode any video, but for whatever reason, Plex fails to play several of them.
Kodi will play the files fine. Plex for Kodi will not, as well as regular Plex.
My brother has an LG OLED, his will transcode only the audio to 5.1 DD to his sonos and leave the video untouched, streaming from my server.
This all makes me think it has something to do with the shield, and not liking Dolby TrueHD audio.
your tv/soundbar can’t pass through the truehd, which is why the audio is transcoding.
do you have subtitles enabled? if subs are enabled, and audio is transcoding, that will usually cause video to be transcoded.
you can try either disable subs, or choose a different audio stream (ie dolbydigital/dts).
it could also possibly be the NON-HDR tv, but…
I think others have reported that shield will decode HDR to an SDR tv, but I’m not for sure on that… It’s not something I’ve tried.
Finally, if you disable pass through on the shield, then the shield should be able to decode the truehd locally and send PCM audio to the tv/soundbar, which may be your only good solution.
Wish I had included another audio stream. I might try to remux an AAC track in there from an HD version of the movie. I’ll also try to disable subs, see if that works. These are all personal rips, used DVDfab for PGS subs in the mkv container.
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I’ll also give this a shot. Definitely sounds like a good idea.
FWIW I’m pretty sure the “Old Player” would play these files fine, but I can’t revert from the “New Player”. Old one crashes plex any time I try to watch anything.
if you really want your 4k hdr/truehd to play properly, then you need to upgrade your tv and get an atmos receiver, so everything can direct play and you get the best quality.
without an hdr tv, and depending on how important good surround is, an atmos receiver, then there isn’t much point to collecting 4k/hdr content, just stick to bluray and save some storage space and hassle.
Yeah, this is for the living room tv. I have an Epson 5040UB with a 7.1 atmos receiver in the movie den. It does pretty well, but I’m still using Plex Media Player, which is deprecated and doesn’t do HDR quite right either. But I have an anamorphic lens and run a custom resolution to fill my 2.39 screen.
I agree though; if I weren’t so hard-headed I’d give up on 4k/HDR/atmos. I know its better than 7.1, SDR, 1080p but with my equipment it’s not THAT much better, you know?
Little update- I added an AAC track to Pixar’s Coco, and voila it plays great, as long as I select the proper track. It switches to direct stream video and audio.
Tried Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, fresh rip today with DTSHD MA 7.1 and an AC-3 track. It plays perfect with DTS, no transcode, didn’t have to select the AC-3 track. From what I can gather, something here doesn’t like Dolby.
If anyone stumbles upon this with a similar problem, uninstall updates to the Plex App on Android TV. It fixed my problem. Now, it only transcodes the audio and plays the video fine with proper tone mapping. I KNEW Plex used to play these files fine, so I guess something has changed, maybe in the “new” player…
Similar issue here on my Android TV 9.0 box with latest Plex app:
My box itself can decode x264 and x265/HEVC video streams up to 4K as well as DTS and (E)AC3 audio streams. When I play a 4K HEVC+EAC3 video with audio output just on my box (optical or HDMI passthrough both disabled), everything works smoothly without any transcoding.
Now I have a 5.1 audio system which I have connected to my box via SPDIF that can handle DTS and vanilla AC3. As soon as I enable the optical passthrough in the plex app (with DTS and AC3 options enabled in the Plex app’s settings), playback of a non-supported audio codec such as EAC3 turns on audio transcoding to AC3 as expected. However, for no apparent reasons this also forces the video (e.g. HEVC which worked fine before) to be transcoded to h264 (WTF?!), although my box is perfectly able to decode the original video stream directly… What is going wrong here?
I already tried raising/disabling the h264 level in the plex app, and switching to the “old player”, however to no avail. (No surprise because h264 limitations on the client shouldn’t affect HEVC streams, should they? The explicit reference to “h264” and absence of a similar “HEVC level” setting in the Plex Android app makes me wonder about its awareness of HEVC profiles/levels…)
Could you fix the logic behind this, so only those streams are transcoded that need transcoding (i.e. here: any streams not supported by the chosen audio output) and the other streams that can be played directly are played directly (i.e. here: the video streams that are completely unaffected by the audio settings and fully supported to be played directly by the TV)?
[Transcode] MDE: no remuxable profile found, so video stream will be transcoded
[Transcode] MDE: Cannot direct stream video stream due to profile or setting limitations
Not sure what this means though, the affected videos are stored as .mkv containers.
Things seems to work properly with the Plex app on my Android 9.1 smartphone, where it does transcode only the audio but leaves the video stream alone as “Copy (HEVC)”.
Plex Server version is 1.21.2.3997.
Plex Android app version is v8.11.0.22186(a1b8a7fb) both on my smartphone (where things work) and the TV (where things go wrong), although their look and feel is quite different.
Issue still happens with new player version 8.12.3. The playback infos even show that the reason for transcoding is the unsupported audio (EAC3), but it also transcodes the theoretically supported video (HEVC) to h264 (older & less efficient, more bitrate required but lower quality!) for no apparent reason. Setting playback quality to original does not help.
