Plex is Transcoding files that previously played without transcoding

John_001 · April 27, 2022, 9:51pm

Server Version#:1.26.1.5772
Player Version#:1.44.0

Processor: 3.6 GHz 8-Core Intel Core i9
Graphics: Radeon Pro 580X 8 GB

Having a strange issue that I haven’t run into in the last year. Some movies that I have watched previously, that played without transcoding, are now being transcoded to h264.

I am also getting: “Not enough CPU for conversion of this item.” for movies that I have watched previously. When watching using Plex.web but not the Plex.app on macOS.

When accessing “General” in settings on the Plex.app I get a spinning indicator.

I have played around with various settings but it doesn’t make a difference.

When looking at the files of two movies, one that Plex is transcoding and one that Plex is not - I can not see a difference.

MediaInfo Files
NaughtyOne MediaInfo.txt (5.4 KB)
NiceOne MediaInfo.txt (5.5 KB)

XML Files
Archive.zip (24.7 KB)

I can add the text here if you’d rather not download files.

dmdrl · April 28, 2022, 1:48pm

log files are required to figure out transcoding reason.

John_001 · April 28, 2022, 4:15pm

I should have noted that the text files are Media Info files. In this post the person is asked to add MediaInfo and XML files…

OK. Which log files? I have a list of 134 log files after doing a “download logs”

Debug and Verbose on or not?

Looking through the logs I see a flood of lines like this:

Apr 28, 2022 11:24:37.575 [0x70000283a000] WARN - QueryParser: Invalid field 'contentDirectoryID' found, ignoring.
Apr 28, 2022 11:24:37.576 [0x70000283a000] WARN - QueryParser: Invalid field 'pinnedContentDirectoryID' found, ignoring.
Apr 28, 2022 11:24:37.577 [0x700003d35000] WARN - QueryParser: Invalid field 'contentDirectoryID' found, ignoring.
Apr 28, 2022 11:24:37.577 [0x700003d35000] WARN - QueryParser: Invalid field 'pinnedContentDirectoryID' found, ignoring.
Apr 28, 2022 11:24:37.580 [0x700002528000] WARN - QueryParser: Invalid field 'contentDirectoryID' found, ignoring.
Apr 28, 2022 11:24:37.580 [0x700002528000] WARN - QueryParser: Invalid field 'pinnedContentDirectoryID' found, ignoring.
Apr 28, 2022 11:24:37.582 [0x700003d35000] WARN - QueryParser: Invalid field 'contentDirectoryID' found, ignoring.
Apr 28, 2022 11:24:37.583 [0x700003d35000] WARN - QueryParser: Invalid field 'pinnedContentDirectoryID' found, ignoring.
Apr 28, 2022 11:24:37.594 [0x700002940000] WARN - QueryParser: Invalid field 'sectionID' found, ignoring.
Apr 28, 2022 11:24:37.594 [0x700002940000] WARN - QueryParser: Invalid field 'contentDirectoryID' found, ignoring.
Apr 28, 2022 11:24:37.594 [0x700002940000] WARN - QueryParser: Invalid field 'pinnedContentDirectoryID' found, ignoring.
Apr 28, 2022 11:24:37.595 [0x700002940000] WARN - QueryParser: Invalid field 'sectionID' found, ignoring.
Apr 28, 2022 11:24:37.595 [0x700002940000] WARN - QueryParser: Invalid field 'contentDirectoryID' found, ignoring.
Apr 28, 2022 11:24:37.595 [0x700002940000] WARN - QueryParser: Invalid field 'pinnedContentDirectoryID' found, ignoring.
Apr 28, 2022 11:24:37.601 [0x7000028bd000] WARN - QueryParser: Invalid field 'contentDirectoryID' found, ignoring.
Apr 28, 2022 11:24:37.601 [0x7000028bd000] WARN - QueryParser: Invalid field 'pinnedContentDirectoryID' found, ignoring.
Apr 28, 2022 11:24:37.601 [0x700002528000] WARN - QueryParser: Invalid field 'contentDirectoryID' found, ignoring.
Apr 28, 2022 11:24:37.601 [0x700002528000] WARN - QueryParser: Invalid field 'pinnedContentDirectoryID' found, ignoring.
Apr 28, 2022 11:24:37.603 [0x700003d35000] WARN - QueryParser: Invalid field 'contentDirectoryID' found, ignoring.
Apr 28, 2022 11:24:37.603 [0x700003d35000] WARN - QueryParser: Invalid field 'pinnedContentDirectoryID' found, ignoring.
Apr 28, 2022 11:24:37.607 [0x7000025ab000] WARN - QueryParser: Invalid field 'contentDirectoryID' found, ignoring.
Apr 28, 2022 11:24:37.607 [0x7000025ab000] WARN - QueryParser: Invalid field 'pinnedContentDirectoryID' found, ignoring.

And when Trying to play this one movie on the Plex.app where I get the message “Not enough CPU for conversion of this item.” in the logs. The bitrate for this file is “2230 kbps”

Apr 28, 2022 11:35:23.498 [0x700002b4c000] WARN - [Transcode] Streaming Resource: Bandwidth exceeded: 22603 kbps > 10000 kbps
Apr 28, 2022 11:35:24.054 [0x700002c52000] WARN - Could not convert "state" ("error") to the correct type

This is the error I get when trying to play the movie in Safari plex.tv:

Apr 28, 2022 10:58:57.560 [0x70000c4c7000] DEBUG - Request: [192.168.80.195:55686 (Allowed Network (Subnet))] GET /hubs/search?query=youth&limit=30&includeCollections=1&includeExternalMedia=1 (23 live) TLS GZIP Signed-in Token (FebruaryMan) (Safari) / Accept => application/json, text/plain, */* / Accept-Encoding => gzip, deflate, br / Accept-Language => en / Connection => keep-alive / Host => 192-168-80-195.5ebb48ea439a469dac9e99352cb7955d.plex.direct:32400 / Origin => https://app.plex.tv / Referer => https://app.plex.tv/ / User-Agent => Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/15.4 Safari/605.1.15 / X-Plex-Client-Identifier => msf7cjczvorvmaq8mou2pjfy / X-Plex-Device => OSX / X-Plex-Device-Name => Safari / X-Plex-Device-Screen-Resolution => 1280x1329,2560x1440 / X-Plex-Drm => fairplay / X-Plex-Features => external-media,indirect-media / X-Plex-Language => en / X-Plex-Model => hosted / X-Plex-Platform => Safari / X-Plex-Platform-Version => 15.4 / X-Plex-Product => Plex Web / X-Plex-Provider-Version => 5.1 / X-Plex-Text-Format => plain / X-Plex-Token => xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx / X-Plex-Version => 4.80.0
Apr 28, 2022 10:58:57.587 [0x70000cbf1000] DEBUG - Completed: [192.168.80.195:55686] 200 GET /hubs/search?query=youth&limit=30&includeCollections=1&includeExternalMedia=1 (23 live) TLS GZIP 26ms 2796 bytes (pipelined: 8)
Apr 28, 2022 10:59:01.019 [0x70000c9e5000] DEBUG - [Transcode] MDE: Youth (2015): Direct Play is disabled
Apr 28, 2022 10:59:01.019 [0x70000c9e5000] DEBUG - [Transcode] MDE: Youth (2015): media must be transcoded in order to use the dash protocol
Apr 28, 2022 10:59:01.020 [0x70000c9e5000] DEBUG - [Transcode] MDE: Youth (2015): no direct play video profile exists for http/mp4/hevc
Apr 28, 2022 10:59:01.020 [0x70000c9e5000] DEBUG - [Transcode] MDE: Youth (2015): no direct play video profile exists for http/mp4/hevc/aac
Apr 28, 2022 10:59:01.020 [0x70000c9e5000] DEBUG - [Transcode] Youth - video.bitDepth limitation applies: 10 > 8
Apr 28, 2022 10:59:01.020 [0x70000c9e5000] DEBUG - [Transcode] Youth - video.bitDepth limitation applies: 10 > 8
Apr 28, 2022 10:59:01.020 [0x70000c9e5000] DEBUG - [Transcode] MDE: Youth (2015): no remuxable profile found, so video stream will be transcoded
Apr 28, 2022 10:59:01.085 [0x70000c9e5000] DEBUG - [Transcode] MDE: Youth (2015): selected media 0 / 25752
Apr 28, 2022 10:59:01.250 [0x70000c9e5000] DEBUG - [Transcode] MDE: Youth (2015): Direct Play is disabled
Apr 28, 2022 10:59:01.250 [0x70000c9e5000] DEBUG - [Transcode] MDE: Youth (2015): media must be transcoded in order to use the dash protocol
Apr 28, 2022 10:59:01.250 [0x70000c9e5000] DEBUG - [Transcode] MDE: Youth (2015): no direct play video profile exists for http/mp4/hevc
Apr 28, 2022 10:59:01.250 [0x70000c9e5000] DEBUG - [Transcode] MDE: Youth (2015): no direct play video profile exists for http/mp4/hevc/aac
Apr 28, 2022 10:59:01.250 [0x70000c9e5000] DEBUG - [Transcode] Youth - video.bitDepth limitation applies: 10 > 8
Apr 28, 2022 10:59:01.250 [0x70000c9e5000] DEBUG - [Transcode] Youth - video.bitDepth limitation applies: 10 > 8
Apr 28, 2022 10:59:01.250 [0x70000c9e5000] DEBUG - [Transcode] MDE: Youth (2015): no remuxable profile found, so video stream will be transcoded
Apr 28, 2022 10:59:01.297 [0x70000c9e5000] DEBUG - [Transcode] MDE: Youth (2015): selected media 0 / 25752
Apr 28, 2022 10:59:13.582 [0x70000c7d9000] DEBUG - [Transcode] MDE: Youth (2015): Direct Play is disabled
Apr 28, 2022 10:59:13.582 [0x70000c7d9000] DEBUG - [Transcode] MDE: Youth (2015): media must be transcoded in order to use the dash protocol
Apr 28, 2022 10:59:13.582 [0x70000c7d9000] DEBUG - [Transcode] MDE: Youth (2015): no direct play video profile exists for http/mp4/hevc
Apr 28, 2022 10:59:13.582 [0x70000c7d9000] DEBUG - [Transcode] MDE: Youth (2015): no direct play video profile exists for http/mp4/hevc/aac
Apr 28, 2022 10:59:13.582 [0x70000c7d9000] DEBUG - [Transcode] Youth - video.bitDepth limitation applies: 10 > 8
Apr 28, 2022 10:59:13.582 [0x70000c7d9000] DEBUG - [Transcode] Youth - video.bitDepth limitation applies: 10 > 8
Apr 28, 2022 10:59:13.582 [0x70000c7d9000] DEBUG - [Transcode] MDE: Youth (2015): no remuxable profile found, so video stream will be transcoded
Apr 28, 2022 10:59:13.627 [0x70000c7d9000] DEBUG - [Transcode] MDE: Youth (2015): selected media 0 / 25752
Apr 28, 2022 10:59:13.758 [0x70000c7d9000] DEBUG - [Transcode] MDE: Youth (2015): Direct Play is disabled
Apr 28, 2022 10:59:13.758 [0x70000c7d9000] DEBUG - [Transcode] MDE: Youth (2015): media must be transcoded in order to use the dash protocol
Apr 28, 2022 10:59:13.758 [0x70000c7d9000] DEBUG - [Transcode] MDE: Youth (2015): no direct play video profile exists for http/mp4/hevc
Apr 28, 2022 10:59:13.758 [0x70000c7d9000] DEBUG - [Transcode] MDE: Youth (2015): no direct play video profile exists for http/mp4/hevc/aac
Apr 28, 2022 10:59:13.758 [0x70000c7d9000] DEBUG - [Transcode] Youth - video.bitDepth limitation applies: 10 > 8
Apr 28, 2022 10:59:13.758 [0x70000c7d9000] DEBUG - [Transcode] Youth - video.bitDepth limitation applies: 10 > 8
Apr 28, 2022 10:59:13.758 [0x70000c7d9000] DEBUG - [Transcode] MDE: Youth (2015): no remuxable profile found, so video stream will be transcoded
Apr 28, 2022 10:59:13.801 [0x70000c7d9000] DEBUG - [Transcode] MDE: Youth (2015): selected media 0 / 25752

BigWheel · April 28, 2022, 6:13pm

do you have the quality in app limited? or a internet upload or bandwidth limit set in server remote access settings?

John_001 · April 28, 2022, 6:20pm

@BigWheel

In Plex.app I have set
Video quality
4 Mbps, 720p

In Internet upload speed I have set 8Mbps (1080p)

Because…

I have a user who has trouble streaming remotely. Video is always stopping. He has plenty of bandwidth. 350Mbps Down and 25Mbps UP. I have a 1Gbps connection.

If I change this to:
Video quality
8 Mbps, 1080p

He is unable to watch without constant buffering issues.

EDIT:

Now movies played using Hosted Web app are doing this:

Video Screenshot

General
Complete name :	/Volumes/PlexMedia/PlexServer_1/Movies/The Croods - A New Age (2020)/The Croods - A New Age (2020) {imdb-tt2850386} [[en] 2.35∶1 WS 1080p BluRay x265 C43904F3].mp4
Format :	MPEG-4
Format profile :	Base Media
Codec ID :	isom (isom/iso2/mp41)
File size :	1.48 GiB
Duration :	1 h 35 min
Overall bit rate :	2 230 kb/s

Video
ID :	1
Format :	HEVC
Format/Info :	High Efficiency Video Coding
Format profile :	Main 10@L4@Main
Codec ID :	hev1
Codec ID/Info :	High Efficiency Video Coding
Duration :	1 h 35 min
Bit rate :	2 000 kb/s
Width :	1 920 pixels
Height :	814 pixels
Display aspect ratio :	2.35:1
Frame rate mode :	Constant
Frame rate :	23.976 (24000/1001) FPS
Color space :	YUV
Chroma subsampling :	4:2:0
Bit depth :	10 bits
Bits/(PixelFrame) :*	0.053
Stream size :	1.33 GiB (90%)
Encoding settings :	cpuid=1111039 / frame-threads=4 / wpp / no-pmode / no-pme / no-psnr / no-ssim / log-level=2 / input-csp=1 / input-res=1920x814 / interlace=0 / total-frames=0 / level-idc=0 / high-tier=1 / uhd-bd=0 / ref=4 / no-allow-non-conformance / no-repeat-headers / annexb / no-aud / no-hrd / info / hash=0 / no-temporal-layers / open-gop / min-keyint=23 / keyint=250 / gop-lookahead=0 / bframes=4 / b-adapt=2 / b-pyramid / bframe-bias=0 / rc-lookahead=25 / lookahead-slices=4 / scenecut=40 / hist-scenecut=0 / radl=0 / no-splice / no-intra-refresh / ctu=64 / min-cu-size=8 / rect / no-amp / max-tu-size=32 / tu-inter-depth=1 / tu-intra-depth=1 / limit-tu=0 / rdoq-level=2 / dynamic-rd=0.00 / no-ssim-rd / signhide / no-tskip / nr-intra=0 / nr-inter=0 / no-constrained-intra / strong-intra-smoothing / max-merge=3 / limit-refs=3 / limit-modes / me=3 / subme=3 / merange=57 / temporal-mvp / no-frame-dup / no-hme / weightp / no-weightb / no-analyze-src-pics / deblock=0:0 / no-sao / no-sao-non-deblock / rd=4 / selective-sao=0 / no-early-skip / rskip / no-fast-intra / no-tskip-fast / no-cu-lossless / no-b-intra / no-splitrd-skip / rdpenalty=0 / psy-rd=2.00 / psy-rdoq=1.00 / no-rd-refine / no-lossless / cbqpoffs=0 / crqpoffs=0 / rc=abr / bitrate=2000 / qcomp=0.60 / qpstep=4 / stats-write=0 / stats-read=2 / cplxblur=20.0 / qblur=0.5 / ipratio=1.40 / pbratio=1.30 / aq-mode=3 / aq-strength=1.00 / cutree / zone-count=0 / no-strict-cbr / qg-size=32 / no-rc-grain / qpmax=69 / qpmin=0 / no-const-vbv / sar=1 / overscan=0 / videoformat=5 / range=0 / colorprim=2 / transfer=2 / colormatrix=2 / chromaloc=0 / display-window=0 / cll=0,0 / min-luma=0 / max-luma=1023 / log2-max-poc-lsb=8 / vui-timing-info / vui-hrd-info / slices=1 / no-opt-qp-pps / no-opt-ref-list-length-pps / no-multi-pass-opt-rps / scenecut-bias=0.05 / hist-threshold=0.01 / no-opt-cu-delta-qp / no-aq-motion / no-hdr10 / no-hdr10-opt / no-dhdr10-opt / no-idr-recovery-sei / analysis-reuse-level=0 / analysis-save-reuse-level=0 / analysis-load-reuse-level=0 / scale-factor=0 / refine-intra=0 / refine-inter=0 / refine-mv=1 / refine-ctu-distortion=0 / no-limit-sao / ctu-info=0 / no-lowpass-dct / refine-analysis-type=0 / copy-pic=1 / max-ausize-factor=1.0 / no-dynamic-refine / no-single-sei / no-hevc-aq / no-svt / no-field / qp-adaptation-range=1.00 / no-scenecut-aware-qpconformance-window-offsets / right=0 / bottom=0
Codec configuration box :	hvcC

Audio
ID :	2
Format :	AAC LC
Format/Info :	Advanced Audio Codec Low Complexity
Codec ID :	mp4a-40-2
Duration :	1 h 35 min
Bit rate mode :	Constant
Bit rate :	224 kb/s
Channel(s) :	6 channels
Channel layout :	C L R Ls Rs LFE
Sampling rate :	48.0 kHz
Frame rate :	46.875 FPS (1024 SPF)
Compression mode :	Lossy
Stream size :	153 MiB (10%)
Language :	English
Default :	Yes
Alternate group :	1

John_001 · April 29, 2022, 7:03pm

@BigWheel
I rebuilt all of my libraries and now this file plays without transcoding. I am looking at the XML from the file before I rebuilt the library and after and there are no differences other than the file location (number and UUID, etc).
The file would transcode when using the Hosted and Local Web.app, but not the Plex.app.

What exactly would cause this discrepancy? Same file, same XML, before it would not play without transcoding and now it plays without transcoding.

system · July 28, 2022, 7:03pm

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Plex is Transcoding files that previously played without transcoding

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