Most of my plex media is .mkv format and when watching on appletv is transcodes to mp4.
for some reason when watching over the internet at my parents house some distance away, I get a good performance and picture quality with no interruptions whilst watching the films
Performance on my home network watching on appletv is not good and films frequently pause as the server cannot transcode quick enough (server is running on a small thecus windows NAS box with an intel atom processor)
My question is, how do I improve performance on my home network so the quality is as good as watching over the internet which I would have expected to be slower.
Apple likes media to be in mp4 containers, not mkv. Also, the AppleTV supports AAC, AC3, & EAC3 audio, but not dts audio. See AppleTV Tech Specs: https://www.apple.com/apple-tv-4k/specs/ or https://www.apple.com/apple-tv/specs/.
When watching a movie on your AppleTV, what is shown in Status -> Now Playing?https://app.plex.tv/desktop#!/status/playing
If Now Playing shows Direct Stream, then PMS is remuxing the file from mkv to mp4. The fix is to manually remux things so your server does not have to do that work.
Mac: Subler, https://subler.org/.
PC: XMedia Recode, https://www.xmedia-recode.de/hilfe/xmediarecode.html.
If Now Playing shows Transcoding, then the video or audio is in a format unsupported by AppleTV (ex: VC1 video, dts audio, etc). You’ll need to manually transcode the media.
Mac/PC/Linux: Handbrake, handbrake.fr. Start with the Apple1080p30 preset & adjust as needed.
For the highest compatibility, go with a mp4 container, H264 video, and AAC audio (Dolby Pro Logic II or Stereo). You can also include an AC3 audio track if your system supports Dolby Digital 5.1. The Apple 1080p30 preset will auto choose these for you.
