Plex Sync Bug: Videos always transcode, even with original quality option. Will this ever be fixed?

General Discussions
1

Hi, what is wrong with Plex Sync and HEVC X265 videos? Whenever I want to sync a video to watch it offline, even when I select “Original” quality, it transcodes the video anyway into X264. Apart from taking way longer to sync, a degradation of quality and as bonus a way bigger file on my mobile device than the original file on the server. Why is this happening? (And it is doing this for at least a year now). Is this supposed to be like this? My device plays the video in direct play perfectly.

Right now the only way to watch the video as is, is to manually copy the file over to my tablet device, which basically voids any reason to have Plex Sync and have paid for Plex Pass.

Anybody, any clue if this will be ever fixed? Or even considered to be fixed by the devs?

1 Like
2

I’m seeing the same thing. Get direct streaming when playing the content from the Plex Media Server. But when I try to sync that same content to that same target device, it transcodes.

3

Often it is a container issue from what I read. Sometimes it is also stream rate it transcodes to a smaller filesize.

4

I don’t think so. The HEVC files are smaller and sometimes even half the size than the x264 reencoded version… bitrate is also very low in HEVC with better image quality. Why is it called ORIGINAL quality after all if it transcodes it anyway…

5

You can probably fix it for yourself for now: Allow sync without transcoding