Plex Transcoding h264 (throttled)

General Discussions
21

I went and checked all these settings (and every one is checked):

HTML5 Player Prefer the HTML5 video player over the Flash player.
Direct Play Allows the player to play compatible media without any conversion. In most browsers, direct play supports MP4 videos with h264 video and AAC audio. Videos with subtitles cannot be played directly.
Direct Stream Allows the server to copy compatible audio and video streams without converting them.
Audio & Subtitles
Allow Direct Play of AC3 Audio
Allow MP4 videos with AC3 audio to be played directly. Browser support for AC3 audio is limited.
Prefer AAC Audio
Prefer AAC over MP3 when transcoding audio. Some devices, like the Wii U, only support HLS with AAC audio.

I don’t understand why the tv player thinks that Direct Play is disabled, that is NOT the case.

22

The client on the TV is reporting to the server that it can’t direct play that movie. I’m not familiar with the Opera player so I can’t help with that.

23

Are you still trying to play this on the TV app?

24

Yes, i want to be able to stream all of our media to the tv. That is, until i get enraged and either upgrade the media server, or perhaps buy a Chromecast Ultra to skip the shoddy Vizio appstore altogether. /sigh

Choosing what six or eight new movies you want to copy over a USB 2.0 flash drive is far from ideal. It was super handy for a lot of years, but you know the drill – bigger, better, faster, more!~

25

You can always download OpenPHT and install it on a $35 Raspberry Pi 3 (I think you can do that, better make sure), or download the embedded PHP and put it on the RPI3 (this does work, and it works very well), connect it to your TV, and never have to worry about transcoding again.

26

You should check the other boards and see if there’s a Vizio board or a smart TV board that your model fits into, and see if you can get some assistance from there.

27

Does any of this mean anything to you: https://www.reddit.com/r/Chromecast/comments/2zvbfb/plex_is_suddenly_transcoding_my_movies/ ??

I’m going to resarch OpenPHT, i wasn’t ever very familiar with the Home Theater portion of Plex things. Appreciate all your help tonight.

28

I don’t know much about the Chromecast, sorry.

29

Well, i guess i didn’t mean specifically for the Chromecast – just how someone suggested going to edit an XML file for the type app player you are using (in my case, Opera instead of the Chromecast as they were monkeying with). Not a huge deal, the movie plays, its watchable. I’ll continue to research workarounds.

OpenPHT sounds interesting. I have much to learn.

30

Looking at your log entry the file is failing to direct play due to a higher h264 level then the TV is reporting it can play.

Dec 30, 2016 22:54:34.150 [0x7fa559bfc700] DEBUG - Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens - video.level limitation applies: 41 > 40

This entry is saying the TV is reporting that it can only play 4.0 content but the video is encoded in 4.1. I do not have a Opera based device myself, but with this situation there is normally only a couple of options:

  1. Check the TV app settings to see if there is an advanced video option to override the h264 limit. Normally, a device can still attempt to play higher levels but it may cause undesirable results. (IE the FireTV reports that it is limited to 4.0 but I have never had an issue with my 4.1 bluray rips on that app, at least related to the video stream…)
  2. Optimize the video with the server ahead of time using the TV profile.

The direct play disabled portion in the logs is only appearing because a limitation is being hit. When a device limitation is met then direct play is disabled as the device is reporting that it cannot direct play the item.

31

Thanks! That 4.1 > 4.0 was foreign to me, i didn’t know how to parse through the log files for the important information. I was told to look for the MDE: lines – i read (and posted a link above) about someone editing an XML file to adjust, or force, specific settings on a player. Vizio uses Opera as their default app/playback device. The tv is sorta old, but will play the movie file fine from a usb flash drive, hence the confusion. In the past i’ve gotten wonky resolutions that have caused Plex to stretch out dimensions. Tried staying with truly hd rips and has caused a lot less problems. Appreciate the insight @jmckee.

32

Actually, I completely forgot that my little kitchen TV is a Vizio with the Plex App on it. To get to the settings you need click in the top right corner where the username is displayed then select settings from the drop down where you clicked.

After that you get a popup menu that says settings, the third item on the left column is video, select that. And then the very last option is Maximum H264 level ( my tv defaulted to 4.0) which you should be able to set to 4.1 to get your video direct playing. Of course it isn’t recommended to exceed the recommended H264 level, but I personally have not seen any issues running 4.1 content with a device reporting a max of 4.0.

33

You totally fixed it. Not just figured out my problem (which you had done, previously) but you gave me a very specific and workable solution. THANKS YOU! Totally fixed. That same file, now direct plays with Video setting of 4.1 – you, sir, are amazing.

Now my dual-core runs at 4-8% (each core) instead of 50-100% (best case scenario). Wow, wonderful. I’m learning a lot about specifics of video formats. Trying out Handbrake 1.0 currently… never used it before. Hoping to rip a couple of our child’s shows from dvd so they can be loaded onto the PMS. For now, he enjoying a directly streamed 720p “Trolls” mp4 – it’s certainly colorful, hope the movie is funny for him. I’ve learned a lot through this exercise, which should come in handy in the future.

34

So i’m having similar problems and was wondering if this could also be related to some settings in my tv. I checked the Vizio’s Opera basic settings to ensure it was bumped up to 4.1 which you had me look at previously, @jmckee but now i’m feeling a bit lost. Restarted server, pulled logs.

Can anyone potentially please help me to decipher this (direct play works for everything else):

Jan 18, 2017 00:07:15.055 [0x7f2567ffa700] DEBUG - MDE: analyzing media item 1635
Jan 18, 2017 00:07:15.055 [0x7f2567ffa700] DEBUG - MDE: E13 - Warhead: Direct Play is disabled
Jan 18, 2017 00:07:15.055 [0x7f2567ffa700] DEBUG - MDE: E13 - Warhead: no direct play video profile exists for http/mkv/h264
Jan 18, 2017 00:07:15.055 [0x7f2567ffa700] DEBUG - MDE: E13 - Warhead: no direct play video profile exists for http/mkv/h264/aac
Jan 18, 2017 00:07:15.055 [0x7f2567ffa700] DEBUG - MDE: E13 - Warhead: selected media 0 / 1635
Jan 18, 2017 00:07:15.055 [0x7f2567ffa700] DEBUG - Streaming Resource: Added session 0x7f256fc1e120:g2bjasqsz258rmr8jehc6uso
Jan 18, 2017 00:07:15.055 [0x7f2567ffa700] DEBUG - Streaming Resource: Reached Decision id=1430 codes=(General=1001,Direct play not available; Conversion OK. Direct Play=3000,App cannot direct play this item. Direct play is disabled. Transcode=1001,Direct play not available; Conversion OK.) media=(id=1635 part=(id=1665 decision=transcode container=mkv protocol=http streams=(Video=(id=3682 decision=copy width=720 height=404) Audio=(id=3683 decision=copy channels=2 rate=48000))))
Jan 18, 2017 00:07:15.056 [0x7f2567ffa700] DEBUG - It took 0.0 sec to serialize a list with 1 elements.
Jan 18, 2017 00:07:15.057 [0x7f25713fe700] DEBUG - Completed: [192.168.0.20:52606] 200 GET /video/:/transcode/universal/decision?has

i obviously don’t really know enough about all the various ways people tend to encode their video files, however this did come from a different source than all the previous that show up in the Plex app everywhere as 576p whereby this episode 13 of Star Wars Rebels shows up merely as “SD” according to my Vizio tv’s Plex app. Could someone please educate me where i’m going wrong. The file streams fine in a browser when i connect a pc and have it plugged into the same Vizio tv using HDMI.

Thanks, in advance for the amazingly active community.

35

According to your log, your first attempt (episode 1) was with a file that is HEVC-encoded. This cannot be played by your Vizio, so it was transcoded. Apparently your tv could play it.

But then you played episode 13, which is already AVC encoded, a format that your tv is compatible with. So the video and audio data streams were merely copied unchanged. It was this, what your tv had a problem with. Please provide a Plex XML info of the episode 13 file.

36

Thanks you, @OttoKerner here is the required XML info (knew i was forgetting something super important):

<MediaContainer size="1" allowSync="1" identifier="com.plexapp.plugins.library" librarySectionID="2" librarySectionTitle="TV Shows" librarySectionUUID="9f853515-0dba-4352-8949-05a309bcf0a6" mediaTagPrefix="/system/bundle/media/flags/" mediaTagVersion="1482363449">
<Video ratingKey="1430" key="/library/metadata/1430" parentRatingKey="1020" grandparentRatingKey="986" guid="com.plexapp.agents.thetvdb://283468/3/13?lang=en" librarySectionID="2" type="episode" title="Warhead" grandparentKey="/library/metadata/986" parentKey="/library/metadata/1020" grandparentTitle="Star Wars Rebels" contentRating="TV-Y7" summary="Zeb and Chopper bring a damaged droid found in the Atollon wilderness back to base, only to discover that the droid is a new Imperial probe programmed to spy on and destroy rebels." index="13" parentIndex="3" rating="7.0" viewCount="1" lastViewedAt="1484713655" year="2017" thumb="/library/metadata/1430/thumb/1484719046" art="/library/metadata/986/art/1484719046" parentThumb="/library/metadata/1020/thumb/1484719046" grandparentThumb="/library/metadata/986/thumb/1484719046" grandparentArt="/library/metadata/986/art/1484719046" grandparentTheme="/library/metadata/986/theme/1484719046" duration="1323241" originallyAvailableAt="2017-01-14" addedAt="1484596406" updatedAt="1484719046">
<Media videoResolution="sd" id="1635" duration="1323241" bitrate="745" width="720" height="404" aspectRatio="1.78" audioChannels="2" audioCodec="aac" videoCodec="h264" container="mkv" videoFrameRate="24p" audioProfile="lc" videoProfile="high">
<Part accessible="1" exists="1" id="1665" key="/library/parts/1665/1484587898/file.mkv" duration="1323241" file="/mnt/WINDOWS/TV Shows/Star Wars Rebels/Season 3/Star.Wars.Rebels.S03E13.HDTV.x264-BATV[ettv].mkv" size="123286897" audioProfile="lc" container="mkv" deepAnalysisVersion="2" requiredBandwidths="842,842,842,842,842,842,842,842" videoProfile="high">
<Stream id="3682" streamType="1" default="1" codec="h264" index="0" bitrate="745" bitDepth="8" chromaSubsampling="4:2:0" colorRange="tv" colorSpace="bt709" frameRate="23.976" hasScalingMatrix="0" height="404" level="31" profile="high" refFrames="5" requiredBandwidths="711,711,711,711,711,711,711,711" scanType="progressive" width="720"/>
<Stream id="3683" streamType="2" selected="1" default="1" codec="aac" index="1" channels="2" profile="lc" requiredBandwidths="138,138,138,138,138,138,138,138" samplingRate="48000"/>
</Part>
</Media>
<Extras size="0"></Extras>
</Video>
</MediaContainer>
37

There is nothing in there that seems to be problematic. I guess we have to take a look at the file itself.
Can you upload it somewhere and send me the download link per PM?
If your upload is limited, shave off a small piece of the file and upload that instead. But make shure that this sample exhibits the same issue as the full file.

38

Thank you for your patience and immense knowledge. Alas, my upstream is capped at 2Mbps, give me twenty minutes and i’ll have a link for you, sir. This happens rarely, when my Vizio is being finicky with how it perceives files coming from Plex – the same files work properly on the same tv when viewed in a web browser, or on a usb flash drive. I’m so frustrated at not even knowing where to begin to look to troubleshoot these type issues. Thank you VERY much.

39

Thank you for the file. I will forward it to the developers.
As a workaround, try disabling ‘Direct Stream’ in the preferences of the Vizio app.

40

Thank you kindly for all of the time and assistance with my little matter, @OttoKerner sir. Unfortunately, i’ve encountered the same issue with this week’s episode of Star Wars Rebels whereby the video plays fine, but is squished down for some strange reason. I even attempted to download the 720p version thinking perhaps a higher quality file may improve my situation. Oh well. Plex is great and the community is one of the primary reasons. Thank you again!