Plex transcoding HEVC version instead of 1080p version

General Discussions
1

I have recently started to add 4k HEVC version of my favorite movies into my Plex collection. I still have my old 1080p version of the movie in the folder for players that do not support 4k and for friends/family that I share with.

I noticed just now that a friend was watching a movie and it had to transcode to :H264 SD" for his player but instead of transcoding off of the H264 1080p file it was transcoding from the H265 4K file. WHY!?!? Doesn’t it take more CPU to transcode H265 than it does H264? Is there any way to fix this?

1 Like
2

I keep my 4K HDR movies & TV in separate directories and libraries and do not share them with others. This prevents them from playing a 4K video and triggering a transcode.

3

That seems like a work around to the way it should be working. I’l keep that in mind as a last resort option. Thanks!

4

I fought with plex doing this for awhile until I finally just bit the bullet and moved my 4k into separate libraries (separate movie-4k and tv-4k).

then I made sure any non-local users had 4k libraries unchecked in their sharing settings.

5

Wow, ok. So that is two votes for the separate library route. I am not trying to replace everything with 4K so maybe this is the best route until its fixed.

6

yeah, unfortunately unless

a) you have a server that is hefty enough to transcode 4k without breaking a sweat
b) plex provides some way to disable/prevent users from streaming 4k to non-4k devices
c) plex provides some way to automatically use 1080 or less for non-4k devices

you can continue to bang your head against the wall, or you can just do what currently needs to be done and keep separate 4k libraries.

7

Here’s a feature request for smarter transcoding

8

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