Server Version#: 1.21.4.4079
Player Version#: iOS 7.14 / iPadOS 7.13
I have some files which have proven troublesome to play, they were ripped at a far higher bitrate than necessary so I’ve transcoded them to something more suitable. As a workaround to the original problem, I put a limit on the kids iPads for the bandwidth of the video they could play (720p @ 4Mbps) which forced Plex to transcode the videos from h264 to h264 but lower resolution/bitrate…all good.
That was however a workaround so as above I re-encoded them and replaced the original files. They play great with the bandwidth limitation removed (e.g. streamed straight from the server to the iPad) but if the file is transcoded for any reason (say outside our network) Plex insists on transcoding the h264 file to h265/HEVC and the client just sits buffering indefinately.
First of all, is there anywhere the h264->h265 option can be disabled. I’ve never noticed Plex doing this before, it has always chosen h264->h264 when transcoding was necessary.
Whilst typing this I witnessed my iOS client wait for the buffer, start playing (audio only) then stop and move to the next episode.
I didn’t because the source files were in MP4 containers and the new ones are MKV, so the new ones simply turned up as new “versions” until I emptied the trash.
I’ll trigger an analyse job now though just for good measure.
So more interesting/confusing is that it seems this behaviour shouldn’t even technically be possible. Someone quoted this post in a large discussion about transcoding to HEVC which shouldn’t technically be possible?!
I get similar results for other files, a 4K rip is transcoded to h264 and played with ease on the iPads (iPad Mini 4) but these files seemingly trigger a condition which should not occur; transcoding to HEVC.
OK so we have a PEBKAC. (Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair) situation. A while ago I was messing around with profiles - I added an iOS.xml profile which supposedly enabled Spacial Audio on iOS but it seems it also b0rks transcoding in certain circumstances. I deleted the profile, restarted Plex and it’s behaving itself now.
