I really wish that Plex would team up with VLC so that every plex app would play every file without the need for the server to do the transcoding! Plex is my favourite app but every day I run into problems with my server (2012 Mac Mini i5) not being powerful enough to transcode. This has started to become more and more of a problem as I’m getting more and more 4K content. I find myself in the VLC app more than Plex which is a shame as I’ve invested in a lifetime Plex Pass and Plex is beautiful. Is there anyone out there that feels the same?
You’re complaining about not being able to transcode 4K on a device that was never able or meant to.
VLC has its own playback engine. Teaming up with them would make no improvement to Plex…
Use a device that can direct play 4K and you won’t run into this…
I’m not complaining about the Mac mini, yes it’s not designed for 4k transcoding. What I was suggesting (maybe not very well) was to use vlc’s playback engine which seems to play pretty much anything on pretty much any device
@“AC Media” said:
use vlc’s playback engine which seems to play pretty much anything on pretty much any device
So can Plex, more or less. The bottleneck is your server. If you want to play 4K content, either get hardware that can direct play 4K content, or upgrade your server to cope with transcoding.
A Mac Mini is essentially an over priced calculator. The fact that it’s transcoding anything is nothing short of a miracle.
I think two conversations are happening here. In regards to transcoding, yes, an underpowered device will always result in a bottleneck.
But, if we’re talking about direct play within the same connected home network, then this is where VLC and plex’s playback engines really differentiate themselves. Case in point is the heavily documented problem with the use of subtitles. Plex transcodes the Video and Subtitles at the server to send a single video to the client player and almost always causes stuttered playback, even with a great server. VLC simply overlays it at the end client with no stuttering or transcoding. I’d say that’s a pretty significant issue and I often have to switch over to VLC for movies with even the occasional forced subtitles.
Another instance where Plex playback engine stinks is the other well documented issues with bluray MKV playback from manufacturers like WB that put in less than 4 b-frames. In Plex if you try to watch the MKV rip of a movie like EDGE OF TOMORROW and you’ll get nauseating flashes and stuttering. Play the same file from the very same server to the very same client with VLC and no flashes or stuttering.
It seems like a decent idea to consider allowing the choice of playback engine on a per client basis, depending on what’s available and installed on that client. On my Nvidia Shield pro, I’d love to select VLC as the playback engine instead of the Exoplayer so I don’t have to watch some of my blurays or anything with subtitles on the VLC app instead of within Plex.
@ntrevena said:
@“AC Media” said:
A Mac Mini is essentially an over priced calculator. The fact that it’s transcoding anything is nothing short of a miracle.
That’s an absurd statement. Even my 2010 Core 2 Duo Mac-Mini has no trouble transcoding
@chelseaflyboy said:
my 2010 Core 2 Duo Mac-Mini has no trouble transcoding
I see, so you’re telling me that your 2010 Mac Mini, is capable of transcoding a 30GB 4K h264 encoded video to 1080p in real time with no stuttering, buffering or frame loss?
PS. Notice how the OP was talking about 4K content? When I said that a Mac Mini is nothing more than a glorified calculator, I was being facetious. I think perhaps you got the wrong idea.
@matterpro said:
It seems like a decent idea to consider allowing the choice of playback engine on a per client basis, depending on what’s available and installed on that client. On my Nvidia Shield pro, I’d love to select VLC as the playback engine instead of the Exoplayer so I don’t have to watch some of my blurays or anything with subtitles on the VLC app instead of within Plex.
You can already do this with certain Plex Clients. For example, you can do it on Android by forcing the client to use the internal Android player (which will then prompt you which player to use). If you have VLC installed, you can use it as the default Android Player.
Not sure which other platforms will do this though. IIRC there was a plugin for Firefox, which diverted all incoming RTMP streams to embedded VLC player. Not sure if this is valid or even possible anymore.
@ntrevena said:
@chelseaflyboy said:
my 2010 Core 2 Duo Mac-Mini has no trouble transcodingI see, so you’re telling me that your 2010 Mac Mini, is capable of transcoding a 30GB 4K h264 encoded video to 1080p in real time with no stuttering, buffering or frame loss?
Well, I didn’t quite say that. But, for kicks, I decided to find out. I took a 34GB 4K h264 copy of The Martian and played it at 20mbps 1080p. It actually did better than I expected but there was frequent buffering. So the answer to your question is “no.”
The 2010 Mac-mini is not my primary PMS. For that I have a 2012 Mac-mini. It had no problem playing the same 4K movie at 1080p while simultaneously transcoding a live TV session and transcoding a 1080p video to 720p. All three played perfectly. Not bad for a glorified calculator, right? Now of course this is one of the quad-core i7 Mac-minis that I picked up soon after Apple stopped making a quad-core version so it’s still more powerful than any of the current Mac-minis. It’s really a shame they stopped making these but I guess they don’t want to cannibalize iMac sales.
@chelseaflyboy said:
Well, I didn’t quite say that. But, for kicks, I decided to find out. I took a 34GB 4K h264 copy of The Martian and played it at 20mbps 1080p. It actually did better than I expected but there was frequent buffering. So the answer to your question is “no.”
That was more or less my point. Unfortunately, while they did get better over the years, they’ve more or less been replaced by high end Intel NUC’s and the like. Especially now you can turn one into a Hackintosh for the hardcore Apple Fans out there.
I wasn’t trying to bag Apple, so much as failing miserably at attempted humor. 
The 2010 Mac-mini is not my primary PMS. For that I have a 2012 Mac-mini. It had no problem playing the same 4K movie at 1080p while simultaneously transcoding a live TV session and transcoding a 1080p video to 720p. All three played perfectly. Not bad for a glorified calculator, right? Now of course this is one of the quad-core i7 Mac-minis that I picked up soon after Apple stopped making a quad-core version so it’s still more powerful than any of the current Mac-minis. It’s really a shame they stopped making these but I guess they don’t want to cannibalize iMac sales.
Agreed. I honestly would love to fire up my servers, I just can’t. I have multiple dual Xeon servers floating around, but no-where to put them. They’re bloody loud, but so much cpu power… yummy.
Well I use my Mac mini because it doesnt use a lot of power being on all the time, it also does other stuff like a virtual machine and vpn so I can access my home network when away from home.
It’s not feasible to have a massive power hungry server farm at home, no matter how much I would like one. If Plex could direct play or direct stream more then it would be better.
@“AC Media” said:
If Plex could direct play or direct stream more then it would be better.
^^^ This! I know that’s hard though, with so many different server/client devices and so many different file bitrates, etc.
@ntrevena said:
You can already do this with certain Plex Clients. For example, you can do it on Android by forcing the client to use the internal Android player (which will then prompt you which player to use). If you have VLC installed, you can use it as the default Android Player.
I’ll look around for a way to do this, that would be fantastic. Shield TV definitely runs the android TV OS, so I’ll report back it I can make it work. Thanks for the tip.
@“AC Media” said:
If Plex could direct play or direct stream more then it would be better.
More? Mine Direct Plays all the time (codecs permitting), with the only exception being the Samsung TV Client which forces transcoding (known bug, no workaround as yet).
I actually found out recently, that my interwebs connection is fast enough to direct stream almost all of my content directly from GSuite/Plex. Amazingly, my speeds aren’t blisteringly fast. About 28Mbps down.
I found out that my bottleneck was actually my modem/router. I dumbed it down, disabled the DHCP server; offloaded the PPPoE over a bridge to a pfSense box and voila! Suddenly, my network is amazing. No more network clashes, no more slowdowns, no more lost packets.
It’s fast enough to direct stream a 1080p movie that’s encoded @ ~10-20Mbps. Good enough for me 
@matterpro said:
I’ll look around for a way to do this, that would be fantastic. Shield TV definitely runs the android TV OS, so I’ll report back it I can make it work. Thanks for the tip.
The setting in the Android client is in:
Settings => Advanced => Player
Put a tick in the boxes as appropriate:
- Use Android media player
- Use External media player
They don’t always work, you may need to restart the client or device.
@ntrevena said:
The setting in the Android client is in:Settings => Advanced => Player
Put a tick in the boxes as appropriate:
- Use Android media player
- Use External media player
They don’t always work, you may need to restart the client or device.
Bummer! That’s not an option on the Shield settings in Plex. I’m guessing that’s on Android devices, but not Android TV. At least not the Shield Android TV version of Plex
@ntrevena said:
That was more or less my point. Unfortunately, while they did get better over the years, they’ve more or less been replaced by high end Intel NUC’s and the like. Especially now you can turn one into a Hackintosh for the hardcore Apple Fans out there.
Well, they got better until 2014 when Apple eliminated the quad-core and decided to solder the memory. The 2011 2.0GHz quad core i7 is still more powerful than the current top of the line Mini. Apple took a very capable line of computers and turned them into niche products. On the plus the machine has lost only ~20% of its value in the 3 years I’ve owned it. It’s actually a great Plex server: MacOS is much more stable than Windows, easier than Linux, and it packs plenty of power into a sleek energy efficient box.
