Hi there, I recently installed Plex on my NAS (Synology DS215J) and attempted to play my mp3 format music via the Plex PS3 app. It returns a ‘server not powerful enough to transcode video’ error. Any idea what the problem might be? Thanks!
Sorry @joncollin81, the PS3 doesn’t support MP3 without transcoding. 
Thanks Matt, I do have a couple of follow-up questions. What audio format does the PS3 support? And why can I play my mp3 audio on my PS3 directly from my NAS via DLNA? Also I was aware that the DS215J was too underpowered to be an ideal Plex server but I’m surprised that it can’t even transcode audio. This seems unlikely.
Sorry, also just seen the FAQ - Plex for PlayStation page on the website which states that mp3 is supported with no need to transcode. Now I am confused! Is it or isn’t it?
Hi @joncollin81. No, mp3 is not supported for direct playback. The PlayStation3 and 4 only direct play M4A and do support transcoding of most other music formats.
My customer service colleague and I just discussed your case. We’ve corrected the support article. Big apologies for the confusion!
The PS3 and PS4 only support M4A audio. All other formats need to transcode. You’re right that transcoding to audio should be possible. Although, believe it or not, we actually have to transcode the audio file into a video stream in order to play on the PS3 and PS4.
Our typical audio transcoding simply transcodes into a MP3 file. Yet since the PS3/4 doesn’t support MP3, it only supports a protocol called HLS. Technically HLS can have video and audio or only audio or only video. Yet the PS3/4 wouldn’t play HLS with audio only. So, our workaround is to combine the transcoded MP3 and a tiny blank video together into an HLS stream with audio and video.
Long story short, MP3 playback currently travels along Plex Media Server logic that checks if the server can support video transcoding. This is where it’s failing for you. Your server doesn’t support video transcoding so it blocks our MP3 playback workaround.
Although there’s good news.
Unrelated to this post we’re addressing this in Plex Media Server and will do the same in the PlayStation app.
Watch the PlayStation release announcements thread and the Plex Media Server release announcements thread.
That’s really helpful @mattseeley . Thanks for the info and I will definitely look out for updated versions of PMS and the PS3 app. There is one more thing though that puzzles me. How come I am able to play mp3 audio through both the PMS and Synology DLNA connections without any issues?
That is an excellent question. As a consumer it’s fair to expect media support to be shared across all apps on the same device. As a developer I think it’s fair to expect the same thing.
The PS3 and PS4 platforms Sony provides to us use a different playback system than the DLNA players. Sad but super true.
Funnily enough I have some files with mono mp3 and it won’t even transcode them so when I play them on the ps4 i get no audio at all, pretty weird.
If possible I’d love to take a look at one of those. Feel free to DM me a Dropbox/Google Drive link.
Hi @mattseeley has the mp3 playback issue been fixed yet?
Hi There everyone! Good News!
I know Plex has a few issues with MP3 files; however, I have found a solution. I have several mp3 oh my plex server. Some play some don’t. So I looked further and found that mp3 files with a bitrate higher than 128 do not play on ps3, but the ones at that rate work just fine. The problem seems to be with the bitrate. I get the “Unsupported Data” msg. So I tested this by converting one of the files that was originally giving the message above using the online video converter at “http://online-audio-converter.com/” and it worked. I am working on converting all my audio files to that bitrate but I am looking for a better way of converting over 2GB of audio.
I will report back after I have found the perfect solution.
