Poor HEVC Direct playback

Plex Players Desktop Players
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1

Server Version#:1.14.1.5488
Player Version#:1.14.1.5488

For some reason, when I play HEVC files from my plex server, the playback quality is horrible on my pc. It looks like it was scaled down to 480p. Both systems can handle HEVC no problem and everything is set to max quality. Is there any known reason why this happens?

If it matters I’m running a vmware ESXI host system with Freenas and Windows Server 2016. Windows server is the plex host as I couldn’t get plex to work after a week or 2 of troubleshooting running directly in Freenas.

Thanks

2

Playing in a web browser will always transcode HEVC content.

If your server is running in a virtualized environment, check whether you have direct network access from client to server or if the connection is ‘indirect’, which means the bitrate is limited to 2mbps.

3

I am playing content with the plex client. The server says nearby, rather than direct/indirect.

4

May I see the content of the Plex XML info of this movie?

Also,

  1. activate debug logging (not ‘verbose’!)
  2. quit Plex Server
  3. wait 1 minute
  4. start Plex Server
  5. wait 2 minutes
  6. play this movie for 1 minute (please note down the clock time when you pressed Play)
  7. wait 3 minutes
  8. fetch log files and attach them here
5

Here’s my logs.

6

Hm, OK the file was Direct Play’ed by PMP, so the server has no influence over the visual quality.

We must now continue the investigation on the side of the Player.
Which type of graphics adapter (GPU) is in the machine?
A log file from the Plex Media Player after this file has been played would be useful.
https://support.plex.tv/articles/207338748-plex-media-player-logs/

7

A post was split to a new topic: Playing HEVC video causes high CPU load

8

It’s a Nvidia GTX 1080, plenty new and powerful.

Here are all the logs that were produced today.

9

Put PMP into its ‘TV Mode’
then click on the user avatar

Settings - Main - Native OpenGL
Settings - VIdeo - Hardware Decoding

Try toggling both these options in different combinations back and forth and compare playback quality inbetween.

2 Likes
10

Huh, looks like turning on OpenGL fixed the issue. I would have never thought I would have to go into tv mode to fix an issue like that. I was kinda worried I would have to stay in tv mode, but it seems the settings transferred over to the standard PMP.

Thanks!

2 Likes
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