Pre-Transcoding, which format/options should i pick?

General Discussions
1

So I’m looking to move my Plex Media Server to a 2009 Mac Mini that i have lying around.
It can handle 2 1080p streams transcoding but to make things easier I’m looking to pre transcode all of my media.

The question is which ‘optimise’ option should i use?
The client devices i have are iPhones, iPads, Apple TV’s and a couple of iMacs.

Clearly they are all apple devices so they all support they same formats but the only options in plex are for iOS or Universal TV/Universal Mobile…

Which options under ‘optimise’ would allow for direct play across all these devices?
(I wish you could just pick H.264 or H.265…)

Any help would be amazing! Thanks!!!

2

I use MKV with h264, 1st audio 2 channel AAC, 2nd audio AC3/DTS/etc., only forced subtitles in srt format. For devices that want MP4 the container change has a near 0 impact on the server.

3

Thanks for the reply.
So do you optimise your media outside of plex with something like handbrake?
Or do you use Plex’s ‘optimise’ feature to do it for you?