Remote Access - 4k Conversion Options?

[SlappyMcPhee]

Server Version#: 1.15.6.1079
Player Version#: Any

So I have to apologize if this has been discussed previously, but if so then my search-foo has failed me. As we all know when streaming either locally or remotely (remote for me is more important in this case) when it comes to the streaming bandwidth you have a large set of options for 1080p, 720p, and even getting down into SD streams. Has there been any discussion on these options being enhanced with 4k?

Example: 30MB 2160p, 45MB 2160p, 60MB 2160p

I mainly bring this up because I have a few family that I talked into picking up the NVidia ShieldTV especially because of its ability to transcode 4k locally however there are various media files that they will encounter stuttering on. I am pretty sure that it is their bandwidth. They don’t have “slow” internet, but especially those that have to use the garbage cable providers such as Spectrum, Crapcast, etc even with 200Mb/sec internet and nothing else being used when they attempt to consume some of my media files they encounter stuttering when using Direct Play. It seems to really depend on their offered speeds and the bitrates of the files. A great example is that I have a BD rip of Aquaman that is 72Mbps for the video which one of them has stuttering issues. When we tested with another BD rip that was encoded by the same “encoding source” with the same encoding settings, Captain Marvel, that is 48Mbps it will run perfectly with their internet link as Direct Play. This would lead me to believe that if the same type of options were being provided for 4k as is for 1080p, 720p, etc then it could alleviate this situation. I believe that this will become more prevalent as time goes on. I am not sure if this is a true PMS situation, but would assume so?

Not sure if I should be posting this as an enhancement request or how to do so if possible? New to using the Plex forums. Any suggestions or feedback would be great.

[pl_5309]

I would imagine that less than 2% of Plex users would have the internet bandwidth, hardware and technical know-how to make 4K practical for on the fly transcoding remote streaming to multiple users. “But Netflix does it”, well they spent millions, have a vast infrastructure to place content servers nearby and still have to pre-convert the video down to 15-25Mbps range.

Discussion:

[INFO] Plex, 4k, transcoding, and you - aka the rules of 4k

NOTE: for 2022 – Plex has come a long way since this FAQ was originally written, HW transcoding has become more available and more stable, and tone mapping was recently added to address the hdr/sdr color conversion issues. The first 4 ‘rules’ generally are no longer as important as they once were, but may still be a good thing to bear in mind. Dolby Vision, is an entirely other mess. THIS thread/FAQ is NOT about DV. DV work is still in progress, and there are no perfect TV’s or external devic…

[SlappyMcPhee]

Yes, I saw that post and honestly has no relevance to mine. We can speculate what the percentage is right now all day long, but it really doesn’t matter. This situation is no different than when the transition was happening from SD to HD and people were putting together collections. Progress is inevitable and if it stagnates then a product becomes irrelevant. Why even mention Netflix and their liquid asset ability? It has no relevance to my request either. I fully understand the complexity of how the backend for transcoding works. I deal with it for my career. So in a nutshell your response didn’t actually address my post, but thanks.

[loz5678]

I imagine one of the problems is that plex doesn’t transcode into x265 so cannot send the HDR data. Adding x265 would be a step in the right direction and would also help sub 4k content as well