Roku Stick+ transcode reason?

Server Version#: 4.47.3
Player Version#: 9.4.0 build 4200-50

Hi, I’ve been constantly experiencing video transcoding on my Roku Stick + while I only play media locally. My settings are:

Direct Play: auto
Allow Direct Stream: true
Burn Subtitles: Automatic
On the Plex server side I got Direct play enabled

The error message I get for various moves is

Movie#1

Dec 26, 2020 13:54:57.699 [0x7fb477684700] DEBUG - [Transcode] We're going to try to auto-select an audio stream for account 1.
Dec 26, 2020 13:54:57.699 [0x7fb477684700] DEBUG - [Transcode] Selecting best audio stream for part ID 2626 (autoselect: 1 language: hu)
Dec 26, 2020 13:54:57.699 [0x7fb477684700] DEBUG - [Transcode] Audio Stream: 6698, Subtitle Stream: -1
Dec 26, 2020 13:54:57.701 [0x7fb477684700] DEBUG - [Transcode] MDE: Selected protocol hls; container: mpegts
Dec 26, 2020 13:54:57.701 [0x7fb477684700] DEBUG - [Transcode] MDE: analyzing media item 2623
Dec 26, 2020 13:54:57.701 [0x7fb477684700] DEBUG - [Transcode] MDE: Love at Second Sight (2019): Direct Play is disabled
Dec 26, 2020 13:54:57.701 [0x7fb477684700] DEBUG - [Transcode] MDE: Love at Second Sight (2019): media must be transcoded in order to use the hls protocol
Dec 26, 2020 13:54:57.701 [0x7fb477684700] DEBUG - [Transcode] MDE: Love at Second Sight (2019): no direct play video profile exists for http/mkv/h264/ac3
Dec 26, 2020 13:54:57.701 [0x7fb477684700] DEBUG - [Transcode] MDE: Cannot direct stream audio stream due to codec ac3 when profile only allows mp3
Dec 26, 2020 13:54:57.702 [0x7fb477684700] DEBUG - [Transcode] MDE: Love at Second Sight (2019): selected media 0 / 2623
Dec 26, 2020 13:54:57.702 [0x7fb477684700] DEBUG - [Transcode] Streaming Resource: Added session 0x7fb4946ebcd0:138d5d2f780f2be40b7209d43cfc6f4c
Dec 26, 2020 13:54:57.702 [0x7fb477684700] DEBUG - [Transcode] Streaming Resource: Reached Decision id=1433 codes=(General=1001,Direct play not available; Conversion OK. Direct Play=3000,App cannot direct play this item. Direct play is disabled. Transcode=1001,Direct play not available; Conversion OK.) media=(id=2623 part=(id=2626 decision=transcode container=mpegts protocol=hls streams=(Video=(id=6697 decision=copy width=720 height=302) Audio=(id=6698 decision=transcode bitrate=241 encoder=libmp3lame channels=2 rate=48000))))
Dec 26, 2020 13:54:57.703 [0x7fb4a6222700] DEBUG - Completed: [192.168.1.152:58422] 200 GET /video/:/transcode/universal/decision?protocol=hls&mediaIndex=0&waitForSegments=1 (11 live) TLS GZIP 11ms 2385 bytes (pipelined: 8)
Frozen
Dec 26, 2020 13:45:57.232 [0x7fb475938700] DEBUG - [Transcode] Codecs: 10-bit HEVC test succeeded
Dec 26, 2020 13:45:57.233 [0x7fb475938700] DEBUG - [Transcode] Scaled up video bitrate to 53122Kbps based on 4.500000x fudge factor.
Dec 26, 2020 13:45:57.233 [0x7fb475938700] DEBUG - [Transcode] MDE: Selected protocol http; container: mkv
Dec 26, 2020 13:45:57.234 [0x7fb475938700] DEBUG - [Transcode] MDE: analyzing media item 2741
Dec 26, 2020 13:45:57.234 [0x7fb475938700] DEBUG - [Transcode] MDE: Frozen II (2019): Direct Play is disabled
Dec 26, 2020 13:45:57.234 [0x7fb475938700] DEBUG - [Transcode] MDE: Frozen II (2019): no direct play video profile exists for http/mkv/hevc
Dec 26, 2020 13:45:57.234 [0x7fb475938700] DEBUG - [Transcode] MDE: Frozen II (2019): no direct play video profile exists for http/mkv/hevc/aac
Dec 26, 2020 13:45:57.234 [0x7fb475938700] DEBUG - [Transcode] MDE: Frozen II (2019): no direct play video profile exists for http/mkv/hevc/eac3
Dec 26, 2020 13:45:57.234 [0x7fb475938700] DEBUG - [Transcode] Frozen II - video.colorTrc limitation applies: smpte2084 != bt709|bt470m|bt470bg|smpte170m|smpte240m|bt2020-10|bt2020-10 [list]
Dec 26, 2020 13:45:57.234 [0x7fb475938700] DEBUG - [Transcode] MDE: Frozen II (2019): no remuxable profile found, so video stream will be transcoded
Dec 26, 2020 13:45:57.234 [0x7fb475938700] DEBUG - [Transcode] MDE: Cannot direct stream video stream due to profile or setting limitations
Dec 26, 2020 13:45:57.234 [0x7fb475938700] DEBUG - [Transcode] Codecs: testing hevc (decoder) with hwdevice vaapi
Dec 26, 2020 13:45:57.235 [0x7fb475938700] DEBUG - [Transcode] Codecs: hardware transcoding: testing API vaapi
Dec 26, 2020 13:54:57.699 [0x7fb477684700] DEBUG - [Transcode] We're going to try to auto-select an audio stream for account 1.
Dec 26, 2020 13:54:57.699 [0x7fb477684700] DEBUG - [Transcode] Selecting best audio stream for part ID 2626 (autoselect: 1 language: hu)
Dec 26, 2020 13:54:57.699 [0x7fb477684700] DEBUG - [Transcode] Audio Stream: 6698, Subtitle Stream: -1
Dec 26, 2020 13:54:57.701 [0x7fb477684700] DEBUG - [Transcode] MDE: Selected protocol hls; container: mpegts
Dec 26, 2020 13:54:57.701 [0x7fb477684700] DEBUG - [Transcode] MDE: analyzing media item 2623
Dec 26, 2020 13:54:57.701 [0x7fb477684700] DEBUG - [Transcode] MDE: Love at Second Sight (2019): Direct Play is disabled
Dec 26, 2020 13:54:57.701 [0x7fb477684700] DEBUG - [Transcode] MDE: Love at Second Sight (2019): media must be transcoded in order to use the hls protocol
Dec 26, 2020 13:54:57.701 [0x7fb477684700] DEBUG - [Transcode] MDE: Love at Second Sight (2019): no direct play video profile exists for http/mkv/h264/ac3
Dec 26, 2020 13:54:57.701 [0x7fb477684700] DEBUG - [Transcode] MDE: Cannot direct stream audio stream due to codec ac3 when profile only allows mp3
Dec 26, 2020 13:54:57.702 [0x7fb477684700] DEBUG - [Transcode] MDE: Love at Second Sight (2019): selected media 0 / 2623
Dec 26, 2020 13:54:57.702 [0x7fb477684700] DEBUG - [Transcode] Streaming Resource: Added session 0x7fb4946ebcd0:138d5d2f780f2be40b7209d43cfc6f4c
Dec 26, 2020 13:54:57.702 [0x7fb477684700] DEBUG - [Transcode] Streaming Resource: Reached Decision id=1433 codes=(General=1001,Direct play not available; Conversion OK. Direct Play=3000,App cannot direct play this item. Direct play is disabled. Transcode=1001,Direct play not available; Conversion OK.) media=(id=2623 part=(id=2626 decision=transcode container=mpegts protocol=hls streams=(Video=(id=6697 decision=copy width=720 height=302) Audio=(id=6698 decision=transcode bitrate=241 encoder=libmp3lame channels=2 rate=48000))))
Dec 26, 2020 13:54:57.703 [0x7fb4a6222700] DEBUG - Completed: [192.168.1.152:58422] 200 GET /video/:/transcode/universal/decision?protocol=hls&mediaIndex=0&waitForSegments=1 (11 live) TLS GZIP 11ms 2385 bytes (pipelined: 8)

Could this be a Roku limitation? If I force Direct Play sometimes it plays but there is no audio. I also have Direct Play enabled but it still says that it’s disabled.

If I play the same movie from my Plex app on my iPhone then Direct Play is working also if I stream it through my Chrome Cast then its all good too.


If I set Directly Play to force on the Roku it plays but no audio as described above and getting the following message

Thanks!

You need to look at the specs for your Roku to see what it supports. I know older Rokus were very limited to what they supported. It looks like one of the movies is in HVEC and is not supported to it converts it to HLS and it only supports mp3 and is why the audio is transcoded.

Thanks. Even if the audio has to be transcoded how come the video gets transcoded too?

I am just taking a guess but I assume that the browser may not support the video format Cast but could be wrong.

Funny thing is I’ve got 3 different types of Roku Devices, but even the expensive one is having this issue. It seems to be when a movie is encoded with MP3 audio. It’s rather annoying as it wasn’t a problem about a month back.

This looks like a pretty common issue now, when it wasn’t before. I have the same problem. I used to be able to watch videos direct play, and now it transcodes them. Same Roku player as before. Plex must have updated something, and now it doesn’t work correctly, and they don’t seem to be responding to any of these forum posts.

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