Both Roku Ultra 4800 and Roku Streaming Stick 4K won’t hardware transcode HEVC automatically. It has no problems direct playing HEVC but if I set the quality lower than the original bitrate in settings, the file is stuck at loading. If I direct play the file and then manually lower the bitrate, hardware transcoding works.
For example:
HEVC Movie is originally 8Mbps. Roku has no problems direct playing it.
In settings, I change the remote quality to 4Mbps. I play the movie and Roku fails to hardware transcode and is stuck at 13% loading.
In settings, I change the remote quality to 8Mbps and direct play the movie. While the movie is playing, I lower the quality to 4Mbps and hardware transcode works perfectly.
So hardware transcode only works if I manually change the quality while the movie is direct playing.
This only affects HEVC files with hardware transcoding. Software transcoding doesn’t have this issue. H264 files also have no issues with hardware transcoding.
This only affects my Roku players. Mobile Android app, Android TV app, and Windows app don’t have this issue.
I’m using the 64-bit Plex server on a Windows 10 PC with a Quadro M2000 Video Card. I’ve only recently noticed this because I was starting to switch to HEVC files.
Why can’t I just direct play? I have limited upload speed, so hardware transcode is needed for my remote users.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
