Server Version#: 1.23.4.4805
Player Version#: 5.27.2 (platform version 5.5)
Plex is installed on my QNAP NAS so I can’t upgrade as this version is the most recent available there.
The TV is Samsung QE75Q950T.
The problem is with HEVC, some videos play well using Direct Play, others have to be transcoded to H264, which loses HDR. The new tone mapping isn’t working well because of some libraries being missing on the NAS.
The screenshots below demonstrate that some 2 movies use Direct Play and one is being transcoded. In all cases, the Original quality is selected in the player. And all 3 show HEVC Main 10 HDR. The Courier is transcoded when playing on the TV but when I tried this same movie on iPhone or Plex for Mac they both used Direct Play. So it’s either something in the video that my TV doesn’t support, which I can’ figure out myself or there’s a bug in Plex for Smart TV.
Finch uses EAC3 and is played directly, which means the TV does support EAC3, while The Courier, which causes the problem, uses AC3, same as IT, which is played directly, which means the TV does support AC3 as well.
And my problem isn’t with the audio but with the video transcoding. All 3 movies show HEVC Main 10 HDR but 2 of them are being played directly while The Courier is transcoded, which makes me wonder what’s wrong.
Thank you, I will check the logs. I’ve also manually upgraded Plex to the latest version so curious to see if that’d help.
I’m wondering if the bitrate might be the cause, the doc says 100mbps for 8k and 80mbps for 4k. IT has a bitrate of 50 Mbps and The Courier has about 77, which is close to the maximum.
Thank you all for the suggestions! The problem appeared to be in Plex. There’s an option called “disable bitrate limit” which isn’t enabled by default and it is causing Plex to force-transcode when the bitrate is too high.
You need to restart the Plex client (at least on my TV) for this setting to take effect. Once done all the movies play well.
And even when audio is in an unsupported format (like DTS) Plex uses Direct Stream and only transcodes the audio, which is awesome
enable this option by default (please correct me if I’m wrong, might be I enabled this initially)
try direct streaming first to remove other (unused) streams from the media file
Also, unclear why did it start transcoding at all, what algorithms are used to determine we need to lover the bitrate. I mean, how did Plex determine the bitrate is too high so we need to transcode and lower it a bit. In the Console log, I saw errors that were saying something like “unable to find a profile for a device”, etc.
I’ve an LG TV. The Plex LG client is similar to, but not exactly the same as, the Samsung client. The LG client does not have a Disable Bitrate Limit option.
Plex analyzes each media file. One of the things it determines is the bitrate at various locations throughout the file (look in the Plex XML info and you’ll see several bandwidth entries).
If the media bandwidth is above the limit of the TV, Plex will transcode to get the stream below the limit.
You can ignore that message.
At one time, Plex used device profiles for each client type. That is no longer the case. Some clients do not require device profiles, so one does not exist on the system. When that happens, you see the “unable to find a profile…” message in the log files.
My TV suddenly died and will be returned back to the store so the problem resolved by itself
But can confirm that since that option was turned on the problem has gone. And it is actually not that easy to hit those TV’s bitrate limitations. The boldest media files I was able to find were playing ok.
