"server is not powerful enough to convert video" on Mac

[lock]

I’m trying to play some video from the Mac web interface (Safari) and I’m getting this message. It’s an M2 Mac Studio, so powerful enough to stream several videos at once, I don’t need the server to process the video for me, I need to access it directly.
If I’m not wrong, on Plex for my LG TV I can force the player to access the video directly (my NAS can’t convert movies in real time), but I can’t find an equivalent on the Web interface.

How to do it? Thanks.

[OttoKerner]

Clear the checkbox
Settings - Server - ‘Show Advanced’ - Transcoder -
“Disable video stream transcoding”

If you want to avoid video transcoding as much as possible, don’t use the web app as a Plex client but either “Plex for Mac” or “Plex HTPC”.
Downloads below.

[lock]

To add more information, I see I’ve this option in the settings:

So I guess it should be ok.

The video is a .MOV made with an iPhone. I know for sure Safari and Mac itself can play .MOV videos perfectly, as it’s a standard format for Apple. So I don’t know what to do. :\

[lock]

Thanks for your answer, @OttoKerner. I disabled the checkpoint but I still can’t have the video to play. It doesn’t show any error but, after about a second where it starts to play the video (same it did with the checkbox on, before showing the error message) and then it stops to a black screen.

All this happens in a Photos library, movies and tv series ones doesn’t show any problem playing videos. But this one is a .MOV, and I’ve no idea if it’s a specific problem of Plex with this format.

Edit: it doesn’t really stops, it’s just very slow, like 10 seconds and then starts to play it. I guess there’s some problem with accessing the file (it’s about 150 MB), or maybe it needs to load it all in memory before to play? I’m going to do some more test on this.

Ok, it seems a problem of Plex playing .MOV files. I converted it to .MP4 and, despite the fact its size is bigger, it plays it smoothy. I have to remember not to use .MOV files in the library.

I can’t use Plex for Mac because it gives me this error on photos:

Error displaying photos + no new media detection

Sorry, I wasn’t sure I uploaded the right file: Plex Media Server Logs_2024-06-25_23-21-51.zip (4.5 MB) Before downloading it I opened three album subfolders, got the error and reloaded the page for every one. As I said, accessing with IP or TV app, everything works perfectly. Thanks. P.S. I’m not in a hurry, at the moment I’m using it with IP, so take your time. I just want to understand and (maybe) solve this issue soon or later.

It seems I can only get a smooth experience accessing the server via IP, and the app seems not to do that.

[OttoKerner]

@lock

I guess there’s some problem with accessing the file (it’s about 150 MB), or maybe it needs to load it all in memory before to play? I’m going to do some more test on this.

MOV is not really a video format, but rather a container format. It exists since over 30 years. During that time, it was extended again and again, so that nobody knows by now what is actually inside, unless you inspect it closely.
Start by taking a look at the Plex media info of the affected item.

Bonus points for extracting more detailed information with an app like MediaInfo

A large pause on playback start often means either

• a very advanced video codec is used, which needs to be transcoded in order to play in Plex
• the file has its audio and video tracks not multiplexed correctly – i.e. in a way where audio and video data are interleaved with each other, so that seeking within the file doesn’t require jumping back and forth all the time

[lock]

Very clear thanks.

I usually prefer to convert my iPhone videos to a more common format like .MP4. But, no matter about my efforts, both h264 and h265 attempts ended with a bigger size file than the .MOV.

Anyway I decided to keep the h265, as it solves the issue.

Thanks for your help.

[OttoKerner]

@lock

I usually prefer to convert my iPhone videos to a more common format like .MP4. But, no matter about my efforts, both h264 and h265 attempts ended with a bigger size file than the .MOV.

Here is an experiment:
Get MKVtoolnixGUI
open it, then drag the MOV file into it
Without changing anything, just click on “Start Muxing” at the bottom

Add the resulting MKV file into Plex and repeat the test.

This procedure can at least help with the second of the two issues I have listed above.

[lock]

Very interesting. MKVtoolnix doesn’t ask for settings and it seems so quick I suspect it just extracts the video stream from .MOV (I’m quite sure it’s an h264 or h265) and creates an MKV video with the same size of the original.

However it seems to have problems with the frame rate. the original is 59,906860, while the MKVtoolnix one is 59,941256. I’ve no idea why this tiny difference but, as a result, the video seems to drop a frame now and then.

Anyway I converted it with Handbrake and, despite the fact that the video is now 30 MB bigger, it retains the same frame rate and the streaming is smooth as the original.

[lock]

Playing with ffmpeg I can see the original metadata of the video:

Cannot understand much, but I see (last line) 59,91 fps and 59,94 tbr. So the correct and wrong one. But no idea about what “tbr” stands for…

[lock]

Ok, I solved the problem using ffmpeg:

ffmpeg -i input.mov -codec copy output.mp4

It changed the container without re-encoding the video and set the correct framerate of 59,906860.