I’ve got Plex Server 1.9.0.4252 running on a Mac Mini with MacOS Sierra 10.12.6, connected to an HDHomeRun PRIME. My DVR’s set to use the automatic experimental transcoding mode (Settings > Server > Live TV & DVR (Beta) > Gear icon next to the tuner name > Convert Video While Recording > Transcoding) while it records.
When I first set up Plex at the beginning of the summer, recorded programs would be automatically transcoded, compressed with H.264, and saved as .mkv files. But after several months of not having anything to record, and several updates to Plex Server, I now find that programs I record are being saved as uncompressed MPEG-2 transport stream (.ts) files, for no apparent reason. I’ve changed nothing in the settings.
I thought the problem might be the version of the Mac Plex comskip script I’m running, but I haven’t changed anything there, either – and when I do a test recording, it seems to remove commercials just fine. Any ideas what might have gone wrong? Just a glitch in the latest version of the server?
Not a glitch. Prior to 1.7.0 release the option for transcoding I believe did convert to mkv but with 1.7.0 the default container created changed to mkv for all recordings. Which introduced issues with subtitles and closed captioning for users that rely on it due to hearing disabilities. PMS 1.7.6 went back to MPEGTS for all recordings due to issues with subtitles and closed captioning.
Plex Media Server 1.7.6 is now available to PlexPass users
NEW:
(DVR) Use MPEGTS for all DVR recordings
Not sure if the mkv option will eventually return or not.
Thanks! So I’m guessing I’m mistaken in thinking that the automatic transcoding feature is supposed to transcode MPEG-2 streams into H.264 MPEG-4? I was hoping that I could get Plex to auto-optimize each show as I recorded it, if only to shrink the file size some.
You can setup show optimization which will create a version of the show based on the optimization settings. But this would be a second copy of the show not a replacement of the show. You can also setup post processing to convert recordings to formats you want before they are placed in the library. Post processing can also do other things like commercial removal.
Thank you! Yep, I’ve got a post-processing script already that filters out commercials. Will have to dig into Handbrake CLI to see about adding automatic conversion to it.
If you setup a preset you can pass preset to use to HandBrakeCLI --preset=“Name”.
