Server Version#: 1.20.2.3402
I really love Plex for Movies, TV Shows and now Music but it really needs a bit more support for photos.
After reading countless articles about DNG photos not being displayed correctly on Plex it really seems no one has a clue what is going on and it’s disappointing. I use Lightroom to organize and edit my photos converting them to DNG so that they’re able to be used in any program in the future, have a full sized edited Jpeg displayable on any computer and still have all the edits saved so that they’re non destructive. It really is becoming the best file format with drones and phones now adopting the format as their “Raw” format.
After countless hours trying to figure out why some photos in my 30,000+ photo library work with Plex and others don’t, most only displaying at 256x171 pixels with wildly incorrect metadata.
It seems it’s an issue with the DNG Lossy file format, with the DNG Lossless displaying almost flawlessly. This is regardless of the Jpeg preview size being created, the size of the file, megapixel size of the camera or camera it was taken with.
I’ve replicated this on my FreeNas server (i7-3770 cpu, 16gb Ram) and Windows Server (main PC, i7-8700K, 32gb Ram). Using all sorts of apps access the server, Plex web (locally and remotely), Roku 4 app, Smart TV app, Mobile phone.
It really would be great to have the ability to display these DNG photos natively or transcoded especially since that is what Plex advertises.
Once a photo has been converted to a Lossy DNG there is no way to convert it back to Lossless either despite having the option to convert it to Lossless it is not truly Lossless and Plex still treats it as Lossy.
Until Plex supports this format I’ll have to look elsewhere for a true media server and not just a server for TV Shows and Movies.
