# Sync and Optimized Content

**URL:** <https://forums.plex.tv/t/sync-and-optimized-content/327627>\
**Category:** General Discussions\
**Tags:** media-optimizer, downloads\
**Created:** [November 5, 2018, 3:26am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/sync-and-optimized-content/327627 "2018-11-05T03:26:39Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 6\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![jeramie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d2c977/32.png) [@jeramie](https://forums.plex.tv/u/jeramie)\
**Post date:** [November 5, 2018, 3:26am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/sync-and-optimized-content/327627/1 "2018-11-05T03:26:40Z")

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Hi Everyone,

I’ve been playing with the media optimization option in Plex and very likely i misunderstand the purpose of this because its not behaving the way i’d expect.

I want to pre-transcode certain shows at .3Mbps because several of my users sync these shows, so instead of it transcoding on the fly multiple times (once per user) i’d like to just have it transcode once and then copy that pre-transcoded content to the mobile device.

I set one of the shows (Chicago Fire) to optimize at Universal Mobile .3Mbps and let it transcode an entire season. Then i went to my Samsung Galaxy S7 and told it to sync s01E01 of chicago fire at .3Mbps… and the server proceeded to transcode the content again… it didn’t seem to care at all that there was already a .3Mbps file ready to go. I tried this also on a samsung tablet, same result.

Am i missing something?

Thanks for any help.

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**Author:** ![anon18523487](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/49beb7/32.png) [@anon18523487](https://forums.plex.tv/u/anon18523487)\
**Post date:** [November 5, 2018, 10:49pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/sync-and-optimized-content/327627/2 "2018-11-05T22:49:58Z")

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You cannot sync an optimized version. Sync will always use the original file. Optimizing media is meant for streaming.

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**Author:** ![jeramie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d2c977/32.png) [@jeramie](https://forums.plex.tv/u/jeramie)\
**Post date:** [November 5, 2018, 11:13pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/sync-and-optimized-content/327627/3 "2018-11-05T23:13:06Z")

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Thanks for the clarification.

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**Author:** ![KarlDag](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/91b2a8/32.png) [@KarlDag](https://forums.plex.tv/u/KarlDag)\
**Post date:** [November 5, 2018, 11:44pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/sync-and-optimized-content/327627/4 "2018-11-05T23:44:14Z")

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Dumb. It’s would be a perfect use case for the streaming brain which was supposed to get improvements but never did.

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**Author:** ![anon18523487](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/49beb7/32.png) [@anon18523487](https://forums.plex.tv/u/anon18523487)\
**Post date:** [November 5, 2018, 11:55pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/sync-and-optimized-content/327627/5 "2018-11-05T23:55:03Z")

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This has nothing to do with the streaming brain, since you aren’t streaming. When you are streaming, you can play the optimized versions.

This has to do with Sync and the current implementation of Sync always uses the original file. Synce has no concept of optimized versions. There will be updates to Sync coming in the future.

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**Author:** ![system](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/plex/original/3X/2/a/2acb9765406f63293d357b4ec509ec39aa28f2ad.png) [@system](https://forums.plex.tv/u/system)\
**Post date:** [February 3, 2019, 11:58pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/sync-and-optimized-content/327627/6 "2019-02-03T23:58:54Z")

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