'The server is not powerful enough to convert video'

Plex Media Server NAS & Devices
34

Once again, I and previous posters don’t want transcoding because the files are playable by the device directly - it’s the Plex app that is not able to ensure they are played. The device e.g. TV can handle the file format and contents.

Don’t get distracted by DLNA or SMB - whatever the device uses to get the file played on the device works when the same device can’t play the same file using Plex.

If you admit this is because the Plex app is at fault and has bugs (assuming the configuration is set up fine) then finally, in this thread, some acknowledgement.

I wasn’t looking for answers just wanted to weigh in on the almost ‘can’t be the Plex app at fault’ comments. It’s a great app when it works, truly is, but it was better before when direct play worked flawlessly. Now it doesn’t. However, I’m curious so will take a look at the newer Samsung TV forum, thanks.

35

btw I’ve assumed it’s a bug. Perhaps it’s a developer or product choice to not support all the device is capable of. Fair enough, it’s your product. Would be helpful to know why.

36

@zdzi You can setup your own profile. To detect which profile your TV is using you can activate “verbose logging” in PMS. Then you can copy the profile to your “user profiles folder” (Plex\Library\Application Support\Plex Media Server\Profiles). Finally, you can change the profile at your will.

It’s the profile (and some Plex client settings, such as maxbitrate) that control if Plex is going to transcode or DirectPlay. Plex’s decision is recorded in the log (verbose) as “Reached decision …”

Plex is distributed with profiles that cover a subset of existing media players. Sometimes profiles need to be changed for our case, to take into account characteristics that our player has, and others sharing the same profile don’t have.

37

@moody_blue I turned on verbose logging but can’t easily make out which profile is being used. The logs have X-Plex-Platform, X-Plex-Device, X-Plex-DeviceName all with related but different values. There is no ‘profile’ string in the log file. There’s also no ‘Reached decision’ string. We’re talking about the Plex Media Server.log right?

There is a Plex DLNA Server log which does indicate a profile but I use the Samsung TV app not DLNA (otherwise I might as well use Synology DLNA).

Now, having done some searching I turned off subtitles always - which allows the files to play. So it was the subtitles that were forcing transcoding. This brings up a new pain in the newer Samsung TV app - once I switch manually to a subtitle the movie tries to restart, this time transcoded, and that fails. Now there is no (intuitive) way to unselect the subtitle. Not in this version of the app.

However, I read you can specify subtitles in the profiles so that the device can switch between them and not have them transcoded. But since I can’t seem to get the Plex app to respond to profile changes (at least I can’t tell it is responding) then that’s not worked as of yet.

Oh, and some posts mention a need to start and restart the PMS to activate profile changes.

Nonetheless I do appreciate your friendly, helpful attempt at steering in the right direction. For a bit of a tech tinker it was fun but otherwise - what a hassle. Which is fine if that’s the customer it is aimed at. I didn’t think it was.

38

@zdzi It’s the X-Plex-Platform that will give you the name of the Profile. The actual name has the .xml suffix.

Subtitles are tricky. Some Plex clients support them, others don’t. And the ones that support subtitles often impose some rules (such as “external srt files with UTF-8 encoding”). This is something that you must ask in the client forum, not in the server forum. Whenever the Plex client does not supports subtitles natively the video is transcoded.

It’s possible to tell in the profile which subtitle formats are supported by the Plex client without transcoding, but I think that this info is generally correct (you can try to change it to see what happens). What is sometimes not correct are the audio / video codecs.

39

@moody_blue https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/217173/samsung-ue55ks7000-subtitles-are-always-transcoding#latest

seems it’s a known, long standing problem with the subtitles. To the layman, this is nuts, not to support device supported sub formats, and for soooo long. I’ve also taken a look across the various forums to see what other pain points people have. Wow. Plex reliability and complexity has gone downhill. Long standing people will drop Plex as the media player. New ones will get frustrated and probably never return. ‘it’ was definitely better in the past. I’d love to be a fly on the wall to the Plex business model. There must be something very attractive if it offsets all the upset experiences. Can’t see it be sustainable in the long run though, especially when a new kid comes on the block. Pity, there was a time when Plex was awesome.

40

@zdzi Even though I understand you, I don’t like SmartTV’s. They are limited to what they are, and every new generation comes with different specs. It’s hard for any SW company to support them, very often they use proprietary code, not available to others… I always prefer an external box to turn a TV into a smart one, such as a RasPI3, an Odroid C2, or a more powerfull device, such the Nvidia shield. Then, if / when video file standards adoption make a new standard widely used it will be a matter of replacing the box and not the TV. Plex clients (or any other client) tend to be more powerfull on such external boxes than when running in the TV themselves. “CPU power” of a TV should be dedicated to image processing, the less it is dedicated to “strange things” as “computer type” applications the better.

TV manufacturers will try to convince you to replace the TV very often, box manufacturers want to have arguments to justify that their box is in the market. IMHO the $$$ invested on a SmartTV is lost in the medium term. Better acquire a good non-SmartTV and an external box. And Plex excels in that, specially with the Nvidia shield.

Alternatively you may rely on Plex transcoding. But this requires powerfull processors, specially when H264 and HVEC video codecs are used. And NAS users often do not have such fast processors. Personally I don’t think that transcoding is a universal solution. I use it exclusively for small bitrates in order to not exhaust the CPU capacity of my NAS, and I never use it for concerts because I need chapter navigation (which is lost during transcoding process).

41

I would like to jump in as a long time digital video fanatic…I have dealt with all kinds of conversion needs over the years but feel the need to draw out that this app markets itself to the “layman”, but requires much upfront homework for a standard home user. I get so many calls from friends as to “why is this happening”.

Kodi at least advertises itself for what it is, not the “hey, check this out… we can magically do this for you” first message of plex. its a nice application, but it is marketed toward the non-tech user.

Bottom line…plex could pass the signal without conversion to a TV that handles the codec… it just doesn’t. One day someone will and will provide the media organizational service that most people with a NAS are simply looking for so that ordinary users aren’t required to interface with arrogant knuckleheads who talk down to them.

I find humor in envisioning the guy you talk down to may have just performed open heart surgery that day and this fun, but rather meaningless stuff is merely an app that caught their eye. just saying…

42

Thanks for all the information. Very useful thread.

I have been building a media server on a QNAP 109 for years and all my media plays on just about anything. Find file on server and play. I then move files to bigger Synology and installed Plex inc TV.

Apart from many other things, when I record a programme it does not play back the MPEG ts file because not powerful enough to transcode (216j). If I then find the file in Kodi it plays perfectly from server in almost ant application. It does not need transcoding cos my PC tablet does have necessary codecs.

Plex, unlike Kodi and despite being paid for is, if I understand right, missing the codecs which are needed to watch recorded programs in their native formats. It saves as ts but cannot play them natively if you know what I mean. Perhaps it can save on “licencing” codecs by trancoding everything?

It is being suggested that I transcode in advance all files I want to watch on Plex (and away from home which is why I got it). When I see Kodi or VLC happily streaming my recording, I have to ask if this cannot be fixed instead.

Thanks

43

Given up on Plex, not even intentionally. All this palaver pushed me to look again at the Synology app and it does the job with no fuss. A Kodi experiment showed the same. Haven’t needed Plex and can’t see a return to it anytime soon.

btw this is what happens when one treats one’s customers casually. and they tell their friends and …

44

HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE? I have windows 10… Latest Chrome version… and latest Edge…
Try to play any video in plex on Chrome I get error" The server is not powerful enough to convert video"
BUT ON Edge everything is working FINE…
WHY HOW?
Please help.

Tnx

46

Alright so all of you guys who suddenly feel a bad itch whenever someone tries to blames the mighty PLEX app, answer me this.

I have a Lenovo Tab 3 Pro Android tablet and a ZTE Spro 2 Android tablet/projector/hotspot.

Lenovo tablet running Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow and ZTE projector running 4.4.4 KitKat.
Just to be clear, ZTE projector is NOT and Android TV device. It’s a full fledged Android device.

I’m not going to list their processor models because it doesn’t matter. Why not? In a moment.

I have synced a lot of TV Shows and Movies on 128GB memory card on my Lenovo tablet and I usually watch media on it directly. When I try to stream synced media to Chromecast it works flawlessly.

When I bought ZTE device, I tried streaming synced media in Lenovo tablet to ZTE projector but it always failed giving that eye-soothing error “This server is not powerful enough to convert video”.

I started fiddling around with settings on both devices in the Quality section and Advanced/Player section. After 15 minutes of fiddling and rebooting Plex apps on both devices and sometimes even rebooting both devices, I was successfully able to play any media synced on Lenovo Tablet flawlessly. I watched several movies and several episodes of different TV Shows and I was happy and content with my life.

But one day out of nowhere, it stopped working. No matter what settings I change, how many times I reboot the apps or devices, now that glorious and Plex crown-jewel server-is-not-powerful-enough error has became a part of my life. Now that the media has actually streamed once, processor models, codec types, my mental health, none of these matters. I’ve even tried clearing Data for Plex app on ZTE device but it’s not helping. I’m NOT going to clear data on Lenovo device just to lose all synced media.

During this period, obviously many Plex updates were installed on both devices. No other settings was changed. No codecs were messed with. So if a peasant like me, just for this one time, blame the glorious Plex app for this issue, am I doing this big of a sin?

#IAmHumanToo

P.S. I’m unable to change “Audio Passthrough” settings in Avanced/Player tab. Whenever I return to settings menu, it becomes Disabled by itself. Not sure why this is happening.
And all of ya’ll who never had any problem playing from Plex in there life and are living a happy and satisfied life, please do not answer to this post. Leave it for those who have either dealt with such problems or actually have useful information. Fingers crossed. Thanks in advance guys.

47

May I ask what merit discussion regarding Android has in the Synology forum?

I kindly ask all who constructively participate in this thread to stay on topic and any others, in the absence of useful contribution, to refrain from commenting

48

I’d question if you followed the request you yourself give about commenting in the absence of useful contribution.

I believe there is merit in the last post. Evidence of people speaking out of a solution that used to work that no longer does despite no changes on user side. Warning of a solution that’s not as consumer friendly as once was or is made out to be.

Warning of itch behaviour should there be any criticism and being prophetic.

49

I do NOT mind folks speaking out in any way. I

Please understand what my job is? I am responsible for support. When a thread starts out as a sincere request for help on a particular platform, key point here being PMS on Synology NAS units, then wanders far off topic and discusses such things as Android, Kodi, and QNAP in that very same thread, I have to ask where the thread is going.

  1. Has the original issue been resolved?
  2. Has the original issue been overrun by off-topic posts?
  3. Does the thread serve any useful support purpose or has it become a Let’s vent here thread.

This is the reason for my post and inquiry.

50

I was searching for a solution to the genuine problem I had (still have) with a service I have heavily paid for. I came accross this post where some people appeared to be talking about the same issue and I thought that this might be a place where I might get an answer. Disappointment aside, I did not know this thread belonged to Synology devices and I truly apologize for igniting a commotion here.

53

Wow! Took you a whole day Trumpy. God I’m not even gonna say anything.

54

Maybe I’m overworked; maybe I’m still half asleep; maybe I’m just a curmudgeon but I can’t seem to discern humor from sarcasm from anything else.

Unless legitimate reasons to keep this thread open are presented in the next 24 hours, this thread will be closed in favor of a fresh start in the appropriate forum(s) at that time.

Sound like a viable plan?

55

The thread has valuable info for people searching on same issue, not limited to: plex doesn’t let the device play the file (pass through) and requests transcoding where other solutions for media streaming/playing play the same media on the same device from the same server ; plex used to allow this but then something changed in the app; plex enthusiasts are twitchy to any criticism of the app so future customers should be aware of that for future issues.

Then again Herr trumpy says you (plural) make the rules so we just listen, follow. Ja Wohl!

56

Thanks for that. I will do whatever it takes to copy / split out those pieces of information which are valuable. If those pieces are generally applicable to other situations & devices, why don’t we put them in a more visible location so more can benefit.

@zdzi While I do see your humor, is that really necessary? While you may think it’s funny, it has a considerably more personal resonance with me and, I’m certain, with others as well. Maybe we can keep the maturity level a few notches higher?