This server is not powerful enough to convert video

Plex Media Server NAS & Devices
1

I have a WD EX2100 NAS with the latest Plex 3.3.1 set up on it. Whenever I try to play a 1080p movie I get the above error message. However if I navigate to the same movie which is stored on my NAS via my Sony TV menu, I can play the movie no problem. How do I fix this?

2

I don’t know the specifics of the WD MyCloud, but I would assume it’s underpowered. The reason the file may work on one device vs. another greatly depends on whether or not Plex needs to transcode a file to get it to play.

Plex Media Server plays the middle man. It looks at your file, and it looks at what formats your client device accepts (TV, Roku, or other). If your file does not match an acceptable format, Plex will attempt to transcode it into something that does. This requires a decent processor, which I suspect the WD doesn’t have.

So, it sounds like you’ve lucked out on one device, and not so much on the other based on the file you’re using. Look up all of your devices and the acceptable native formats they support and look for a match. You can then use Handbrake or a similar program to reformat the file into something more universally acceptable.

3

Thanks for the explanation. It is still unusual that I navigate to the Plex App on my NAS via my Sony Shared Drive menu and it plays fine using the same Plex instance. So I can play movies using Plex navigation via my TV - but cannot use Plex using the Plex App installed on my Android box. The NAS is new with a Marvell ARMADA 385 1.3 GHz dual-core.

How do I ensure Transcoding is ‘turned off’ altogether on Plex as I cannot find an ‘off’ switch?

4

That’s the thing… Transcoding will only happen when it has to. If you had the ability to disable it, the media would simply not play at all on devices where the native file format is unsupported.

I suspect the file format you’re trying to play is simply incompatible with the Android platform. If you could post specs about the file, I’m sure someone could chime in about why it isn’t working.

Also, I could be blowing smoke, and your processor could be fine with transcoding… up to a certain degree. The file itself could have some massive bitrate, or some other factor causing more havoc than we can guess.

You should be able to pull the XML for the file from Plex and post those details here.