Would it be difficult to include the transcode reason in the dashboard display of streams? It’s difficult to find in the logs (well, from my perspective it’s not possible because it’s not in there). Maybe providing a document with directions on how to do so would be helpful.
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It tells you if it’s transcoding the video and/or the audio plus if subtitles are on - what more are you looking for? If the display doesn’t support the source, or the audio chain, it’ll transcode. Or obviously the player if it’s in between. Or if a client has the convert to stereo from multichannel on. Or audio settings hard selected to a non supported option.
You need to enable “debug” logging (but NOT “verbose”) in the server settings.
Then stop and restart the server.
Play something for ~1 minute.
Fetch the server logs.
In the file Plex Media Server.log look for lines which have MDE: at the beginning. These and the surrounding lines are of interest, if you want to find out why something is transcoding.
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Thanks for the reminder about Debug logging.
I’ve used the logs to find out the cause before, but still propose this be surfaced in some way through a client application. Currently the dashboard provides a confusing lack of detail.
I understand the causes of transcoding, but when I see the dashboard report a video transcode from H264 1080p to H264 480p I become curious of the cause. These are situations where there’s obviously something wrong somewhere rather than a reaction to resource contention, or an incompatibility. No one is configuring their client app to throttle to 480p, either. I thought it’d be a popular feature request to not have to dig into logs for a cause.
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The reasons can be complex, and are sometimes the result of several circumstances, which are not easily summarized.
In your example case above, I’d look for the connection type. It will probably at least be “remote”, and likely also “indirect”.
The restriction to SD sounds an awful lot like the 1mbps bandwidth limit for Plex relay connections.
Tautulli sometimes shows a little bit more details, you might wanna try it.
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