Transcode to HEVC/x265

[Scott-M]

I was not referring to 4K content exclusively, but any content encoded in H.265/x265. I was simply commenting that Direct Play of HEVC is not limited to LAN.

But since you are experiencing issues with 4K, you should check out the rules of 4K (specifically rules 1, 2, 8):

[INFO] Plex, 4k, transcoding, and you - aka the rules of 4k

NOTE: for 2022 – Plex has come a long way since this FAQ was originally written, HW transcoding has become more available and more stable, and tone mapping was recently added to address the hdr/sdr color conversion issues. The first 4 ‘rules’ generally are no longer as important as they once were, but may still be a good thing to bear in mind. Dolby Vision, is an entirely other mess. THIS thread/FAQ is NOT about DV. DV work is still in progress, and there are no perfect TV’s or external devic…

If you really need to downscale a 4K video, you should probably look into curating your media (for example using handbrake) to create different file versions instead of making Plex do it on the fly.

To your point of streaming on 4G or Wifi, that’s why I compress an HEVC SD (480x720) version of my Blu Rays. Direct Plays like a charm, and does not require much extra effort.

How does the media server display two qualities of same film?

To answer your question: In the web interface, Plex will indicate how many versions of a film/episode there are on the poster (this is not visible in most apps) If your remote user just clicks Play, Plex will do it’s best to play the file that is most optimized for that remote session. I have had great success with this. Instead of just clicking Play, you can click Play Version, and you can specifically choose which file to play. [image] I use Handbrake to compress an SD version of each Bl…