Still no support for this, it’s just incredibly disappointing. Jellyfin added this in 2019 (experimental), and 2020 more officially. It’s been over 2 years, and Plex still doesn’t have this very basic functionality.
Please fix this, at this point it’s not a feature request, it’s a core support issue.
No 2022 update from the Plex team about this subject ?
No proper ipv6, hevc encoding and av1…
With more recent dedicated HEVC transcoding on Apple Silicon providing HEVC x265 encodes that are simultaneously faster, higher quality and with much smaller files sizes than the h.264 comparator, I cannot fathom why Plex does not include it at all - it should be the default.
Added my vote.
4 posts were split to a new topic: Apple Silicon HEVC Encoding
this request is kinda stupid if you want to all video to be transcode to hevc/x265. this is like putting your server to encoding videos. lol.
i dont know the purpose why would you want this? dont tell me less file size? gtfoh. plex is not handbrake that would do all the encoding for you for your plex downloads.
@esmarq - The clue is in the name… HEVC ( High Efficiency Video Coding)
More and more people are using HEVC nowadays, and what is actually stupid, is Plex transcoding an HEVC video to x264 which is obviously less efficient.
x265 is “generally speaking” twice as efficient as x264, which also equates to the same quality at half the size / half the bitrate.
And so if Plex could transcode to x265, you could give your remote users roughly twice the quality, or inversely, use half the bandwidth.
You’re right, it doesn’t make sense to recompress and save already-compressed files.
Sometimes on-the-fly transcoding is useful, and HEVC/H.265 can produce streams that require perhaps 1/3 less bandwidth, or have somewhat higher quality, compared with AVC/H.264.
When using a modern accelerator, there’s little downside to HEVC over AVC. The accelerator means it will be fast enough, and Nvidia and Intel’s implementations of HEVC are relatively better than their AVC output.
I’m guessing the reason Plex hasn’t done so yet is that AVC already works everywhere, is “good enough” (by some definition), and Plex must continue to support AVC for many devices. Adding HEVC (and there is a similar thread for AV1) will multiply the amount of support and testing required. HEVC is also an absolute snake-pit of licensing.
i would not deny your claim, but its the plex server is doing all the work when youre gonna default the transcode to hevc/x265 when the source of video being transcoded is in different format (x264/h264 to x265/hevc)
remember plex client are not transcoding (even they support hevc). this just gonna fk everything up for plex server owners who have tons of h264/x264 media when their shtt get transcode now to hevc/x265.
And the hell your talking about everyone is now on hevc/x265. h264/x264 has become new norm for average users choice of media. It has just replace xvid and divx and is widely used now in the world and every device has supported. And lets not included the third world… theyre format still avi and still adapting h264/x264.
@esmarq I don’t think you need to worry -
Who said anything about defaulting it to hevc / x265 ?
It wouldn’t be defaulted or forced… If and when this is implemented [and I believe it WILL inevitably happen one day], it will likely be an option, a switch, a choice.
And besides, some of the modern CPU’s that now use QSV can transcode to x265 like a breeze!.. Doesn’t even touch the CPU for the video transcode (although it would still use the CPU for the audio transcode)
Not quite sure why you think this is gonna screw anything up!.. I really cannot think of any technical reason that would make this happen.
Um… Don’t think I actually said that, so please don’t put words in my mouth. What I actually said was…
And lets not forget that when it comes to 4K, x265 is indeed the the norm… Why? Because it’s more efficient!
This really isn’t the case… I have been converting my content to x265 for around 5 to 6 years now, and I’m certainly not the only one, and as I said previously, x265 is the default codec for 4K.
Oh… And just added my vote 
Just added my vote as well.
As an option in Settings, I can enable for my remote users who are tied down by slow connections. Allowing them to stream at a higher res but with lower bandwidth needs. Also means my upload which is not the best can support more users.
When I have a 40mbps file and my friend has a 4mbps connection to me, why would he want that to be a 1080p HEVC version instead of a 720p AVC version? That would be crazy, right?
Adding my vote to this as well. I just recently started using Tdarr to transcode my library all to HEVC to save disk space and because nowadays almost every client can do HEVC easily. Everything that connects to my Plex server can natively. Being able to do to live transcoding to HEVC would be really handy for many reasons.
To add to this, just about any remotely modern CPUs and GPUs these days can also transcode HEVC just fine. My Plex server has an old GTX 950 in it that has no problems both decoding and encoding HEVC. In fact that’s what Tdarr is using currently and is quickly blowing through my library at 3 simultaneous encodes all going faster than real time for most of my files.
I did this as well, and the result is, I now don’t have to buy more storage capacity, my collection is 50% the size now, the quality is perfectly fine, I’m happy with it and now all new videos are encoded in HEVC first.
But what annoys me is when I watch remotely, it transcodes everything back up to H264, with higher bitrate and lower quality, would be nice it if just direct streams my H265 encodes.
This is still 100% needed, if there was any other directly competing platform that had better hardware support, I would switch.
Can’t you setup a VPN at home?
I must be missing something but how does that help ?
If there was a transcode forced by PMS seeing a WAN connection, then attaching to your VPN makes PMS see a LAN connection. So I’m curious if that helps because I don’t understand why the user is seeing a transcode only on remotes.
It is how PMS remote works (specifically with HEVC).
