Transcode to optimize bandwidth/quality (i.e. x265 if it works)

[Cafe_Diem]

Two reasons.

1. Without hardware acceleration, real-time transcoding to h.265 is a big challenge on the CPU. Even on a reasonably high-end processor, you wouldn’t get many transcodes.

2. Newer graphics hardware can handle accelerated encoding to h.265, which would surely allow for more simultaneous encodes (though I don’t know how many). Plex devs haven’t seen this feature as a priority in previous threads about the topic. You can see for yourself right here:

Transcode to HEVC/x265

Plex doesn’t give roadmaps but transcoding to HEVC doesn’t make much sense, does it? HEVC is extremely hard to decode as it is. Encoding to HEVC is even harder. If the source video only has 2 Mbps of video, encoding to HEVC buys nothing … Bits lost cannot be reinvented by encoding to HEVC.