This is the companion discussion thread for
Transcoder Upgrade Forum Preview
Please keep non-failure / bug reports confined to this thread.
Posts will be moved here from the primary thread as needed.
Hi, thanks for the builds!
I’m running the Windows x64 Build, trying to improve the handling of Live TV from my DVB-T2 tuner.
My hardware is pretty low power, but capable of playing HEVC with hardware decoding. When I start a TV channel, Plex always wants to transcode. On the official build this would start but playback is very choppy. With this experimental build it does not even start.
I actually would prefer it that there is no transcoding of the HEVC video stream on Live TV happening.
In the log I found:
no direct play video profile exists for hls/mpegts/hevc
avoiding video remux due to live stream
no remuxable profile found, so video stream will be transcoded
Is there any way to enable direct play for the video stream in this case?
I can upload logs if you want.
The new IOS/Android clients don’t direct play MPEG2. Make sure to turn off HEVC encoding for non-HEVC Sources in the server transcoder settings.
Probably also want to ensure it is disabled for recordings.
It shouldn’t be necessary to Modify HEVC transcoding on the server side unless you are running an early version of the New Experience clients. 2025.17 and later should force an h264 transcode for LiveTV regardless of this setting.
From the OP:
No new features, but paving the road for more (e.g. hw transcoding for more architectures…)
since this is testing stage its technically usefull to switch it to 7.x series if its already made for easy upgrade in future (if i understand that correctly in a developer comment). otherwise it needs to be tested again in future and it will a never ending story and this will finally bring av1 transcoding support which is part of the 7.x series which is a demand of alot of users. there is a patch for 6.1 for av1 support but this will just mess up the code again. another option is that the patches are provided to follow the gpl license. so users can decide if they compile it by themself which also solves the license problems with some codecs. this may result in unofficial transcoder builds which are open to the public on github, but brings a huge benefit to plex users at the end
This is a Forum Preview (final test) of the FFMPEG 4.1 → FFMPEG 6.1 upgrade prior to putting it into production use.
As previously stated, all the built-in Dolby features would need be ripped out from 7.x due to our current licensing.
What users might do is significantly different from what for-profit corporations do.
Dolby will take legal action if Plex violates the existing licensing in any manner.
yes and the trick here is to make it full opensource by gpl license requirements. provide the source for self compiling. like ffmpeg is doing it. in that way you cannot get into legal troubles. in fact you are just providing a patch on top of ffmpeg to make the plex transcoder out of it. thats it. what features are compiled in is the choice of the person who runs the configure script and its not your responsibility if someone downloads ffmpeg, applies your patch and compiles it by himself in a way he wants it
Please check <PMS install dir>/resources/License file
you dont need to show me the buch of licenses which are included in plex. i gave you a advise. so this was not a proper answer. you do provide the sourcecode of the ffmpeg sourcecode as required by the gpl, but you do not provide the modifications. this is a violation of the license. but i’m not here to blame you for that ignorance of the license you use. i just told you whats best how to handle it in favor of usability for all users. if you modifiy a sourcecode which is licenced under gpl you need to provide under no circumstance the modifications you made to that code.
If you read the file, you will see it contains a link to our source code for download!
wget https://downloads.plex.tv/ffmpeg-source/plex-media-server-ffmpeg-gpl-10ae7f268d.tar.gz
–2025-07-08 17:05:40-- https://downloads.plex.tv/ffmpeg-source/plex-media-server-ffmpeg-gpl-10ae7f268d.tar.gz
Resolving downloads.plex.tv (downloads.plex.tv)… 2606:4700:4400::ac40:97cd, 2606:4700:4400::6812:2433, 172.64.151.205, …
Connecting to downloads.plex.tv (downloads.plex.tv)|2606:4700:4400::ac40:97cd|:443… connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response… 403 Forbidden
2025-07-08 17:05:40 ERROR 403: Forbidden.
and by description. it does not contain the modification but just the base of source you are using
Darn, and can sadly confirm that the download link is not avail for public
I have raised this internally
@brainslayer
I have been informed that the link will work when the version get’s released
This is a Preview, and code might change, so we do not provide downloads for preview versions
okay. not really in complicance with the licence, but i’m not the devils advocate
I believe you’re thinking of VVC (H.266). FFMPEG 7.0 is the first version that included an experimental decoder for it, and it was then promoted to stable status in 7.1.
likelly. dont know anymore. wasnt too focused on it
Apologies if this was mentioned already or in another thread,
Does this forum preview transcoder upgrade enabled transcoding with Battlemage (Arc B580)? Specifically through ubuntu 25.04?
Appreciate the info!
