I have several family members that use my PMS. I have had as high as 6 people watching at once and for the most part, with no issues. Every once in a while there are buffering issues. I just noticed 4 people on there right now and 3 of them show to be DIRECT PLAY, and one is transcoding both audio and video. I understand that transcoding uses more CPU, but is there a way that I can help eliminate transcoding by watching the file types that I’m adding to my server? I usually stay with H264 or 265 video and AAC audio (I don’t really understand what these mean). Almost all files I load I first run through Handbrake to add an SRT file for subtitles. I always comvert these to MKV files before putting them on my server. Is there something I’m not doing or doing wrong with this process? I just want to make sure that almost everything I have is able to DIRECT PLAY to avoid buffering. Does that also depend on the type of device that is playing the file? Mostly we use Roku, with a few TV’s and an XBox. Thanks.
Stay away from H265. The maturity isn’t there yet for it to be used widespread. If you are sure that some of your clients can DP it, and there are reasons such as 4K HDR and such, sure - but keep them in a separate library so not all clients will access them.
There are a couple of other stuff you could try. Cayars script tries to create stream friendly files - https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/comment/931888/#Comment_931888 as do Plex own media optmizier https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/214079318-Media-Optimizer-Overview
Another option could be to look into the new HW transcoding if you have a graphics card available on your server. It could help offload the CPU. Though as with H265, it is still early days for it.
