Server Version#: 4.63.0
Player Version#:8.21.2.27212
I have an NVIDIA shield with a plex server. Server runs just fine locally and remotely. Although I started testing remote access. I have a 1GB upload and 1GB download fiber connection at my home.
I took a 4k movie converted it to a 720P 2.5Mbps optimized for mobile version.
I have my max upload bandwidth set to 4Mbps
The way I tested this was to use a VPN on my fireTV so it appears I am connected from an outside network. I connect to plex on my fireTV now I ran into a couple issues.
Plex does not automatically select the optimized version to play when connecting from outside. Should it since it knows its an external network?
If I manually select the optimized version its still doing HW decode for the video and audio.
This shows up as
720p (H.264) (hw)- 720P (H264)—Transcode (hw)
English (AAC Stereo)-AAC—Transcode
I was not expecting any hardware transcode I was expecting it to just stream the file directly.
Additional settings I have set:
Play smaller videos at original quality
Automatically adjust quality (Beta)
Use hardware-accelerated video encoding
Use hardware acceleration when available
Should I expect the stream to stream directly since it appears the HW transcode is not doing anything different from the original stream?
So with some additional fidgeting I got this to work the way I expected. It just does not do it completely the way one might expect.
If I go into the player settings I had remote streaming quality set to 2Mbps. Since The optimized version was encoded at 2.5Mbps it was transcoding down to 1.2Mbps (480p). User error so this makes sense.
I set remote streaming to maximum quality in the player and now it will send the direct 720 2.5Mbps stream as direct stream.
It still will not pick up the optimized for mobile version automatically this has to be manually selected. Seems like some additional negotiation could occur with the server. Client could request highest quality. Server could respond back to client with the maximum bandwidth allowed. If a lower quality exists that matches the maximum upload bandwidth select the lower quality version as direct stream… I’m sure I over simplified it, but seems doable?
On my local network I have 1Gbps ethernet connected to the same FireTV. FireTV is limited to 100Mbps on ethernet. Speed test results are around 90Mbps. No VPN so streaming locally.
The TV connected to this FireTV is a 1080P Plasma TV. What I would expect here is that if I selected a 4k stream the fireTV would do the transcoding internally since it supports 4K streams the TV supports 1080.
What happens is that if on the player settings (fireTV) I have “adjust video quality automatically” set to OFF. I get an error when it tries to play. If I switch “adjust video quality automatically” to ON it will play but transcodes to 720P. This is confirmed by checking the dashboard on the server side. 4K (HEVC Main 10 HDR) (hw) - 720 (H264)—Transcode (hw). Local streaming is set to maximum.
Now the weird part. While its playing if I go to the HD button and select play original stream it grabs the 4k stream and plays it just fine. This is confirmed by checking the server dashboard. It is still transcoding but what I see is 4K (HEVC Main 10 HDR) (hw) - 4K (H264)—Transcode (hw)
I expect this because my movies are encoded in H.265 so its converting to H.264 makes sense. What does not make sense is why it will not play at all if “adjust video quality automatically” is OFF. And then why is it choosing 720P instead of the 4K stream when “adjust video quality automatically” is set to ON.
What I am trying to accomplish here is to do the least amount of transcoding on the server side when other equipment is capable of streaming the content and doing the transcoding.
ok I think I figured this one out too, kinda. It appears to be an issue with the audio stream and the Plex player. This is a 2 gen FireTV. I’m not sure what audio codecs it supports.
I typically encode my files MKV h.265
I pass through the TrueHD version of the audio as well as the AC3 Dolby digital stream
So it appears if in the FireTV audio setting you have it set to dolby digital plus automatic. Then for some reason its always going to transcode and cause the issues above. Now If I select dolby digital plus over HDMI then it appears to work as expected. If I select a 4k movie it transcodes the 4k video to 4k video because the fireTV does not support TrueHD audio so it converts it to AC3. But it still selected the correct video which is less transcoding work so 1/2 way there. Now if I go in and select the AC3 audio file I get direct play video and direct play audio exactly what I wanted no transcoding by the server.
My denon reciever however sees the audio stream out of the fireTV as 2 channel PCM. Doh! at least direct stream is working. I think the issue is the FireTV Plex player is very buggy.
