TV settings for better 480p display

General Discussions
1

Hello everyone,

I know this subject has been touched a lot in the past but since I am new to Plex, I would like some input on my specific situation.

I ripped my DVD collection (both movies and tv series) and it is obviously in 480p. When I watched the DVD, my PS4 did the upscaling and the image was pretty good considering it was DVD. Now through Plex, it’s watchable but with a noticeable drop in quality. My content is direct stream as I have my media in MKV container. My tv is a bit old, late 2000s, early 2010s so I am not sure about it having a built-in upscaler, so no help there (I didn’t find anything online on the subject. LG 42LK450 if that helps).

My question is, based on your experience, what kind of picture settings I should use on my tv in terms of brightness, colors, etc., that I could use to make my 480p DVDrip look better?

Would having my media in MP4 for direct play significantly improve the quality?

Thanks!

2

If Plex is transcoding a 480p video stream its being destroyed. 720x400 is what you’re getting.

Direct play or the highway.

3

@JuiceWSA said:
If Plex is transcoding a 480p video stream its being destroyed. 720x400 is what you’re getting.

Direct play or the highway.

What I don’t understand is that the video feed is transcoding but the video is already h264. Is it because it’s an MKV? I know MP4 is the best option but I often have two languages and some subtitles for my media and MKV is just easier for that.

4

MP4 isn’t the best option - unless you have devices that won’t direct play MKVs. The TV has very little to do with the whole deal, unless you’re running an old Plex App that may be installed on it.

Image based subs like ASS, PGS, Other are more than likely going to need ‘burning in’ (transcoding) while Text Based Subs (UTF-8) are likely to Direct Play.

When that annoying H.264 to H.264 message comes up in ‘Now Playing’ - you don’t know what’s happening - unless it specifically says: Direct Play. Depending on your Devices, seeing what the stream is actually doing may be better in the Device. An Android Device, for instance, has a very nice ‘Display Information’ feature (basically it’s only redeeming value) that when enabled, will inform you exactly what is happening and tell you why something is transcoding. A Roku is a little less informative, but you can see the condition of the streams.

Since Plex Development sees very little need to let the user know what the stream is actually doing in ‘Now Playing’ and if you aren’t using an Android App, or a Roku, digging tirelessly through logs is the only way to reveal exactly what is going on… unfortunately.

At my house I use Plex Media Player, Roku and AFTVs (that get very little use, except troubleshooting via Display Information), due to there being no real AFTV Design Team. Whatever the Android Team vomits out is what the AFTV gets and seeing as how in SIX YEARS Plex hasn’t been able to develop a working Plex App for an AFTV, mine doesn’t see much Plex Use - if any.

I do create ALL the material - or re-create it, if it won’t Direct Play - so ALL my 720x480 material Direct Plays at 480p, not 400p and looks pretty good, considering it’s only 480p, but there’s nothing wrong with a good strong 480p video stream. There’s a LOT wrong with a 400p video stream, but unfortunately Plex doesn’t know how to program their transcoder.

If it won’t Direct Play - it will by the time I’m done with it and 480p stuff MUST Direct Play, or Plex will annihilate it.

Handbrake Guide in my sig - in case you need it.

5

@JuiceWSA said:
MP4 isn’t the best option - unless you have devices that won’t direct play MKVs. The TV has very little to do with the whole deal, unless you’re running an old Plex App that may be installed on it.

Image based subs like ASS, PGS, Other are more than likely going to need ‘burning in’ (transcoding) while Text Based Subs (UTF-8) are likely to Direct Play.

When that annoying H.264 to H.264 message comes up in ‘Now Playing’ - you don’t know what’s happening - unless it specifically says: Direct Play. Depending on your Devices, seeing what the stream is actually doing may be better in the Device. An Android Device, for instance, has a very nice ‘Display Information’ feature (basically it’s only redeeming value) that when enabled, will inform you exactly what is happening and tell you why something is transcoding. A Roku is a little less informative, but you can see the condition of the streams.

Since Plex Development sees very little need to let the user know what the stream is actually doing in ‘Now Playing’ and if you aren’t using an Android App, or a Roku, digging tirelessly through logs is the only way to reveal exactly what is going on… unfortunately.

At my house I use Plex Media Player, Roku and AFTVs (that get very little use, except troubleshooting via Display Information), due to there being no real AFTV Design Team. Whatever the Android Team vomits out is what the AFTV gets and seeing as how in SIX YEARS Plex hasn’t been able to develop a working Plex App for an AFTV, mine doesn’t see much Plex Use - if any.

I do create ALL the material - or re-create it, if it won’t Direct Play - so ALL my 720x480 material Direct Plays at 480p, not 400p and looks pretty good, considering it’s only 480p, but there’s nothing wrong with a good strong 480p video stream. There’s a LOT wrong with a 400p video stream, but unfortunately Plex doesn’t know how to program their transcoder.

If it won’t Direct Play - it will by the time I’m done with it and 480p stuff MUST Direct Play, or Plex will annihilate it.

Handbrake Guide in my sig - in case you need it.

Thanks, that helps a lot! I guess my PS4 cannot Direct Play MKV files and Plex has to transcode them, hence the drop in quality. I just don’t get the “H.264 to H.264”. I know it’s also an issue with IOS devices and frankly, it’s a real pain in the a**. I don’t see myself recreate all my 480p material through Handbrake as I must have well over 1,000 hours of 480p content. I guess I got too used to HD and it ruined me for 480p!

6

H.264 to H.264 is probably just a remux of the container. If it’s not using up any system resources (heating up the CPU), that’s probably what is happening. It’s a shame Plex doesn’t seem interested in revealing to users what Plex is doing to their files - and why it’s doing it - without digging through logs to find out.

If you wanted to remux files into a new container - that’s an easy process - and no, Handbrake won’t help.

Xmedia Recode is the tool for that job:
https://www.xmedia-recode.de/en/download.html

Select new container type
Copy Video
Copy Audio
Happens fast… a few minutes. You could do many files at once in a queue in no time at all.

You can also fiddle with audio streams, convert subtitle formats, etc.

7

@JF_Lefebvre said:
I ripped my DVD collection (both movies and tv series) and it is obviously in 480p. When I watched the DVD, my PS4 did the upscaling and the image was pretty good considering it was DVD. Now through Plex, it’s watchable but with a noticeable drop in quality. My content is direct stream as I have my media in MKV container. My tv is a bit old, late 2000s, early 2010s so I am not sure about it having a built-in upscaler, so no help there (I didn’t find anything online on the subject. LG 42LK450 if that helps).
How did you RIP your collection? What software did you use?
What codecs (video and audio) are used in the produced files?

Would having my media in MP4 for direct play significantly improve the quality?
Can’t say it will improve quality per say but it will stop Plex from further destroying/downgraded the video.
If ripped correctly it should look darn near exactly as how it would have coming straight from the DVD player.

Ideally, you want to convert the media to a format that will direct play while not destorying or removing what little info is there to begin with.

I haven’t ripped a DVD in a long time but I’d just use MakeMKV selecting tracks I want, then run it through my scripts or HandBrake to convert the video and audio to a direct streaming format. I personally prefer MP4 containers over MKV but neither container affects quality UNLESS it causes a transcode to happen. Either MKV or MP4 is fine for DVD use and you can remux back and forth with ZERO loss of quality anyway so this doesn’t matter.

Making sure you use a codec for both video and audio is key to avoid transcoding.

8

@JuiceWSA said:
H.264 to H.264 is probably just a remux of the container. If it’s not using up any system resources (heating up the CPU), that’s probably what is happening. It’s a shame Plex doesn’t seem interested in revealing to users what Plex is doing to their files - and why it’s doing it - without digging through logs to find out.

If you wanted to remux files into a new container - that’s an easy process - and no, Handbrake won’t help.

Xmedia Recode is the tool for that job:
https://www.xmedia-recode.de/en/download.html

Select new container type
Copy Video
Copy Audio
Happens fast… a few minutes. You could do many files at once in a queue in no time at all.

You can also fiddle with audio streams, convert subtitle formats, etc.

Do you know if the software works for Mac? My PMS is on a small HTPC but I do all my ripping and converting from my Macbook. If it works, I will definitely have a look!

9

@cayars said:

@JF_Lefebvre said:
I ripped my DVD collection (both movies and tv series) and it is obviously in 480p. When I watched the DVD, my PS4 did the upscaling and the image was pretty good considering it was DVD. Now through Plex, it’s watchable but with a noticeable drop in quality. My content is direct stream as I have my media in MKV container. My tv is a bit old, late 2000s, early 2010s so I am not sure about it having a built-in upscaler, so no help there (I didn’t find anything online on the subject. LG 42LK450 if that helps).
How did you RIP your collection? What software did you use?
What codecs (video and audio) are used in the produced files?

Would having my media in MP4 for direct play significantly improve the quality?
Can’t say it will improve quality per say but it will stop Plex from further destroying/downgraded the video.
If ripped correctly it should look darn near exactly as how it would have coming straight from the DVD player.

Ideally, you want to convert the media to a format that will direct play while not destorying or removing what little info is there to begin with.

I haven’t ripped a DVD in a long time but I’d just use MakeMKV selecting tracks I want, then run it through my scripts or HandBrake to convert the video and audio to a direct streaming format. I personally prefer MP4 containers over MKV but neither container affects quality UNLESS it causes a transcode to happen. Either MKV or MP4 is fine for DVD use and you can remux back and forth with ZERO loss of quality anyway so this doesn’t matter.

Making sure you use a codec for both video and audio is key to avoid transcoding.

I didn’t use Handbrake to rip my collection. When I started that project a while ago, I didn’t know about it (unfortunately!), so I use ByteCopy to rip my DVD in lossless files, than I compressed them using Wondershare Video Converter. It was a real hassle, especially now that I use Handbrake and it’s so much more effective.

The codecs are H.264 for video (with the standard 856x480 resolution) and AAC for audio. So technically, shouldn’t it direct play? Would the H.264 to H.264 transcoding be due to my PS4 not supporting MKV? (Sorry if they are dumb questions, I’m pretty new to this). If the transcoding happens because my Plex client does not support the container, is there any device that would support MKV for Direct Play? Like I said in my original post, I sometimes have two languages for my movies and some subtitles and having separate files for each is just annoying in my folders (yes, I’m like that!).

10

I’m not a MAC guy and never have been. I really have no idea what software to recommend for the ripping but HB will work for the conversions.

What I would check is to make sure the client doesn’t have a bitrate limit which would force transcoding regardless of what software created it.

But to answer your question, if done correctly you should not be transcoding H.264 to H.264 as that’s just wasteful and won’t help PQ (picture quality) one bit. AAC should be fine as well assuming you are using normal bitrates.

Try and play a file that causes this transcoding. Let it play about one minute then cancel he playback. Upload the zipfile of log files (ask if you need help with this) and we can take a look to see what the reason is Plex is transcoding. Figuring out the reason this is happening is step 1. :slight_smile:

Carlo