I am a lifetime Plex Pass member, and I am having trouble
Post Android app update, my users and I are having problems. We keep getting a “Unable to determine HEVC profile” message, and content won’t play when this happens.
I went look for a solution and learned I may need to turn on HEVC encoding, and even though I followed the steps I found in the Forums. the option isn’t there.
I am stumped, and could use some help. Please let me know what if anything I haven’t included here in my post to help you help me.
Please start by telling what kind of hardware you are using for your Plex server.
If it’s a PC, please detail which operating system and which type of GPU and CPU are in there.
PS - I would personally be looking for ways to ensure the remote folks are able to direct play without transcode if at all possible. Granted this is often a bandwidth issue, however a 1080p HEVC Main 10 stream for me is about 2 Mbps in direct play.
If you can’t get direct play to be more of a thing, either because the endpoints your watchers are using don’t support HEVC etc OR you can’t allocate enough bandwidth, then Transcode is more a thing and I hope you find a solution.
PS - I’m no expert, however as I understand it HEVC transcode is quite inefficient, especially with HEVC sources, because it is so efficient in the first place. Basically you are squeezing rock out of a stone. Anyone who knows more able to confirm, clarify or totally debunk my thinking?
Inefficient how? In terms of space per CPU use, or bit-rate compared to original? I believe the CPU will be much more utilized to do in-time HEVC encoding, but you should be able to get the same resolution in a lesser bit-rate compared to x.264/AVC.
As for compression of file compared to original, it’s likely to be less efficient than HEVC encoding it yourself ahead of time. However, it’s likely to take longer than the file takes to play to encode it in a small bit-rate, so it’s not viable for in-time encoding. This is why in-time encoding is less bit-rate compressed than it could be otherwise.
I’m more talking about CPU/GPU hurt transcoding from HEVC to HEVC, not bandwidth. I very much notice fan noise, and associated increase in system utilisation on my macStudio with this profile.
It is a PC, I’m running Windows 10 Pro for Workstations. I have an NVIDIA GeForce GTX660 for a CPU and a what looks like a quad core Intel i5-4440 CPU @ 3.10GHz
If that is all you read, I do not understand why you think turning on server-side HEVC transcoding will solve your “HEVC profile” problem.
Background info
When a client asks to play a file on the server, it sends a “profile” to the server that is just a list that indicates what kind of media (video encoding, audio encoding, etc) the client can play. Some clients are low quality, and cannot decode the HEVC codec, which usually requires a beefy CPU.
When the media is in a format or encoding that a client cannot handle, the server then falls back on a universal real-time “transcoding” preset and transforms the media for the client. This preset is usually H.264, because it is easy to be able to transcode media in real-time using that. Only recently, when HEVC real-time encoding has become common and capable, that Plex decided to add an experimental option to have a server change the transcode fallback to using H.265/HEVC.
This is the option you are looking for, and it sounds like your CPU and/or video card is not capable of doing so. Thus, the option is missing, not allowing you to turn this feature on. I do not believe even if you had the option, that it will fix your issue. End background info
So if you cannot enable HEVC encoding, we should tackle the error from a different direction. The next time this error comes up (if you can reproduce it yourself or on demand, that is WAY better), take the server logs and upload them here for someone who can parse them (sorry, not me). The error you get might have more information in the logs that can pin down why anyone gets the error.
