Running the latest server version and the latest apps for Mac and Windows.
I have some 4K HVEC HDR files that I want to play back. Long and short, they won’t, even on a wired connection in my home. They stutter like mad and audio cuts out after a few minutes. Very weird. They are not being set to transcode, and are only 17mbps according to Plex.
I had Plex optimize (convert) to “original quality”. It resulted in a 56 (holy bjesus) mbps file that played fine. But all the colors were washed out, it looked awful. No contrast at all.
I also noticed that having the server transcode to 20mbps 1080P high resulted in normal colors (meaning tone remapping was working) but stuttered as well!! 1080P medium resulted in flat colors and fine playback.
What is going on here?!
I tried with hardware transcoding on and off. Made no difference. I have a dedicated GPU and a QS capable Intel CPU. Really only sped up my conversions when I made the optimized versions (which were huge and had no contrast).
Why does 1080P high work with color, and medium not? Why does 1080P high stutter the same way as 4K HDR?!
There is currently no support for transcoding HDR to SDR in Plex.
You can only play those files on clients which support them in their original format.
And of course the computational effort to transcode 4K HEVC is even higher, so stuttering is expected if the server cpu doesn’t have hardware transcoding support.
I have hardware transcode support. I have plex pass, a GTX 1060 6GB and an i5-4590S. Hardware transcode is enabled.
It doesn’t explain why a LOWER (17mbps) 4K HVEC file stutters, while a converted version at 56mbps does not, despite both being 4k. Why would the non-optimized file stutter when being played at original quality?!
If there is no HDR transcode support, then how come tone mapping (meaning colors look fine) works when 1080P 20MBPS is selected, but as soon as I drop the quality further the colors go flat?
The Mac client I am using has the same issue, though I don’t have that laptop with me to check the version.
I don’t think I have separate audio tracks for these files – should I run them through some conversion software? If so, what?
Some user mentioned disabling direct play but I think that might cause the tone remapping issue with HDR content (everything looks like its de-saturated).
Is there any way I can roll back to an older player? I am pretty certain this is the issue with playback, it has to be EAC3 since all other files play fine.
Edit: It is a very weird issue – the first 30 seconds or so will play with intense stuttering, then playback stops entirely.
Aaaaand another weird edit – it seems like it has something to do with network streaming. I have plenty of bandwidth (wired gigabit) but I tried downloading the Plex Player for Windows on the server locally. 4K EAC3 played fine there. So why is remote (even on local network) the issue? It shouldn’t be transcoding, I have direct play enabled. The server also has enough horsepower to drive a transcode if need be, I’m not seeing GPU usage over 30% and CPU at 40% when doing a 4k transcode.
Weird…
I have noticed the Plex desktop app itself seems laggy on my laptop – the interface stutters. Is this somehow an issue with my installation? It is on a quad core 8 thread Xeon based laptop with 32gb of ram and a Quadro – I kinda doubt the laptop is struggling to keep up xD
