VP9 Direct Play in Plex Web?

Plex Players Desktop Players
1

Server Version#: Linux (docker container) 1.40.5.8921
Player Version#: Plex Web 4.137.1 on M2 MacOS 14.5 Chrome 128.0.6613.85

I’ve seen this come up a couple times in the past and in some of those threads it seems like Plex should be able to direct stream VP9 to web. In my case I have a number of Youtube videos with VP9 video and AAC audio playing over LAN (wired). Tautulli reports “Transcode (VP9 (HW) 1080p H264 (HW) 1080p)” with audio playing directly.

Is this the expected result or should Plex be able to direct play VP9 to web? I’ve noticed that the plex desktop app appears to direct play. My understanding is that the Plex desktop app is in large part a stripped down web browser so I would assume it should be possible in Chrome as well.

2

The user interface is “a website”, that’s correct.

However, the crucial difference is that the desktop app has a dedicated audio/video engine (mpv), whereas the web app uses what’s available in the browser.
The difference in playback support is the main reason why the desktop app exists at all.

3

Sure fair enough but this doesn’t answer my question which is whether Plex web should be able to do VP9 direct streaming. In at least one past thread with a user having similar issues it sounded like it should work (based on a reply from a plex employee).

4

I have also tested this on a Windows 11 desktop in Chrome as well and I also see transcoding there too. Also tested updated Firefox & Safari with similar results.

I’m happy to go and convert everything to HEVC but if VP9 should work (or can work with a small bit of effort) then I’d prefer to not put that already compressed media through another encoding pass.

5

If I play a VP9 video in Chrome under Windows11 I get the dreaded “This server is not powerful enough to convert video.” message…:frowning:

6

I played around with changing/customizing some of the client profiles to try to get it to direct play but that either results in the same message you got (because Plex Web doesn’t appear to support VP9 direct play with the current version) or continues to transcode.

Would love to hear from some Plex folks on this to settle whether it should work (and doesn’t currently) or whether it’s not intended to work in Plex Web at all (or some combination of “it only works with this particular setup”).

1 Like
7

I’d love to get some feedback on this if possible. For now I have been using HEVC but I’d still like to hear something a bit more official. Again my specific question related to VP9 is:

8

I just performed a quick test on macOS 15.1.1 (MacBook Air M2) with Safari 18.1.1 using a VP9 profile 0 file in a webm container. It direct played with no issues. I don’t use Chrome so I didn’t test that, but there doesn’t appear to be a Plex web limitation with direct playing VP9 in general.

I’ll see if I can track down a VP9 profile 2 (10-bit) file to test as well.

[Edit]
I found a 4K VP9 profile 2 file. It also direct played in the environment described above. However, I did need to re-mux this file (using ffmpeg) to webm format before it would do so. (It was originally in an MKV container and required transcoding.)

9

This topic was automatically closed 90 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.