Starting today, I’m noticing a strange issue with the Plex Web client. No matter which video I try to play, it always triggers transcoding—even though I have the playback quality explicitly set to “Original.” This behavior is new; everything used to direct play just fine.
What’s even stranger is that this only happens on the web client. When I use the Plex app on my TV, iPhone, or iPad, everything plays via direct play without any transcoding.
Is anyone else experiencing this? Could this be due to a recent update or change in the web client?
Just to clarify, the issue started this morning without any changes on my end. I even tried reconfiguring everything from scratch, but the problem persists.
What’s puzzling is that until yesterday, everything played perfectly fine via the web client using direct play. Now, every single video triggers transcoding, even with playback quality set to “Original.”
Also, on some devices outside my LAN, I’ve noticed that certain content starts transcoding automatically—even when “Original” is selected.
Specifically, the client (tv/web) is now performing Direct Stream instead of Direct Play, and in many cases it transcodes either the audio, the video, or both, failing to reproduce the content.
I just tried a h264, mp4, and hevc in Firefox and none of them are transcoding for me.
To help figure it out, you probably want to share what browser you are using, as well as turning on debug leveling, reproducing it, then copy and paste the logs into a text file and upload them. Maybe your server logs too. https://app.plex.tv/desktop/#!/settings/web/debug
Refresh the web app in your browser, instead of recycling an old tab that wa sloaded ages ago.
This is very much recommended after updating the server software.
After many tests and attempts—including clearing the cache and fully reconfiguring everything—I’ve now hit the certificate request limit. Here’s the log excerpt:
May 13, 2025 08:44:18.338 [140428520958776] ERROR - CERT: Error acquiring new certificate: Failed to upload CSR: 429, <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<errors>
<error code="1003" message="API rate limit exceeded" status="429"/>
</errors>
Could you please reset my certificate so I can start from a clean state? That way, I can also collect and share fresh logs from both the client and server sides.
I’ve noticed the same problem, also just started. Files that previously direct-played without issue are now triggering transcoding.
This is also happening on an AppleTV 4K - when it starts playing (transcoded) I can manually change the quality to “original” and it continues playing just fine without transcoding.
Could this be related to ios18.5 that just dropped yesterday? (Edit - yes it is!)
iPad w/ 18.5 - web player transcodes (on files that it didn’t used to), native app does not.
AppleTV w/ 18.5 - plex app transcodes on files it previously didn’t used to, and will still direct-play original when manually forced.
No server-side changes.
Edit: on an AppleTV that is still at 18.4.1, the same test files direct-play perfectly.
Edit: I cleared my problem by just changing and changing back every setting having to do with network bandwidth and when to transcode on both the server and Apple TV client - something was stuck somewhere.
The certificate now is ok, so I have clean all server logs and started from scratch. In attached:
Screen of the execution in original and transcoded quality
Logs → all backend verbose logs
Client-web-debug.json → client verbose logs
EDIT: I’ll add this screenshot where you can see exactly the problem, on the video it plays directly, while I don’t understand why the audio has to convert it, this causes the playback not to start and remains pending
