What video and audio codecs are supported by the web player?

Plex Players Desktop Players
1

Hello,

I’m sorry if this is a dumb question. I’ve looked around for the answer but I haven’t seen it spelled out anywhere. What I’m wondering is, exactly what filetypes and codecs are supported by the Plex Web player, without requiring transcoding?

My server is a raspberry pi, so it’s not up to the task of anything more than a bit of audio transcoding, and even that can be troublesome sometimes. I’m aware that Plex Web is not the best player and the native apps are better, but since it’s the only player I can use on one of my devices, I’d prefer to just pre-convert any files before adding them to my library so they just work everywhere.

I’ve worked out that MP4 files with H.264 video and AAC audio don’t require transcoding, while HEVC/H.265 videos and AC3 audio do. Are there any other video / audio codecs that will just work natively? Is there a list somewhere?

I’ve seen mentions of a Plex add-on that showed what files need transcoding, but my understanding is that add-ons are no longer supported.

Thanks in advance for any help you can give me!

Sam

Server Version#: 1.19.4.2935 (raspberry pi)
Player Version#: 4.36.1 (plex web)

2

That’s pretty much it:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Client name="Web">
  <!-- Author: Plex Inc. -->
  <TranscodeTargets>
    <VideoProfile protocol="hls" container="mpegts" codec="h264" audioCodec="aac,mp3" context="streaming" />
    <VideoProfile protocol="dash" container="mp4" codec="h264" audioCodec="aac" context="streaming">
      <Setting name="ForceTranscodesForLive" value="true" />
      <Setting name="SkipAudioBeforeStart" value="true" />
      <!-- <Setting name="BreakNonKeyframes" value="true" />  -->
    </VideoProfile>
    <VideoProfile protocol="http" container="mkv" codec="h264" audioCodec="aac,mp3" context="streaming" />
    <MusicProfile container="mp3" codec="mp3" />
    <PhotoProfile container="jpeg" />
    <SubtitleProfile container="ass" codec="ass" context="all" />
  </TranscodeTargets>
  <CodecProfiles>
    <VideoCodec name="*">
      <Limitations>
        <UpperBound name="video.bitDepth" value="8" />
      </Limitations>
    </VideoCodec>
    <VideoAudioCodec name="*">
      <Limitations>
        <UpperBound name="audio.channels" value="6" />
      </Limitations>
    </VideoAudioCodec>
  </CodecProfiles>
  <!-- When transcoding a multi-channel audio stream inside a video transcode, downmix the audio stream to stereo. -->
  <TranscodeTargetProfiles>
    <VideoTranscodeTarget protocol="*" context="streaming">
      <VideoAudioCodec name="*">
        <Limitations>
          <UpperBound name="audio.channels" value="2" onlyTranscodes="true" />
        </Limitations>
      </VideoAudioCodec>
    </VideoTranscodeTarget>
  </TranscodeTargetProfiles>
</Client>

If you want to use the web client, you need to run the server on adequate hardware, so it is able to transcode.

1 Like
3

Thanks very much for your response! So, if I’m reading the XML correctly (which I’m not totally confident about), for a video to stream to Plex Web without transcoding it needs to be h264 video with AAC stereo audio. Good to know!

If you want to use the web client, you need to run the server on adequate hardware, so it is able to transcode.

Nah, I’m happy just converting files beforehand!

4

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