Hi,
I can play some .avi’s such as
Video: DivX 5 352x240 29.97fps 1786kbps [V: mpeg4, yuv420p, 352x240, 1786 kb/s]
Audio: MP3 44100Hz stereo 192kbps [A: mp3, 44100 Hz, stereo, 192 kb/s]
but not other .avi’s such as
Video: MJPG 640x480 30fps 14975kbps [V: mjpeg, yuvj422p, 640x480, 14975 kb/s]
Audio: PCM 11024Hz mono 88kbps [A: pcm_u8, 11024 Hz, 1 channels, s8, 88 kb/s]
Can anyone tell me how to overcome the problem please…
Thank you,
Brian
more details… plex server windows 7 Version 1.7.5.4035 playing on Samsung UE22ES5400W television…
I have also tried optimising the movie for TV and it still says ‘cannot support this file format’…
Can Plex play the file outside of your TV? PlexWeb, Roku, Android, Apple, etc…?
For the life of me I can’t figure out why people use AVI files.
Hardly anything handles them natively.
They are generally packed with streams that WILL NOT Direct Play on ANYTHING I have.
They are throwbacks to a bygone era - like Dinosaurs - and The Black Death.
I’ve never met an AVI file I like.
Every single AVI file I’ve ever seen sucks.
and
Every time I see something to download, right next to that AVI file is another file that’s NOT an AVI file - so I get that one.
There are those of us that have quite large libraries that have some AVIs from a pretty long time ago simply because it too much trouble to go through and convert them and simply not worth the effort.
My servers are plenty powerful enough to transcode any AVI file I have and it is quite reasonable to expect Plex to be able to do it pretty well.
I will also say that every AVI I have tried has been played fine in Plex. Not even one exception.
I think, in order to diagnose the problem, the Plex people involved with the transcoder will need an example file or at least a snippet that fails.
I would volunteer to take a look at it BUT I am just a lowly user and I know very little about the internal workings of Plex’s transcoder. However if you provide a link to an example file (DropBox or some such) I and others will try to play it on our system and at least provide more data points to the Plex team.
Right, well… most of the AVI files I’ve had dealings with are SD or 480p. We have already determined that Plex’s transcoder and ultimately the guys that programmed it, don’t have a single clue how to encode SD/480p material. Not one single clue. As a result Plex’s transcoder destroys any and all SD/480p material it comes up against. Not just a slight mishandling - I’m talking about The Mother Of All Bombs dropped, directly on top of a VW bug. Plex’s transcoder annihilates it and there’s nothing left!
I used to have some AVI files that I watched through VLC/etc, but the first time I saw Plex kick the living snot out of one with it’s transcoder that pretty much sealed the deal for me. That moment was the moment I decided it was time I learned how to encode because it was dam clear Plex’s transcoder needed to be taken out of the equation.
Well @JuiceWSA I have not had even one AVI file that the Plex transcoder failed to play. I do not know where you got the AVIs from but all mine were created years ago from original sources but I do not know what tool was used as my uncle that left me his library did the encoding but he must have done a good job as the AVIs he produced are pretty easy on the Plex transcoder. And, yes, they are all SD and 480p or even lower but they look the same played through Plex as they do through VLC on a computer.
But this all is not relevant to the OPs problem and without an example file I, for one, cannot reasonably even guess what the problem might be.
Oh, it transcodes them.
They just look like the north end of a south bound mule.
I’m not saying Plex can’t transcode an AVI. I’m saying Plex’s transcoder will destroy any quality in the process because Plex’s developers don’t know the first thing about encoding SD video - period. Over and Out. End of story. Fat Lady Sings. The End.
If the OP has a problem with an AVI file I’m not surprised. AVI files suck when they work and if they don’t work delete 'em 'cause they’re not worth worrying about.
@JuiceWSA said:
I’m not saying Plex can’t transcode an AVI. I’m saying Plex’s transcoder will destroy any quality in the process because Plex’s developers don’t know the first thing about encoding SD video - period. Over and Out. End of story. Fat Lady Sings. The End.
No. Keep in mind that transcoding is designed for live streaming, so the quality is turned down otherwise some systems can’t keep up the real-time processing. Or if it can, then you limit the number of streams. Live transcoding is never going to match the quality of offline re-encoding of a file without some serious CPU power behind it.
If you have the CPU power, you can change the H264 preset level from very fast to something slower and therefore higher quality.
i.e. When I encode a file, I use 2-pass processing, which can’t be done in real-time.
Two different things.
If Plex knew what they were doing it would be possible to create material with suitable quality while using lower resources.
We’ve been over this same ground - ad-nasium here:
12 pages that prove beyond any doubt just how little Plex knows about encoding SD video, so there’s no need to re-hash it here in this thread.
Anyone ever experiencing the horror show of Plex’s default remote quality settings coupled with Plex’s transcoder also know how little Plex knows about encoding video - due to Plex’s uncanny ability to transcode based on resolution instead of bit rate, but again - no need to beat that dead horse any further as it will NOT get up and walk back into the barn.
I will stipulate that ‘most’ users don’t know, or care, what Plex is doing to their video while transcoding it and rely heavily on Plex’s transcoding processes. For ‘most’ users if they can see moving images at any quality - it’s a success story. Users that do care what their stuff looks like already know the best possible scenario is to keep Plex’s transcoder as far away from their material as possible - and will go to any length to make that happen - so a compromise has been struck.
For the purposes of this thread it might be possible to re-code that AVI in question so it can play on something, but:
