Thanks to everyone who replied, I appreciate the articles and ideas… Some additional notes;
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I have difficulty getting the dashboard activity to show what’s happening because it errors out and stops before I can get to it (player and server on different floors in the house). I have enabled debug logging so hopefully will glean some more info and will share what I can.
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While I understand that the files are being transcoded I’m trying to understand WHY. I can play the exact same physical file from the same NAS server thru the same appleTV 4k on the same TV, across the same gigabit hardwired network using the VLC app and it plays just fine. Subtitles & all. But when I play it thru Plex it get’s transcoded - unnecessarily (with or without subtitles) and the server is not powerful enough to transcode 4k. I have tried using handbrake to encode the files into a variety of compatible formats (frame rates, h.265, h.264, HEVC, lower bit rates, AC3 audio, AAC audio, etc.) and they all result in transcoding. However, when I encode in to MP4 or M4V instead of MKV then Plex plays the files without transcoding (but I lose subtitles).
That would “seem” to be a bug or deficiency in Plex’s ability to match source file compatibility with device that makes it work much harder than it needs to…
hopefully the debug logs will tell me more about what is triggering the transcode or what it “thinks” is incompatible.
