When I click on the quality button in the player it shows me Original, 720kbps, 320kbps, etc. when before, it would say original, 3mbps-720p, 2mbps-720p, 1.5mbps-480p and so on. I know my movies are all in 720p and Plex even recognizes it but I don’t think they are playing in that quality even though original is selected. On my TV shows, all the normal quality options are shown and if original is selected, it doesn’t load fast enough (shows are also in 720p). So I know it can’t be playing in 720p because when I’m not on the local network, nothing above 1.5mbps would work. So my question is, did Plex downgrade my movies and if so why just them and not my TV shows and why at all. Or is the transcoder actually maintaining original quality while sending at 1.5mbps. Or, is it something else? I should also note, it isn’t just when not on local network, it’s even on the server computer player. Please hep.
To diagnose this, we need to collect some technical information:
First, look at the preferences of your client. For Plex Web this would be
Settings - Web - Player - ‘Show Advanced’
most importantly the preselected ‘Quality’ and whether the ‘Direct Stream’ / ‘Direct Play’ options are allowed or not
Then get a mediainfo XML of an affected video.
- activate debug logging (not ‘verbose’!)
- quit Plex Server
- wait 1 minute
- empty the log folder
- start Plex Server
- wait 2 minutes
- play one of the movies
- wait 3 minutes
- shut down Plex server
- wait 1 minute
- zip up the whole log folder and attach it here
Here, I really hope this helps, if there’s even anything wrong.
The reason for the noticeable worse quality is the “burning in” of subtitles (which is = transcoding)
-
Why is it selecting subtitles to play?
The movie has either an audio track marked as an ‘unknown’ language or there is a forced subtitle track available for it.
I guess it is the former. Your language preferences say ‘Play subtitle with foreign audio’, right?
You need to correct your movie file and ‘tag’ the audio track so it says ‘English’.
Or you disable the automatic subtitle selection. -
Your client could display the subtitle itself, without the transcoder burning it in (and thus making the picture quality worse). But you need to tell it so: Settings - Web - Player - Burn Subtitles = ‘Only Image Formats’
The audio track says English and the subtitle track isn’t selected. I changed the setting to only image formats and still the highest setting under original is 720kbps and I know the movie I chose has had the higher options before. I played a 720p TV show and compared the two pictures and there is a noticeable difference between them. So I downloaded a movie that’s 1080p and when I click the quality button it has the highest option as 2mbps-720p then original. I don’t really think it’s playing in 1080p though and the bitrate says 2185kbps in the info box from the movie’s menu compared to 925 for the 720p one. I hope this is helpful
Your logfile shows that you play a YIFY release with just 795kbps video bitrate.
It is no surprise that it looks poor when transcoded again for burning in subtitles.
Apr 14, 2016 18:36:43:989 [4568] INFO - [Transcoder] Input #0, mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2, from 'E:\Server Movies\21 Jump Street (2012)\21.Jump.Street.2012.720p.BluRay.x264.YIFY.mp4':
Metadata:
major_brand : isom
minor_version : 1
compatible_brands: isomavc1
creation_time : 2012-06-08 16:15:29
Duration: 01:49:37.66, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 893 kb/s
inspect the mediainfo of the files you are playing
The web player won’t offer you playback qualities above those of the original files.
Did you probably use the Plex ‘Optimize’ and replaced your original files with the “optimized” ones?
Oh, I see the correct bitrate now, I didn’t use optimize and since you said it won’t offer qualities higher than the original, maybe before it was wrong displaying the mbps options since the video’s bitrate is less than that.
