So this seems kinda stupid or I’m misunderstanding something.
One of my friends has little kids, which means they are watching the same thing, over and over and over. My server was regularly transcoding it because they were watching on an iPad a lot. Perfect use case for optimized version I think!
I go into the video, setup for an optimized version, and set it up for iOS. Well here’s where I question this setup a bit…I hit custom, iOS, and the default is still 20mbit, 1080P. Obviously not right…so I guess at 3mbit 720P…I see her playing it later…and it’s still transcoding. Now this person isn’t a real technical person, I doubt she’s changed the Plex for iOS defaults. I’m assuming that means the client is defaulting around 1.5Mbps SD.
Is it too much to ask for optimized versions to actually try and match client defaults? While I’m at it, it would actually be useful if the playback history actually let you see enough info or have an option to say “make an optimized version that matches this playback” or something along those lines to simplify the guessing game that apparently has to happen to get one where Plex won’t transcode.
Although, frankly, I’m not convinced anymore that the optimized versions really get matched up and used with the clients to prevent transcodes very well.
So looking into it some more, it’s actually a little worse than I thought, or Plex is reporting bitrates inconsistently.
My friend started playing on of the movies on the iPad. In the dashboard, it says the remote is at 2Mbps, and is being transcoded to SD. If you go look at the selection options in optimized versions, there is NO 2Mbps, SD. There’s a 1.5Mbps SD, and next up is a 2Mbps 720P. It doesn’t look like optimized versions can even produce something with specs matching what the iOS Plex client asks for, to prevent a transcode from happening every single time. Unless that 1.5Mbps encode option is doing something weird like not counting the audio stream, and then rounding that up to 2Mbps. But it’s probably not since I’m still getting a transcode. BTW, Tautulli reports it is using an optmized version, but it’s on the fly transcoding the pre-transcode, so that’s wonderful.
I guess it can direct stream the audio now, but I don’t know what purpose the rest of it serves, when optimized versions appears to be unable to produce a version that matches the request from Plexs’ own client and prevent a video transcode.
I have a similar issue. I have optimized versions set up to minimize transcoding as well. When I’m at home I don’t want to play an optimized version. I want to play the original file. I don’t see anywhere in the settings to make that the default. Instead it defaults to an optimized version. Then there is an issue with selecting the version I want (original). I select it and it goes right back to the optimized version instead. I have to select the version, play, exit, exit from movie details and then go back into the movie. Same issue with selecting subtitles inconsistent.
Same issue here. Have a user that plays the same movie every day and after creating an optimized 4Mbps 720p the server is still transcoding the original 1080p->720.
