I had such cases where I cannot why transcoding is required?
Transcoding is such an heavy process, sometimes the dual core that host the plex server is unable to follow due to this high charge.
While plex seems to need to transcode almost everything. Yesterday, I was having a 1080p TV Show, in a mp4, with 384Kbits/s audio, and here it is, I was unable to watch it through plex because it was needing to transcode.
Why? I mean I’ve a gigabyte connection to the plex server, the computer on which I was seing the video is high end computer(i7, 16Gb of RAM, …), why would we do some transcoding???
Same thing for transcoding, I can’t understand why we would need to transcode everything just to have the subtitles burned in the video? Why the client application(android/html app) is not able to just get the srt file and display it? It would be a much lighter process.
I’m a little bit disappointed that since 1 years, none of this has been improved, please take the time to fix to base issues and not use the “easy” way of transcoding everything…
For me transcoding should be required ONLY when the client does not have the capability to read the media(either due to connectivity, either due to the used codec). But in my case, I’m able to do so(on my computer and on my Google nexus player).
Please plex, fix those issues before adding some fancy features(e.g. quick search, useless for all the users I talked to).
I’d say that Plex does a good job with only transcoding when absolutely necessary because of the client device’s limitations. If Plex is transcoding when you think it shouldn’t, then there could be something wrong on your end. Make sure you set the client quality setting to original to start with. Make sure the video is completely compatable with the device/client you are using. There’s a lot of factors to consider.
What clients are you using? On the desktop, you should be using Plex Media Player or OpenPHT. Since you’re a Plex Pass subscriber, I’d suggest using PMP because it uses the mpv media player and should almost never need to transcode. Don’t use Plex Web unless you’re using it to manage your libraries or server settings
When it comes to burning in subtitles, Plex is limited by the device’s/client’s capabilities. If the device/client doesn’t support SRT subtitles, then burning them in is the only way to view them. Just so you know, the Plex Android app can definitely display SRT subtitles without transcoding (burning them in), at least on my device. I just verified it.
I hope you can get it working well. I use the Roku, which has a limited set of compatible formats, and I never have to transcode. I do make sure my media is mostly compatable across a wide range of devices though.
I had such cases where I cannot why transcoding is required?
Transcoding is such an heavy process, sometimes the dual core that host the plex server is unable to follow due to this high charge.
While plex seems to need to transcode almost everything. Yesterday, I was having a 1080p TV Show, in a mp4, with 384Kbits/s audio, and here it is, I was unable to watch it through plex because it was needing to transcode.
Why? I mean I’ve a gigabyte connection to the plex server, the computer on which I was seing the video is high end computer(i7, 16Gb of RAM, …), why would we do some transcoding???
Same thing for transcoding, I can’t understand why we would need to transcode everything just to have the subtitles burned in the video? Why the client application(android/html app) is not able to just get the srt file and display it? It would be a much lighter process.
I’m a little bit disappointed that since 1 years, none of this has been improved, please take the time to fix to base issues and not use the “easy” way of transcoding everything…
For me transcoding should be required ONLY when the client does not have the capability to read the media(either due to connectivity, either due to the used codec). But in my case, I’m able to do so(on my computer and on my Google nexus player).
Please plex, fix those issues before adding some fancy features(e.g. quick search, useless for all the users I talked to).
and you checked that your android client actually support SRT subtitles ?
I’d say that Plex does a good job with only transcoding when absolutely necessary because of the client device’s limitations. If Plex is transcoding when you think it shouldn’t, then there could be something wrong on your end. Make sure you set the client quality setting to original to start with. Make sure the video is completely compatable with the device/client you are using. There’s a lot of factors to consider.
That’s is fanciful rubbish. Plex transcodes far more frequently that is required especially when you are syncing stuff. See threads from myself about transcoding music, and anamorphic videos on Android.
@buzzme I can’t speak for all clients, but for the clients I use (mostly Roku), it only transcodes anything the device doesn’t support. Maybe the rules for transcoding that Plex uses for your client(s) isn’t entirely correct. I’ve done a lot of testing and it always worked as expected for me.
That’s the issue, Plex decides completely erroneously that the device does not support some format and then transcode’s it. There is for example only one profile for almost all Android devices, which has Android as unable to handle anamorphic video files so they get transcoded. However EVERY Amazon Fire tablet going right back to the original one which are classified as Android are perfectly able to handle anamorphic video files when synced. This is easily testable by editing the Android profile and removing the limitation, and presto it syncs without transcoding and playback works with the correct aspect ratio.
In fact I can’t find a single Android device that cannot handle synced anamorphic video files.
I would add that streaming to Android, web client and Roku has always worked perfectly and only tried transcoding when there where bandwidth problems or the source video was incompatible due to an error getting it ready for Plex.
Syncing or optimizing is a different story. In those cases, PMS has very little info on the client, so it has to pick a very generic set of settings to make sure it will direct play.
When playing back to a specific device, the client has more say in what it can support. The Roku can handle srt files so that should not be the cause, unless you have the app set to burn in subtitles. If you can provide the PMS log when you start playback, it will tell exactly why it is trnascoding.
I’m not syncing my media currently, and still, while playing a TV show with french subtitle on the web client, I’ve my NAS with a huge CPU load(even if it has transcoding chipset that are not used by plex)
@Nargzul said:
I’m not syncing my media currently, and still, while playing a TV show with french subtitle on the web client, I’ve my NAS with a huge CPU load(even if it has transcoding chipset that are not used by plex)
make sense, the subtitles would be burnt with the video.
