I have tried adding some WMV videos to my plex server and no matter what I do the playback looks horrible, blotchy squares etc.
If I play the WMV itself with built in Movie app or VLC, it looks fine. If I optimize “original quality” it produces a smaller MP4 (for example a 651k wmv will become a 439k mp4) and it looks bad if I play it with those same apps; the picture quality is the same “poor” that I see if I play back thru plex player on same machine (optimized or not).
I have transcode set to “make my cpu hurt” and “very slow”. Not sure what else I can configure to say “I want quality and am prepared to wait for it”.
I am on win10, and have moved my testing all to the plex server so as to remove network and cross platform things from involvement.
I just don’t know enough about video formats/etc to troubleshoot further. Any ideas/explanation and how to get past this problem would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks for the response. While I understand older content is lower resolution than newer monitors, I do not understand why “VLC or Windows Media Player or a similar older player” will play them beautifully on that newer monitor, while plex cannot.
FYI my sample file is 768x432. Orig file has datarate 3135kbps, total bitrate 3199kbps, 30 frames/sec orig; after going thru plex optimize with orig-quality that changed to 2041kbps datarate, 2217kbps total bitrate, 24 frames/sec.
So it boils down to the new kid on the block does worse on old video content than the old guy. I guess it’s really that the old guy plays it as-is and the new kid insists on a transcode to something newer and more universal (which ironically isn’t all that important to me if client is also still the same old windows; but it is what it is). Thanks for the explanation. I may give Handbrake a shot; it keeps coming up as a suggestion when I have whatever problems I have. Thanks, again.
