So to make a long story short, three Xbox Ones access my files currently for testing purposes, they are all up to date and running the same versions of everyhing.
My problem is that one of them is making most files (anything that is HD) transcode, but only on one out of the three xbox’s.
Direct play is enabled, and sometimes it will direct play the sounds, but never HD Video.
File formats vary from MP4, MKV, and the rare few AVI.
Id add an XML for an example, but it says file not allowed.
Is there anything I can check or do to remedy the situation?
You can check your Plex media server.log located on the server. It will tell you why the Xbox thinks it needs to transcode (Typically lines before the transcoder begins starting with MDE:).
The other thing to check would be to see if the Xbox has a quality limit set. During video playback hit the A button, select the menu option on the right to bring up the quality screen and make sure the far right column for video is set to original.
So according to the remote user, direct play is enabled on their end. (even sent a picture to me of all settings)
BUT checking the log as you said, shows the following:
Mar 13, 2016 01:28:49:350 [2620] DEBUG - MDE: analyzing media item 109019
Mar 13, 2016 01:28:49:351 [2620] DEBUG - MDE: E01 - The North Remembers**: Direct Play is disabled**
Mar 13, 2016 01:28:49:351 [2620] DEBUG - MDE: E01 - The North Remembers: media must be transcoded in order to use the hls protocol
Mar 13, 2016 01:28:49:351 [2620] DEBUG - MDE: E01 - The North Remembers: no direct play video profile exists for http/mp4/hevc
Mar 13, 2016 01:28:49:351 [2620] DEBUG - MDE: E01 - The North Remembers: no direct play video profile exists for http/mp4/hevc/aac
Mar 13, 2016 01:28:49:351 [2620] DEBUG - The North Remembers - video.width limitation applies: 1920 > 1280
Mar 13, 2016 01:28:49:351 [2620] DEBUG - MDE: E01 - The North Remembers: no remuxable profile found, so video stream will be transcoded
Mar 13, 2016 01:28:49:351 [2620] DEBUG - MDE: computed resolution bounding box of 1280x720.
Mar 13, 2016 01:28:49:351 [2620] DEBUG - Scaled up video bitrate to 4063Kbps based on 4.500000x fudge factor.
Mar 13, 2016 01:28:49:351 [2620] DEBUG - Scaled maximum bitrate for resolution reduction to 1805Kbps.
Mar 13, 2016 01:28:49:351 [2620] DEBUG - MDE: E01 - The North Remembers: selected media 0 / 109019
I thought it may be due to the tv being used is only capable of 720P, but when i configured one of the other xbox’s to use 720P in the actual xbox settings, it didnt replicate the results.
Should I relocate the xbox to a tv capable of 1080P to check? This will be difficult as Ill have to move it to a different house alltogether to test.
I am trying to get some more information to see if somehow the Xbox is overriding the default settings based on the HDMI connection to the television. As far as I know, the TV Shouldn’t change what the Xbox is requesting, but with what you’re reporting it does seem like the app/xbox knows the TV is only 720p and not requesting the 1080p stream.
Is the Xbox itself configured for 720p output? (My Xbox is currently being shipped so I don’t remember if this was a setting in the actual xbox settings, but I am guessing that if the xbox itself is set for 720p that might carry over to the Plex App as well)
Unfortunately, since it is the weekend I might not be able to get a more definitive answer until the start of the week.
There is a setting on the xbox for outputting @ 720P or 1080P, but i tried mimicking the behavior by setting another xbox to 720P only in xbox settings…and it didnt prevent direct play of any files
Speaking with one of the developers, they informed me that the App itself has no awareness of a resolution limitation like that unless the quality is set to a 720p quality during the playback.
If that setting is indeed set to original quality, I would attempt to set a lower quality and after that loads switch it back to Original. There was an older bug where the selected quality/subtitle wasn’t actually the one being used so if that is the case it might be the cause and something that needs to be looked into once again.
