So I’ve seen this asked in various places but I was hoping to get a more concrete answer.
My Plex Server is running on a Synology NAS and I get this error (“Your Server isn’t powerful enough to convert video”) when watching some movies through a web browser or the PS4/xbox1 Plex App on my local network where the Plex server lives.
However, with the same files in the same library, I never get an error on the iOS/Android apps or on a 4th Gen Apple TV. They play every time, all the time with no errors. Also, these same files work remotely on a 4th Gen Apple TV and iOS/Android apps with no issue.
Why is this the case? How can it be fixed? Can it even be fixed is probably a better question. Any help would be appreciated.
As the error message says, the videos need to be converted to a container (file format) or codec that the device exhibiting the error needs for that version of it’s client app to play. And your NAS hasn’t got enough horsepower to do that conversion in Real Time to do it, so you see that error instead of a constantly buffering movie or show.
Couple of ways to fix this… One, use that NAS for storage, but use a more powerful machine is the PMS machine. The bad thing here, is requiring more than one device for your PMS.
Another way to fix this issue is to convert the media to the most common denominator for your different players. Typically, this means MP4 with H264 video codec and an AAC Stereo codec for the first audio track. Most other containers (mov, flv, avi, etc…) are going to likely require transcoding. And most other codecs as well.
For conversion scripts you can check out the link I have in my signature for @cayars scripts modified. This tells you how to convert the scripts he made for Windows into something that runs on an Asustor NAS. Your Syno should need about the same conversions. I run ALL of my media through those conversion scripts for my NAS before Plex gets any of the media items to share. It ensures 100% compatibility for everything I run as clients except bitrate conversions. (10Mbps down to 4Mbps.)
Thanks for response. I will definitely take a look at your scripts. I should also mentioned that I re-encode everything with HandBrake before adding to my Plex.
My question though still is… why do the same files work on the Apple TV, Roku, Fire stick, iOS and Android apps (remotely as well) but do not work on the PS3/PS4, Xbox One and Web Browser apps on my local network or remotely?
To me, that doesn’t make any sense at all. Is it just that the PS3/4, Xbox One and Web browser apps are just so poorly coded? If the same movies work on all those other apps from the same server, why not the ones I mentioned? More so the PS3/4 and Xbox apps?
You have to look for what file containers and codecs, bitrates and resolutions each device is able to support to answer that question:
https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/204103633-What-media-formats-are-supported- Xbox
https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/204377253-What-media-formats-are-supported- PS4
I’m not going to go line by line to determine which supports what, or delve into what you are running for bitrates, codecs or containers. I don’t have either of these two devices. I’ll leave that for you to test. There should be enough information here to enable you to get your own answers now.
