Plex server transcoding issue

[Strayan_Hades]

Hi,

Just finally finished ripping my movie collection to my plex server. But have notice a few odd issues related to transcoding. First one is VC1 video in The Dark knight.

Second is AC3 and DTS audio.

 

When I only want directplay streaming.

 

I used makemkv.

 

Any help would be great

 

[brwainer]

13 minutes ago, Strayan_Bass said:

Hi,

Just finally finished ripping my movie collection to my plex server. But have notice a few odd issues related to transcoding. First one is VC1 video in The Dark knight.

Second is AC3 DTS audio.

 

Insteed of using directplay.

 

I used makemkv.

 

Any help would be great

 

You didn't say what issues you are actually running into - unless you mean that the video is being transcoded, but you want it to Direct Play.

[samiscool51]

reset your plex client and server settings

it's most liky that you have changed something and plex won't play files as a result

also check your source files, i have had it when plex won't play a file due to a damaged file

[Strayan_Hades]

3 hours ago, brwainer said:

You didn't say what issues you are actually running into - unless you mean that the video is being transcoded, but you want it to Direct Play.

Yeah i just want it to use direct play and avoid transcoding.

[brwainer]

15 minutes ago, Strayan_Bass said:

Yeah i just want it to use direct play and avoid transcoding.

Direct play depends on device you are playing the video with. What device is it? If its a computer, are you using one of the Plex programs (they make two different ones), or a browser (which browser)?

[Strayan_Hades]

8 minutes ago, brwainer said:

Direct play depends on device you are playing the video with. What device is it? If its a computer, are you using one of the Plex programs (they make two different ones), or a browser (which browser)?

Sony kdl55w800c android tv using plex app

 

[gamerking]

this is for windows formats

so i would guess h.264 with aac audio for mp4/mkv with your tv

• MP4 container
  • Video Encoding: H.264, H.265 (HEVC), mpeg4, VC-1
  • Audio Encoding: AAC, AC3, EAC3, MP3
• MKV container
  • Video Encoding: H.264, H.265 (HEVC), mpeg4, VC-1
  • Audio Encoding: AAC, AC3, ALAC, FLAC, MP3

edit it seems people have issues using plex from quick searching

[brwainer]

6 hours ago, Strayan_Bass said:

Sony kdl55w800c android tv using plex app

 

OK. So for Direct Play to work, the file has to be in a format the TV will understand without issue. You me tioned VC1 and AC3 DTS - I recommend using handbrake to convert this to make a few different tests. Experiment with different levels of h.264 (level 4.0 Main is almost universally supported, but higher levels, and changing from Main to High, enables more features that give you a smaller filesize) and different audio codecs (AAC is pretty well supported here). If you play a video on the TV and then open Plex in a browser, on the Activity page where it shows the current streams, you can hover over that and see what video and audio format Plex is transcoding to. You are almost guarenteed to get Direct Play if you pre-transcode (using handbrake or another video converter) to the same audio and video format, but this might not be the smallest format the TV supports.

 

Also in the TV app settings, make sure that direct play and direct stream are enabled.

[Strayan_Hades]

5 hours ago, brwainer said:

OK. So for Direct Play to work, the file has to be in a format the TV will understand without issue. You me tioned VC1 and AC3 DTS - I recommend using handbrake to convert this to make a few different tests. Experiment with different levels of h.264 (level 4.0 Main is almost universally supported, but higher levels, and changing from Main to High, enables more features that give you a smaller filesize) and different audio codecs (AAC is pretty well supported here). If you play a video on the TV and then open Plex in a browser, on the Activity page where it shows the current streams, you can hover over that and see what video and audio format Plex is transcoding to. You are almost guarenteed to get Direct Play if you pre-transcode (using handbrake or another video converter) to the same audio and video format, but this might not be the smallest format the TV supports.

 

Also in the TV app settings, make sure that direct play and direct stream are enabled.

So when i re encoded can it keep the same quality of the video stream (orignal bitrate) to prevent block artifacts

[Jarsky]

You can direct copy the video, while re-encoding the audio if you *do* need to reencode the audio to a different format.

 

But before doing that you mentioned that you used makemkv. So have you *actually* encoded them, or did you just remux them into an mkv container?

Can you run MediaInfo on the mkv and let us know exactly what the video & audio formats are?

 

Also check that in your Plex Server settings under Player you have

Local Quality: Original

and that you have Direct Play, Direct Stream, Direct Play of AC3, and Prefer AAC all enabled. 

 

 

 

[Strayan_Hades]

11 hours ago, Jarsky said:

You can direct copy the video, while re-encoding the audio if you *do* need to reencode the audio to a different format.

 

But before doing that you mentioned that you used makemkv. So have you *actually* encoded them, or did you just remux them into an mkv container?

Can you run MediaInfo on the mkv and let us know exactly what the video & audio formats are?

 

Also check that in your Plex Server settings under Player you have

Local Quality: Original

and that you have Direct Play, Direct Stream, Direct Play of AC3, and Prefer AAC all enabled. 

 

 

 

I set all my player setting's to use direct stream and direct play. An on these two films I just get audio no video.

 

Also to keep the orignal video in handbrake would I use Constant quality and rf 0?

 

Media Information:

 

[brwainer]

3 hours ago, Strayan_Bass said:

I set all my player setting's to use direct stream and direct play. An on these two films I just get audio no video.

 

Also to keep the orignal video in handbrake would I use Constant quality and rf 0?

 

Media Information:

 

You will not notice any loss of quality if using an rf of around 20, which is the default for most of the presets.

[Strayan_Hades]

11 hours ago, brwainer said:

You will not notice any loss of quality if using an rf of around 20, which is the default for most of the presets.

So in other words I need to re encode entire library. Which all my movies from 2008 - below use the VC-1 codecs.

 

Another thing, I was told awhile back not to bother encoding my media. Insteed use direct playback from what I get from using makemkv. E.g. what Ive just done to prevent block artifacts.

 

Its starting to look like I just have to deal with plex's transcoding for best quality.

[brwainer]

On 6/1/2017 at 9:10 PM, Strayan_Bass said:

So in other words I need to re encode entire library. Which all my movies from 2008 - below use the VC-1 codecs.

 

Another thing, I was told awhile back not to bother encoding my media. Insteed use direct playback from what I get from using makemkv. E.g. what Ive just done to prevent block artifacts.

 

Its starting to look like I just have to deal with plex's transcoding for best quality.

The advice to just direct stream everything is valid assuming you have clients that can handle the codec. If you're using Plex directly on a x86 computer, or a beefy ARM device, then the device can Direct Stream even if it has to render in software. All other Plex clients however are limited to what codecs it can decode in hardware, which for most devices is MP2 and main-level MP4.  There are some Bluray players which have VC-1 decoders for bluray playback, and also have a Plex client that they can run, but they sometimes can't do VC-1 from Plex because the VC-1 decoder is configured such that it can only handle data from discs.

[Strayan_Hades]

On 6/2/2017 at 0:22 PM, brwainer said:

The advice to just direct stream everything is valid assuming you have clients that can handle the codec. If you're using Plex directly on a x86 computer, or a beefy ARM device, then the device can Direct Stream even if it has to render in software. All other Plex clients however are limited to what codecs it can decode in hardware, which for most devices is MP2 and main-level MP4.  There are some Bluray players which have VC-1 decoders for bluray playback, and also have a Plex client that they can run, but they sometimes can't do VC-1 from Plex because the VC-1 decoder is configured such that it can only handle data from discs.

I've may have solved my problem with the transcoding. I've switch applications on my tv to the default video app which notices my plex server under devices. Allowing me to stream without transcoding. So I believe its a issue with the Plex app itself.

[brwainer]

3 hours ago, Strayan_Bass said:

I've may have solved my problem with the transcoding. I've switch applications on my tv to the default video app which notices my plex server under devices. Allowing me to stream without transcoding. So I believe its a issue with the Plex app itself.

If it sees it as a generic network device, then its probably using DLNA, which the Plex Server has builtin. DLNA usually still uses transcoding, but uses a stream type that requires much less CPU and uses more bandwidth. Alternatively, the default app on the TV might have access to more decoding hardware than the Plex App does.