Stuttering with Plex 4K playback

[baconborn]

I've been having an issue on my HTPC with only a few of my 4K movies having significant stuttering when trying to watch them. This only happens on my HTPC (my wife an I's gaming PC's do fine, albeit they are higher spec) and only with 4K movies that have a high (40Mbps+) bitrate which leads me to believe I may just be running into a hardware limitation. While playing these particular videos, the CPU utilization on the HTPC will be at 100%. To my knowledge, there is no transcoding taking place as both the client and server are showing the videos are being played with Direct Play. To check, I went to the "Now Playing" screen and it shows Direct Play when I hover the thumb nail (which I'm just assuming means it is using Direct Play, if that's not correct, please let me know)

 

I am using the app from Plex (not the windows store app or web browser) on the HTPC, I am wired via CAT6, I can play 4K content from YouTube fine, and all the other 4K files in Plex also play completely fine. Thing's I've tried include updating display drivers to the newest version (no change) and I switched the audio quality from 7.1 to 5.1 (this did actually help a little bit, but still mostly unwatchable). The only "help" I've been able to get beyond this is being told that I'm not really seeing the symptoms that I'm seeing.

 

Specs for the HTPC are:

Intel Pentium G4600

Asus B250i Strix Gaming

2x4GB Crucial Ballistix DDR4-2400

450W Silverstone SFX PSU

[Void Master]

Try adding a gt 1030 this will fix the issue with 4k playback

[NoobCase]

4K youtube is highly compressed in order to get the bitrate down iirc. I Think you need a better GPU to handle 4K playback at that bitrate.

 

or as suggested above a dedicated GPU might help.

[NoobCase]

Or... a couple of guides that light help:

 

 

https://www.google.dk/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/PleX/comments/7d5mrq/plex_4k_direct_play_guide/#ampf=undefined

[baconborn]

4 minutes ago, Void Master said:

Try adding a gt 1030 this will fix the issue with 4k playback

I was considering just this at first since a GT1030 is a lot cheaper than a new CPU, but the CPU utilization is what's being maxed out while the iGPU utilization doesn't even break 30%. Would a dedicated graphics cards still be the solution?

[Void Master]

5 minutes ago, baconborn said:

11 minutes ago, Void Master said:

Try adding a gt 1030 this will fix the issue with 4k playback

I was considering just this at first since a GT1030 is a lot cheaper than a new CPU, but the CPU utilization is what's being maxed out while the iGPU utilization doesn't even break 30%. Would a dedicated graphics cards still be the solution?

you should use Hardware-Accelerated Streaming

[baconborn]

21 minutes ago, Void Master said:

you should use Hardware-Accelerated Streaming

I've been told previously that hardware-accelerated streaming doesn't affect Direct Play, and researching looks like that is something done server side instead of client side?

 

Or are you meaning that I should use hardware acceleration in windows 10 on the HTPC?

[baconborn]

double post by accident

[Void Master]

13 minutes ago, baconborn said:

27 minutes ago, Void Master said:

you should use Hardware-Accelerated Streaming

I've been told previously that hardware-accelerated streaming doesn't affect Direct Play, and researching looks like that is something done server side instead of client side?

 

Or are you meaning that I should use hardware acceleration in windows 10 on the HTPC?

Yes, before you put in the gpu try to enable hardware acceleration to see if the igpu will bee stressed

then we decide

[baconborn]

1 minute ago, Void Master said:

Yes, before you put in the gpu try to enable hardware acceleration to see if the igpu will bee stressed

then we decide

I will try that today. I was looking around online and found a setting in Plex Media Player called Hardware Decoding, Do I need to mess with this, like making sure it's enabled?

[Void Master]

10 minutes ago, baconborn said:

18 minutes ago, Void Master said:

Yes, before you put in the gpu try to enable hardware acceleration to see if the igpu will bee stressed

then we decide

I will try that today. I was looking around online and found a setting in Plex Media Player called Hardware Decoding, Do I need to mess with this, like making sure it's enabled?

Yeah just make sure that its enabled