Why does one connection transcode and the other direct play? as far as I can tell there are no differences and the transcoded stream is 4x the bandwidth.
Posted Jun 24, 2021, 11:11 PM UTC
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What client? And you're absolutely certain that both clients have the quality set to original?
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The client is the Plex app on a 2016 Samsung. The issue I have is that both streams are being viewed at 1080p but in one it is direct playing and in the other it is transcoding but taking up four times the bandwidth. I can see no reason why the transcoding is taking place.
The hardware can handle the client side decode, and the transcode takes up more bandwidth!
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Wait I'm confused. These are not the same files. Does the file that works play correctly on BOTH TVs? And does the file that doesn't work not work on both TVs? If the file doesn't play correctly on both TVs, then there is something wrong with the file.
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They are files of sequential episodes from the same season of a TV show. They were played one after the other on the same TV. So everything was the same hardware and the encoding (as far as I can tell) is identical. It plays well enough but one of the plays took up 4x the bandwidth and required server hardware cycles to transcode. I am just trying to work out why.
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That didn't answer my question. You do not know for sure that the encodes share the same specifications.
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Subtitles would have been my first guess, but as you've ruled that out, what the connection strength the same on both clients?
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Connection strength is identical, it is the exact same hardware at all stages.
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did you make sure that client isnt still set on the default (720p) forcing it to transcode?
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Definitely, and in any case both are being viewed at 1080p
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Player on one device can’t handle MKV. It’s transcoding it to a mp4
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They are the same device!
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You might look in plex, or use like mediainfo or ffprobe to get more details on the file. I know these are hevc, but I know for h.264 there are levels that not all devices are compatible with. Might be some slight difference that this view in plex is not showing.
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Good tip, I'll take a closer look at the encoding... but they are subsequent episodes of the same show that were acquired in a season pack.
Edit: from mediainfo it appears they are near identical. The format, profile, codec, etc. are all the same and there are only minor differences in bitrate (4499 vs 4497).
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This subtle difference could be the difference between it being supported or not.
I’m not sure if this is the correct link to your tv, but Samsung should tell you the limit. https://developer.samsung.com/smarttv/develop/specifications/media-specifications/2017-tv-video-specifications.html
Logs would help a ton though; so next time I guess.
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Were there subtitles on either stream? If not, you'll get the most definitive answer by looking at the logs (make sure debug logging is enabled as well via Settings > General > Enable Plex Media Server debug logging). Here's a snippet of what it might look like if subtitles have to be burned in:
No subtitles on either stream.
I have had the debug logging going but they only seem to go back about 10 hours and this occurred about 12 hours ago. I might have to catch it sooner.