Plex Megathread: Your .ASS Is Getting Transcoded

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Inspect Your Gadgets > Plex Megathread: Your .ASS Is Getting Transcoded

teagone: Jun 10, 2003; That was pretty intense, huh?

OldSenileGuy posted:

Is there a setting I need to enable to get my Plex server to direct play 5.1 AAC audio to my AppleTV 4K? Currently anything with a 5.1 AAC track gets transcoded to AC3, which my PC should be able to easily handle, but still sometimes introduces a slight stutter into the video every 30 seconds or so.

This slight stutter doesn�t happen if I play back using the app on my LG tv, which does accept AAC audio as a direct play stream.

EDIT: It will also direct stream the audio to my iPhone app. It�s only the ATV4k that triggers an audio transcode.

Check audio settings in the Apple TV's settings. Assuming it's already set to Dolby Digital, try setting it to the 'best available' option instead.

# ? Jul 14, 2019 12:29

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# ? Jun 7, 2024 15:42

Motronic: Nov 6, 2009

Atomizer posted:

Yup, in this case it's the UHD transcode that's stressing your system. From Plex's own guidelines:

Your CPU is a little over 12k Passmarks, so that single transcode is bottlenecking the CPU.

* Each of the CPUs.

I still need to actually read about GPU transcoding and figure out if I should shove one in that server

# ? Jul 14, 2019 16:46

Hed: Mar 31, 2004; Fun Shoe

I updated to the latest PMS and everything is running super slow: browsing thumbnails, spinning before I hit play. It�s acting like when I had the container�s metadata hosted on an NFS share (awful). It looks like the file I/o is fine.
Is there a way to regenerate or clean up cruft in the database? I�m guessing at what could be the cause here.

# ? Jul 14, 2019 17:46

teagone: Jun 10, 2003; That was pretty intense, huh?

Hed posted:

I updated to the latest PMS and everything is running super slow: browsing thumbnails, spinning before I hit play. It�s acting like when I had the container�s metadata hosted on an NFS share (awful). It looks like the file I/o is fine.
Is there a way to regenerate or clean up cruft in the database? I�m guessing at what could be the cause here.

Could force an Optimize Database maybe? https://support.plex.tv/articles/200392106-library-actions/

# ? Jul 14, 2019 18:16

ROJO: Jan 14, 2006; Oven Wrangler

Well, picked up a UHD friendly drive and fooled around with ripping some of my DVD/Blurays and a single UHD to start to fiddle with Plex. Have handbrake running to get the DVD/BDs down to a more manageable size. Gotta say, Plex is pretty slick! My only hiccup so far is because I have all my Google home devices on an IOT vlan, and the server on my desktop (trusted lan) for now, I cant cast because the protocol Plex uses for discovery is apparently layer 2 and there isn't an easy way on my Unifi gear to make that go across vlans (I can cast anything else fine across them). Easy enough to solve for now by putting my remapping the port of my main Chromecast to the trusted lan, but obnoxious long term.

Other complaint is that it loaded all our music reverse alphabetically, so I will forever see a bunch of my wife's ancient 'N Sync on the recently added list until I buy more

# ? Jul 14, 2019 22:27

Bobulus: Jan 28, 2007

Atomizer posted:

My first question is, is this HEVC file only SD resolution, or just a low-bitrate HD file? Asking because of the stated 1.5 MB/s bitrate, which hints at this being a low-res source, and if that's the case my very modest server can transcode those easily for comparison.

Beyond that, I see that it's determined a 4.5x fudge factor, meaning it's guessed the max bitrate of a VBR file to be that multiple of the nominal bitrate. As best as I can tell, PMS is upscaling (or perhaps upsampling to a much higher bitrate) while it's transcoding, and as we've established HEVC is more demanding than AVC, and your CPU is quite old. It should still be able to handle at least one HEVC transcode (or two AVC FHD transcodes) though. I would suggest going to the client and limiting the maximum stream parameters to prevent PMS from trying to upconvert (again, I'm working off the assumption that the original file is only SD and I guess PMS is upscaling it to FHD to accommodate the TV's native resolution?) I have a feeling that this will reduce the load on the server and cause it to stream more easily without buffering, but that doesn't explain why it can do a background conversion in much faster than real time. (The answer is perhaps in the parameters that haven't been mentioned thus far.)

Here's the exact specs, courtesy of MPC-HC:

Video: HVC1 1440x1080 23.976fps [V: hevc main 10, yuv420p10le, 1440x1080 [default]]
Audio: AAC 48000Hz 6ch [A: English [eng] (aac he-aac, 48000 Hz, 5.1) [default]]
Audio: AAC 48000Hz 6ch [A: Japanese [jpn] (aac he-aac, 48000 Hz, 5.1)]
Subtitle: Advanced SubStation Alpha [S: English [eng] (rear end)]
Subtitle: Advanced SubStation Alpha [S: English [eng] (rear end)]
Subtitle: UTF-8 [S: No subtitles]

These three lines seem to indicate that it's transcoding due to the subtitles. Which makes sense why it plays fine when I leave the subtitles turned off.

code:

Jul 13, 2019 18:33:18.159 [5584] DEBUG - MDE: E2 - Episode 2: selected subtitle cannot be converted to a compatible format, burning into video stream
Jul 13, 2019 18:33:18.159 [5584] DEBUG - MDE: E2 - Episode 2: avoiding video remux due to burned subtitle stream
Jul 13, 2019 18:33:18.159 [5584] DEBUG - MDE: E2 - Episode 2: no remuxable profile found, so video stream will be transcoded

I'm almost wondering if the problem is somehow with my TV and not the encoder? Looking at that log again, it's transcoding faster than the TV needs it. At the time the playback freezes, it's requesting segment 60-something, and it's encoding segment 100-something.

# ? Jul 15, 2019 00:22

Atomizer: Jun 24, 2007

Bobulus posted:

Here's the exact specs, courtesy of MPC-HC:

Video: HVC1 1440x1080 23.976fps [V: hevc main 10, yuv420p10le, 1440x1080 [default]]
Audio: AAC 48000Hz 6ch [A: English [eng] (aac he-aac, 48000 Hz, 5.1) [default]]
Audio: AAC 48000Hz 6ch [A: Japanese [jpn] (aac he-aac, 48000 Hz, 5.1)]
Subtitle: Advanced SubStation Alpha [S: English [eng] (rear end)]
Subtitle: Advanced SubStation Alpha [S: English [eng] (rear end)]
Subtitle: UTF-8 [S: No subtitles]

These three lines seem to indicate that it's transcoding due to the subtitles. Which makes sense why it plays fine when I leave the subtitles turned off.
code:
Jul 13, 2019 18:33:18.159 [5584] DEBUG - MDE: E2 - Episode 2: selected subtitle cannot be converted to a compatible format, burning into video stream
Jul 13, 2019 18:33:18.159 [5584] DEBUG - MDE: E2 - Episode 2: avoiding video remux due to burned subtitle stream
Jul 13, 2019 18:33:18.159 [5584] DEBUG - MDE: E2 - Episode 2: no remuxable profile found, so video stream will be transcoded
I'm almost wondering if the problem is somehow with my TV and not the encoder? Looking at that log again, it's transcoding faster than the TV needs it. At the time the playback freezes, it's requesting segment 60-something, and it's encoding segment 100-something.

That is a really weird source file; 1440x1080 (so it's still technically "1080p" I guess) but only 1.5 MB/s? I'm guessing it's anime?

The subtitles will definitely force the transcode since it has to burn them into the image.

If you suspect your client (in this case the TV) may have something to do with it, just try using a different device. Your smartphone, a Web browser, etc.

# ? Jul 15, 2019 06:44

EL BROMANCE: Jun 10, 2006; COWABUNGA DUDES!
🥷🐢😬

1440 was used in broadcast, the BBC definitely utilized a lot of source stuff in 1440x1080i.

# ? Jul 15, 2019 07:10

cosmo321: Jan 6, 2011

It's probably an old series made in 4:3, remastered for blu-ray. No idea about the problem.

# ? Jul 15, 2019 22:39

Bobulus: Jan 28, 2007

Yeah, it's an old 90s 4:3 anime.

I dug around in the options on my tv, and there's an option to turn on logging to the plex server, so I'll try this again tonight with that logging on and see if it clears anything up.

# ? Jul 15, 2019 22:59

Chumbawumba4ever97: Dec 31, 2000; by Fluffdaddy

If I just got a new i7 CPU (9700k) which obviously supports QuickSync or whatever it's called, am I supposed to turn hardware acceleration on in Plex for it to utilize it? Or is that only for GPU-only assistance?

# ? Jul 18, 2019 23:29

Moey: Oct 22, 2010; I LIKE TO MOVE IT

Motronic posted:

* Each of the CPUs.

I still need to actually read about GPU transcoding and figure out if I should shove one in that server

Yeah, it isn't quite double on dual CPU boards.

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Xeon+E5-2670+%40+2.60GHz&id=1220&cpuCount=2

# ? Jul 19, 2019 17:06

Atomizer: Jun 24, 2007

Hoobastank4ever97 posted:

If I just got a new i7 CPU (9700k) which obviously supports QuickSync or whatever it's called, am I supposed to turn hardware acceleration on in Plex for it to utilize it? Or is that only for GPU-only assistance?

Yes, it has to be enabled explicitly (I think it isn't by default) and it applies to any compatible hardware acceleration, be it from Intel, AMD or nVidia. If I remember correctly PMS will automatically decide which hardware transcoding solution to use if multiple are present in the system.

# ? Jul 20, 2019 06:54

Chumbawumba4ever97: Dec 31, 2000; by Fluffdaddy

Atomizer posted:

Yes, it has to be enabled explicitly (I think it isn't by default) and it applies to any compatible hardware acceleration, be it from Intel, AMD or nVidia. If I remember correctly PMS will automatically decide which hardware transcoding solution to use if multiple are present in the system.

I would have never known that. Just turned hardware acceleration back on. Thanks a million!

# ? Jul 20, 2019 15:53

Atomizer: Jun 24, 2007

Hoobastank4ever97 posted:

I would have never known that. Just turned hardware acceleration back on. Thanks a million!

To confirm that it's active, you should see a "(hw)" designation on the text line denoting a transcode.

# ? Jul 21, 2019 04:36

OldSenileGuy: Mar 13, 2001

More and more I've been buying movies from iTunes, usually because I want it in 4K/HDR and don't want to download/store a 50GB file for one movie. And whenever I get something from iTunes, I delete it from my Plex Library to free up some space.

But as my iTunes library grows larger, it's becoming more difficult to remember what I actually have. I know there's almost assuredly never going to be a way to stream the iTunes movies within Plex, but has anyone come up with a way of tracking movies bought on other services within Plex?

Even if there's no official way of doing it, I was thinking I can make a tiny quicktime file that's just a 10-second black screen that says "WATCH THIS MOVIE IN ITUNES" and make a copy of that file with the movie's metadata to add to my Plex library for each movie I have in iTunes.

Is there any more official or elegant way to do this, or should I just go with what I've outlined above?

# ? Jul 23, 2019 16:54

EL BROMANCE: Jun 10, 2006; COWABUNGA DUDES!
🥷🐢😬

OldSenileGuy posted:

Even if there's no official way of doing it, I was thinking I can make a tiny quicktime file that's just a 10-second black screen that says "WATCH THIS MOVIE IN ITUNES" and make a copy of that file with the movie's metadata to add to my Plex library for each movie I have in iTunes.

Could do that, and also stick it in a collection for the service you use, so you can easily browse each service in one go.

# ? Jul 23, 2019 16:57

Beaucoup Haram: Jun 18, 2005

Xeon crew reporting in

300w all day erry day.

Unfortunately I'm limited by external bandwidth (40mb upload speed)

Only registered members can see post attachments!

# ? Jul 25, 2019 04:03

EL BROMANCE: Jun 10, 2006; COWABUNGA DUDES!
🥷🐢😬

Posting in both here and the Usenet thread as hopefully positive news from TVDB for everyone :

quote:

Flexible Seasons
Over the years, we've heard your complaints about how our episodes don't match up to what you'd expect. We know that some series, like �Firefly,� make far more sense sorted by Joss Whedon's preferred order rather than the order the episodes were aired. We know that our old air date, DVD, and absolute ordering system was restrictive and at times annoying.

To get around these issues, we've implemented what we�re calling flexible seasons. Our moderators are now able to enable any number of alternate orders for specific series (at their discretion). The episodes exist outside the season structure, which means each episode can be attached to various types of seasons without needing to recreate the episode (and cause management issues).

Not only does this allow us to handle things like Director's Preferred and Popular season types, but also gives us flexibility over series that use joined or split episodes depending on the format. For example, �Looney Tunes� episodes that were originally aired individually, but later joined into two-part episodes, can now be structured both ways. It allows �Chilling Adventures of Sabrina� to be split in both the official structure (by seasons) and the common sense structure (by parts).

As with everything else in Version 3, adjustments will be necessary to streamline this approach for both users and moderators, but we think it�s the best long-term solution to the biggest issue that has plagued the site.

I'm sure the people who run the place will still find a way to cause nothing but headaches, but it feels like it might be a step in the right direction at long last.

# ? Jul 31, 2019 16:51

IOwnCalculus: Apr 2, 2003

I like this, but ugh it's gonna be a mess until somehow Sonarr and Plex devs figure out how to work with it.

# ? Jul 31, 2019 17:17

EL BROMANCE: Jun 10, 2006; COWABUNGA DUDES!
🥷🐢😬

Hoping that until then, whatever is their standard version is the default one and nothing changes. Hopefully it'll then become an option in Sonarr as to what chain you want to follow (ie default to Scene if you're using it with usenet/torrents) but yeah Plex might be a little trickier. Maybe something in the Match dropdown? I'm guessing each version will have an identifier so it might be something like

American Dad! Air Version (100)
American Dad! DVD Version (100)
American Dad! Scene Version (100)

etc

# ? Jul 31, 2019 17:36

Bonzo: Mar 11, 2004; Just like Mama used to make it!

quote:

Our moderators are now able to enable any number of alternate orders for specific series (at their discretion).

So business as usual?

# ? Jul 31, 2019 17:45

EL BROMANCE: Jun 10, 2006; COWABUNGA DUDES!
🥷🐢😬

Yeah I'm guessing that's where it will fall down. They'll be more than happy to implement their own personal interpretation of how things should be split, but not versions used by a massive amount of people.

# ? Jul 31, 2019 18:02

Cornjob: Jun 12, 2007; NOT AN ACTOR

Had Anyone had success integrating local
Extras into their plex library?

I followed the plex instructions and Im getting nothing.

# ? Aug 2, 2019 01:35

EL BROMANCE: Jun 10, 2006; COWABUNGA DUDES!
🥷🐢😬

It can be a pain. Sometimes it seems to work for me, sometimes not. I always put things in a folder called /Scene off the main movie, and make sure that Local Media Assets is the top agent in every library. Usually works, but no guarantee for some reason.

# ? Aug 2, 2019 01:38

Cornjob: Jun 12, 2007; NOT AN ACTOR

EL BROMANCE posted:

It can be a pain. Sometimes it seems to work for me, sometimes not. I always put things in a folder called /Scene off the main movie, and make sure that Local Media Assets is the top agent in every library. Usually works, but no guarantee for some reason.

I dont think any instructions specified that �local media asset� had to be selected, but I guess that seems like an obvious troubleshooting step. Ill try it

# ? Aug 2, 2019 01:42

EL BROMANCE: Jun 10, 2006; COWABUNGA DUDES!
🥷🐢😬

This is the official guide for it, the local media asset bit is right at the top. Make sure it all matches to that and fingers crossed.

https://support.plex.tv/articles/200220677-local-media-assets-movies/

# ? Aug 2, 2019 02:24

teagone: Jun 10, 2003; That was pretty intense, huh?

Sometimes I'll have an issue where Plex will add the Extras as separate library items instead of putting them in their proper place. Usually a library refresh or two, or doing the Plex Dance with the specific files for the Extras gets them added properly. But otherwise I've had no other issues with the Extras feature. I've since been using the feature to also add different cuts (director's cut, extended editions, special editions, etc.) of a film under the same library entry.

# ? Aug 2, 2019 02:42

Dren: Jan 5, 2001; Pillbug

be sure to name your extras exactly matching their naming guide. i name my stuff <name>.<resolution>.mkv and it wouldn�t recognize my extras till i removed the resolution part.

# ? Aug 2, 2019 05:03

teagone: Jun 10, 2003; That was pretty intense, huh?

I'm strict when it comes to following Plex naming schema and never deviate from it. Adding extras still somehow manages to mess up on occasion despite the files being named exactly how they should be. It's always just been a matter of forcing another library refresh or Plex dance the files to get them to add properly for me.

# ? Aug 2, 2019 05:29

Looten Plunder: Jul 11, 2006; Grimey Drawer

I've recently got a NAS and I've finally moved my media over and structured it how Plex wants it. I've finally managed to get it to load my TV/Movie libraries, but no matter how many times I refresh metadata it still looks like this.

Can someone tell me how to fix it? It doesn't matter if I refresh the whole library, an individual show or and individual season, nothing ever changes. If it has artwork it keeps it, and if it doesn't it doesn't change.

I did some googleing to see if there is an easy way to just copy my artwork over to the new server from my old/existing one but the instructions make the whole thing look really complicated.

Also, it seems to have loaded/popluated my movies accurately without issue, it just seems to be the TV stuff.

# ? Aug 3, 2019 13:22

savesthedayrocks: Mar 18, 2004

There may be a faster way, but what�s sticking out in my head was when I had to �match� the series. There should be a selection in the ... menu for each show.

# ? Aug 3, 2019 13:36

Looten Plunder: Jul 11, 2006; Grimey Drawer

Yeah, that was one of the things I tried when I tried fixing it on a show by show level, nothing happens after I select the title. Just tried ununmatching and rematching too.

# ? Aug 3, 2019 13:51

EL BROMANCE: Jun 10, 2006; COWABUNGA DUDES!
🥷🐢😬

I don�t think it�s you, tvdb has been a complete arse for me for about a week or two where it�s a coin toss about whether it propagates the poster or not. I�ve been doing it by hand by opening the site in another tab and getting the image url and pasting it in. Annoying though.

# ? Aug 3, 2019 14:19

RichterIX: Apr 11, 2003; Sorrowful be the heart

Yeah, give it a few days. I went bonkers a few months ago trying to troubleshoot the same issue and it turned out it was just that tvdb was being a bitch that day.

# ? Aug 4, 2019 02:58

Korthal: May 26, 2011

When isn't TVDB a bitch?

# ? Aug 6, 2019 14:52

MagusDraco: Nov 11, 2011; even speedwagon was trolled

I remember it getting posted in one of the Plex/Kodi/HTPC topics but I don't remember which and can't find it.

What do you use to integreate Plex into Kodi/the good Kodi fork (not sure which that is) if you want to get subtitles to work on 4k HDR media on a shield TV. Using the .PGS subtitles on Plex makes it want to transcode the video and that breaks everything because there's no way a quad core haswell xeon is going to transcode a 4k video

# ? Aug 6, 2019 19:12

Dicty Bojangles: Apr 14, 2001

MagusDraco posted:

I remember it getting posted in one of the Plex/Kodi/HTPC topics but I don't remember which and can't find it.

What do you use to integreate Plex into Kodi/the good Kodi fork (not sure which that is) if you want to get subtitles to work on 4k HDR media on a shield TV. Using the .PGS subtitles on Plex makes it want to transcode the video and that breaks everything because there's no way a quad core haswell xeon is going to transcode a 4k video

MrMC has Plex built-in.

# ? Aug 6, 2019 19:56

Dren: Jan 5, 2001; Pillbug

MagusDraco posted:

I remember it getting posted in one of the Plex/Kodi/HTPC topics but I don't remember which and can't find it.

What do you use to integreate Plex into Kodi/the good Kodi fork (not sure which that is) if you want to get subtitles to work on 4k HDR media on a shield TV. Using the .PGS subtitles on Plex makes it want to transcode the video and that breaks everything because there's no way a quad core haswell xeon is going to transcode a 4k video

I transcode all of my 4k stuff ahead of time and burn in the subtitles. Handbrake takes care of it.

# ? Aug 7, 2019 00:20

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# ? Jun 7, 2024 15:42

Tim Whatley: Mar 28, 2010

FYI TVDB had to revert back so if it's still being funky with you, delete the cache directory for it. It instantly solved it for me.

# ? Aug 7, 2019 00:30

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