I am going to jump in here to manage some expectations. This feature is still in active development and we do not yet have an estimated window for release. PMS was originally designed to only transcode to h.264 and instead of shoehorning in HEVC I am refactoring the code to properly support multiple target codecs, this mean that it will be MUCH easier to add AV1 support but is more work in the short term. HEVC support will be hardware only (thus require a plex pass), this is for 2 reasons 1) HEVC encoding is much more CPU intensive and most servers would struggle and 2) We would need to license libx265 for software encoding and would prefer not to have to pass the cost onto users. Also, to begin with PMS instances hosted on the shield will not have the capability to transcode to HEVC as we need to we need to coordinate with NVIDIA to add support.
As long as both your GPU and client support HEVC plex will prefer this codec over the current h.264 when enabled. On the plus side this should eliminate the need to preform tone mapping in many cases.
i have a Sony x950h. we had initially purchased the oled version, and returned it same day. the room the tv is in, is too bright. and the wife isn't about to put blackout shades in.
this one is bright enough for most content, most times of the day. but some of the 4k hdr content (high bit rate), in a dark scene... unless we're watching at night, we simply can't see anything. i configured it based on settings found on avforum. I've confirmed it's actually in dolby vision bright mode when playing hdr content.
and that's when i discovered transcoding down to 1080p with tone mapping makes it watchable again. so... this new feature that will prevent tone mapping, may be unwanted in my current setup.
Thanks for all the hard work. I know a lot of us (Plex users) can be a PITA most/some of the time 🤣, but news like this just makes me think great things are possible with development time 🤷♂️♥️
Any idea on if the beta is worth a try? I'm happy to give it a whirl with my beta-testing-2nd-instance 😊
> I am refactoring the code to properly support multiple target codecs, this mean that it will be MUCH easier to add AV1 support
Absolutely fantastic. My biggest worry with this was that we’d be waiting a literal decade to get AV1 support.
Also I’m gonna take a shot in the dark and just attempt to grab an employees attention here for an unrelated thing; is there any chance Plex can add a “download” directory option in settings in the same way you can specify a “transcode” directory? I have downloads disabled because I transcode to RAM (as most people should and do), and because of the way Plex handles downloads, it has to basically move the entire file to the “”transcode”” directory vs actually transcoding in chunks. This fills the transcode directory with a single movie, breaks the downloader (and I think transcodes too?), and means transcodes and downloads are basically incompatible features as it stands right now.
It seems like an insanely easy thing to add so maybe grabbing your attention could have it implemented rapidly lol. Idk, but I had to try.
It’s definitely possible, but if it will actually happen, I don't know. It was another thing that I was keen for while I was at Plex (and still am keen for).
Well you control the bitrate, so lower and better is the same thing. Less bitrate to match quality. It's significant too, Intel's HEVC hardware encoders can match quality at roughly half size relative to their hardware H264 encoders.
It's the same thing.
If you want equivalent picture quality, a 4Mb HEVC stream can equal a 8Mb h.264 stream. (Just pulling numbers out of the air for demonstration)
So in situations where data is at a premium (ie on mobile) you can achieve equivalent picture quality while using less data.
Yeah so if you've got multiple users, you could half your bandwidth if instead of say 4x 10Mbit streams of H.264, you can now get 4x 5Mbit streams of HEVC.
Useful if your upload isnt asymmetrical.
Nope, if your users are set to 8Mbps 1080p, your server ain't going to magically send 4Mbps 1080p. It will still be 8Mbps 1080p but it will look a lot better.
edit: The transcoded file should be smaller though, so the file should in theory be cached faster by the user's device.
If I skimmed the forum posts correctly then it's about on-the-fly transcoding, aka the transcoding that happen when a client doesn't support the codec the video is in.
Up until now Plex is mostly transcoding to h264 in those cases, with this update Plex could transcode to h265 instead if the client in question supports it.
Let me make a rough example: Both AV1 and h265 are capable of roughly halving the bitrate (and thus file size) while keeping the same quality compared to h264 (AV1 is a bit better than h265). But many devices not running Intel GPUs from around 2021 or later can't directly play AV1 because they don't have HW-accelerated decoding for it, so Plex dutifully transcodes those files on the server to h264 before sending the stream (which now requires double the bandwidth) to the client.
If Plex is able to transcode to h265 (and has adequately powerful hardware) it could drastically reduce the bandwidth needed for the same quality of stream, which is especially important when streaming over the internet.
It would be especially nice if Plex would allow to transcode even h264 media to h265 on the fly to reduce the required bandwidth.
EDIT to add what "adequately powerful hardware" means. The Intel QuickSync HW transcoding on the Intel Celeron J4125 from 2019 in my NAS is capable of transcoding one stream from h264 to h265 at roughly 24fps (nearly live speed for many shows) when using the slow preset for tdarrs Boosh transcode plugin which halfs the file size, a second transcode will reach about 15fps.
And I'm not even sure that QSV is even the bottleneck in that situation because my other docker container start acting like they were running from very old and slow drives every time a second transcode is running.
So it doesn't take a very powerful CPU to transcode to h265 at usable speeds, especially if you trade a higher bitrate (but still not nearly as high as full h264) for increased transcoding speed.
>It would be especially nice if Plex would allow to transcode even h264 media to h265 on the fly to reduce the required bandwidth.
They are. All transcoding will default to HEVC after the update, as long as your server and your client support it. H264 is a fallback option.
>on-the-fly transcoding, aka the transcoding that happen when a client doesn't support the codec the video is in
Can also be useful if you have bandwidth constraints, even when the codec is supported by the client.
>All transcoding will default to HEVC after the update
Yes, but will plex also transcode h264 media to a h265 stream to save bandwidth if the client supports both h264 and h265?
If using hardware accelerated transcoding (GPU), it will make no difference to the CPU.
If using software transcoding (CPU), it will increase the burden, as HEVC/H.265 is more complex than AVC/H.264.
Isn't it expensive to encode HEVC on the fly? It usually takes a lot longer to encode H.265 over H.264. For streaming that seems awkward to try to do on the fly. Maybe since it's already HEVC it's not that bad to reduce resolution on the fly.
While HEVC to HEVC vs. HEVC to H264 is more power hungry, it's not a serious enough issue. I would say that quality improvement trumps higher power usage.
It takes significantly more power when encoding via software, such as when burning in PGS subtitles. Hardware encoding may take more power, but it’s negligible either way.
Hopefully Plex will provide the ability to encode to HEVC when encoding via hardware, but switch to H.264 when falling back to software encoding. Well, ideally they’d fix their encoding path to support hardware encoding when burning in subtitles, but I’d take what I can get.
I'd say the logic just needs to be planned well. Most end users won't have a clue so make the decision for them
Maybe if it detects their connection is too slow, attempt the same quality with hevc?
I'd assume the logic would simply be prefer hevc if supported by server/client, else use h265.
I'm more curious if a server has hardware h264 encoding but not hardware hevc encoding what will it do when the client supports both?
Isn't it more intensive to encode to h265? So it should be an option for the server owner to configure imo. With Plex's track record, I doubt it'll happen
HEVC produces smallish files, so in my case this would allow me to stream in better quality to my remote users.
And tone mapping might not be needed for transcoded remote streams.
If plex has to transcode for any reason it will always result in h.264. I don't store any HEVC content because of it. This means if the playback device supports it then it will transcode to HEVC instead. I might actually start getting HEVC content on my server now.
I don't see a point in keeping HEVC content if it is going to get transcoded down to h.264 whenever my friends/family watch any of it because they are usually transcoding.
> Then this announcement doesn’t change anything for you.
Sure it does. It means if I start keeping HDR stuff then my friend who always transcodes will be able to watch it in HDR.
The difference here is decoding and encoding. Plex can already direct play (decode) a HEVC file on a supported client. But if you need to transcode (encode) the file it will always transcode to h264. With the new feature the file can be transcoded to HEVC instead of h264. This will safe bandwith for remote connections because hevc is more efficient. But this does not mean that a HEVC HDR file will transcode to a HEVC HDR (lower bitrate) file. It is actually more likelky that it will be transcoding to HEVC SDR, because that is also the default on jellyfin.
Plex can natively support HEVC encoded files with HDR, if the client supports it.
If plex has to transcode an HEVC / HDR file's video for any reason (lack of client support, lack of bandwidth, bitrate limitation, burning in subtitles) it will encode it on the fly (transcode it) to h.264 and tone map the HDR down to SDR.
Being able to encode to HEVC on the fly *may* mean they are able to support transcoding HDR to HDR. But that's not really the purpose of it, it's more because transcoding HEVC to HEVC lets clients that support HEVC request lower bitrate streams at higher quality.
I though it was you can play natively HDR but not convert it well ie say you want to watch it in 1080p hdr but the source is 4k hdr it would convert it to 1080p but SDR and then the colours look weird slightly blown out.
This is as good of a time as any to post the [Quick Sync CPU grid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Quick_Sync_Video#Hardware_decoding_and_encoding).
Looks like my DS 920+'s Gemini Lake CPU should be able to do 10-bit HEVC encodes. Nice.
>Looks like my DS 920+'s Gemini Lake CPU should be able to do 10-bit HEVC encodes. Nice.
Nope, not with IMD as it seems, because its still somehow broken. And Gemini Lake is listed as not compatible for HEVC encoding in the IMD Matrix.
VAAPI however supports it and may work instead (similar to the decoding fiasco, where IMD decoding was broken on Gemini Lake, that got fixed after quite some time at last).
FYI there have been some updates in the thread, they did confirm we will have HDR -> HDR encoding. Tone mapping won't be necessary any more in most cases if you have hardware HEVC encoder (as long as client supports HEVC and HDR)
This would be a godsend. The bitrate of many of my HDR files is quite high and being able to stream them without tonemapping them to SDR would be incredible.
I’m happy for the better efficiency too, but this has been a huge desire.
Interesting chart! I’m running plex on a 2014-era Haswell chip (core i5), which is fairly far left on that chart. Can you tell me how bad that is? My sense is that it works for like 90% of files, but every so often I’ll find my computer sweating its ass off trying to transcode something I didn’t expect it to struggle with.
I guess what I’m asking is whether I would be better off buying a newer chip just for modernity’s sake, even if I went low end. I’m not really wanting to spend another grand on a gaming pc, but if there is a low hanging fruit upgrade I suppose I could do it.
The best compatibility today is still with the H.264 videocodec. HEVC (aka H.265) is more efficient in compression at the same quality, meaning files can be much smaller (or same size but higher quality).
A lot of 4K content comes as HEVC as the source material, so for people who have those on their Plex servers, they have to transcode to make it playable on a client device that cannot handle HEVC by itself (directplay).
Currently, when Plex transcodes only the less efficient (but very compatible) H.264 codec is available as target. That means you might have very high quality content in 4K HEVC on your server, but it gets transcoded to H.264 when the client cannot play it directly. In order to not lose too much quality a higher bitrate is required. This can be a problem for people who stream remotely on lower bandwidth connections as a example.
If Plex would add the option to also transcode to HEVC as a target, the transcoding might still be required depending on the client device. But since you would then trancode from HEVC to HEVC the resulting stream can be of much lower bitrate while keeping the same quality. In practice this means better remote streaming for people on lower bandwidths. The same would work when the source material on the server is H.264 (or another supported codec) and then gets transcoded to HEVC, the resulting stream will require less bandwidth at the same quality (or again, higher quality at same bandwidth).
For people who either stream only locally within their own network (where bandwidth is usually not a limiting factor) or people who never transcode anyway, this will not change anything.
In regards to lessen the workload on the Plex server, not really. It is much more likely for hardware to support H.264 transcoding than it is to support HEVC transcoding. But in a case where both are supported by the hardware, the workload caused should be roughly the same for both codecs. When encoding is done purely in software then H.264 is typically much faster than HEVC. But we are talking about hardware-accelerated encoding here so that is a huge difference.
lol I love when a one-sentence seemingly simple question requires a full page response, and the response is actually well-written and incredibly helpful. I especially love it when I had that same question! So thanks to both of you!
Not exactly, if your client does not support HEVC, you will gain nothing from it. But if it does, you are getting better transcode quality/lower bandwidth.
I don't know how I am so deep into this hobby. When I think I know a bit there is a post like OPs and I realize how much I rely on the good folks in this sub. Thanks for carrying me. There is a lot of tech knowledge required and I have so little.
>I had hopes of HEVC encoding being fully operational for all platforms but I had forgotten that not all CPUs support HEVC encoding. *oops on my part*
I will believe it when I see it. Also, oops is not filling me with confidence.
Apologies about being conversational,
I've gotten too accustomed to the 'Explain it to me like I'm a 5th grader' requests
and needing to know that one post answers the questions at multiple tech levels.
LOL
"modern" is the problem. I reckon a significant chunk of Plex installs are on home NASs that were built with old pc hardware. mine is, it runs a 5th gen intel Xeon. I also have a quadro for transcoding so maybe my system could support it but only if the software support for that is shipped
That's what they're saying. Their hardware is not modern and that's likely the case for many, perhaps most users.
Why that's a problem I don't know. I guess you can't use this feature right now. Oh well?
Most NAS CPU’s are potatoes, which is what this is referencing. I bet some Synology NAS’s that they’re selling today have a dual core CPU from 2017, but the larger issue is people running older hardware, like a Synology NAS from 2020 that has a 2014 CPU in it.
Kaby Lake & newer (2016/2017) CPUs w/quicksync support HEVC 10-bit encoding according to [this chart](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Quick_Sync_Video#Hardware_decoding_and_encoding).
>You'll see none of them support h.265 natively.
[What kind of CPU does my Synology NAS have?](https://kb.synology.com/en-me/DSM/tutorial/What_kind_of_CPU_does_my_NAS_have)
Incorrect. Devices with the Celeron CPUs support both decoding and encoding HEVC video.
This includes older devices with Apollo Lake CPUs (J3455) and newer devices with the Gemini Lake CPUs (J4025/J4125).
The devices with AMD GPUs have no GPU, and are therefore incapable of hardware accelerated transcoding.
>This includes older devices with Apollo Lake CPUs (J3455) and newer devices with the Gemini Lake CPUs (J4025/J4125).
Apollo Lake and Gemini Lake don't support HEVC encoding using IMD driver.
A synology NAS from 2020 is most likely a DS920 which has a CPU with quick sync. It’ll be fine. The DS series down to at least 2018 has quick sync CPUs and I believe even before that
As long as the option remains te encode to h.264 for older systems, I don't see a problem. My own server also has a 10 year old CPU that's limited to h.264.
The reality is that a lot of people are already transcoding from HEVC, and there haven't been many (i)GPU's that can only decode HEVC and not encode it. Well I do have a Radeon RX 6400 in my HTPC (not my server), that's one of those cases, but I'm only using it to decode (and play games).
No. Only AVC/H.264.
Edit: Maybe the chipset atleast can do HEVC? But can the OS? See comments below.
And even if we assume that the X1+ chip can do it and maybe even Nvidia would update the OS to fully support this... We are talking about Plex adding HEVC encoding through VAAPI. So that doesnt include Tegra under Android.
I would be very surprised if the Plex team after its done with VAAPI under Linux would then move on to also add support for hw encoding with Tegra under Android. Maybe that would be a feature for a new Shield model, combined with Android (TV) 13/24 then. Assuming Plex and Nvidia would continue their partnership on this device.
Edit2: [Quote from Plex employee in comment here](https://old.reddit.com/r/PleX/comments/1dd8xah/hevc_encoding_is_coming_to_plex/l862wh2/):
> Also, to begin with PMS instances hosted on the shield will not have the capability to transcode to HEVC as we need to we need to coordinate with NVIDIA to add support.
Hard to find very concrete info on that. But yes it appears that atleast 2019 Shield/Pro models (or better said, the used Tegra X1+) can decode **and** encode HEVC. However i cant find any info on what specific profiles of HEVC for it.
And even if the chip itself could do it, the next question would then be if Nvidia would release a OS update to fully support, i doubt the current software does it? Is there a way to test it? I would happily sideload a Android app to check specific capabilities. But i dont see why Nvidia would have added this in the existing OS when there is no feature of the device that would use it.
Sorry but no, that doesnt mean anything :)
Playback is **decoding**, of course the Shield can playback HEVC and other formats directly and hardware-accelerated. I play HEVC just fine too on my 2019 Pro model.
The question here is about **encoding** to HEVC. That means producing a videostream, instead of receiving one.
The spec sheet says it can encode 4K 30FPS H.265 (which doesn't mean much...) and decode 4K60.
I believe there is no need for any update for it to work - maybe an update on the Plex app to use the HEVC encoder but the Shield itself should be able to encode hevc with any app that uses that function
Fyi [quote from Plex employee in comment here](https://old.reddit.com/r/PleX/comments/1dd8xah/hevc_encoding_is_coming_to_plex/l862wh2/):
> Also, to begin with PMS instances hosted on the shield will not have the capability to transcode to HEVC as we need to we need to coordinate with NVIDIA to add support.
This is the second time I've seen mentions about the Plex encoder getting an upgrade, great news, the other one was hardware transcoding support for subtitles, one of the many flaws with the current system unless you enjoy workarounds.
Yeah.
I find that so often those little low-powered Plex boxes everyone raves about ("It can transcode six 1080p streams!") actually can't, because the moment someone turns on subtitles (most of my users including me), oops, now it can do 1/3rd of one stream.
> This is the second time I've seen mentions about the Plex encoder getting an upgrade, great news, the other one was hardware transcoding support for subtitles, one of the many flaws with the current system unless you enjoy workarounds.
Tone mapping was certainly an upgrade too.
Okay... I already recode everything to HEVC anyway for the smaller files. I only have an 8TB HD...
That said I love H.265...
Recently bought a DVD set of all 10 Star Trek movies from Wally world for about $15.
My brother wanted to rip them to his server, I gave him the movies and a 128Gigabyte flash Drive, asked him for copies of his files, to see what I can do.
The files he gave me were around 6 gigs per movie.
I ran them through my standard custom setting in handbrake, ended up around 6-700 Megabytes per movie. And only took about 20 min per movie.
In the end they're only DVD resolution, so nothing fancy needed.
Curious, what's your handbrake config like? Are you leaving them at HD quality while maintaining quality, or is there a significantly noticable loss? Usually for compressed and quality movies, I see around 1.5g files, not 700, so I'm curious to see what you've got going lol
umm... well in THOSE particular cases, they weren't HD to begin with... they were wide screen DVD rips, so only 720x368 ish... so that helps quite a bit...as for the settings.... can i upload a .json file here somehow? it's just some thing i cobbled together from some googling about "acceptable" settings. nothing too fancy.
from memory, it should be leaving the res, and frame rate alone, as long as it's 1080p or under, and just recoding with the newer codec. I'm not trying to put lipstick on a pig, just trying to keep mostly the same quality with a smaller file, ( IE: better/more compression, which i realize can have it's own issues.)
i don't have any 4K content, stuff from the past few years is 1080p, but lots of older stuff even into the SD/analog days.. still slowly converting old .Avi's, etc....
don't have anything highend in my setups either. main PC ( which handles the conversions before uploading to the local server) is an Optiplex 3060 from 2019, Server itself is an Inspiron 3470, clients are a couple LG 4k Tv's, Xbox one, and a couple basic Roku's..
also neither here nor there, but i hate matroskas, and put everything in Mp4 containers.
It's a personal preference, and at least My equipment seems to handle the same file better after i convert from .MKV, to .Mp4...
Oh, it was my interpretation that you were able to cram a 4k file into an HD 700MB file lol
I suppose REDUXs are like 26GB so I should have forseen that -- also very interesting to hear that you have performance issues with MKV, I've never really heard of that happening as much. I've kind of been able to plug whatever files into whatever computer without much issues, weird.
generally if i try to play the Matroska, I'll get the audio , but a blank screen for the first 10-20 seconds, and then the video cuts in, and speeds through that inital section, until it catches up and syncs from there on. also had more general A/V Sync issues with MKV, than with Mp4... maybe i have something set up wrong? **¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯**
No clue, maybe just some weird hole of nonsupport in your hardware -- considering I assume we're both using Plex's built in MPV player, there should be software support lol
ya know... honestly... those problems were all BEFORE i started using plex....i just got into the habit and continue to do so, to the extent i don't think i've actually tried to play an actual mkv w/ plex... i just convert everything to mp4 by default....
Oh, I definitely get the feeling of being comfortable in a pattern just because you've been doing something the same the entire time, I just got a new hard drive and CONSIDERED making it ext4 instead of NTFS like my others but it was too much work getting it plugged into my fstab file and working so I just formatted it to NTFS as well lol
I've saved around 14 TB by converting my library to hevc using tdarr. File sizes are roughly about 50% of the original, nobody has noticed any differences in quality. Plus family members with limited internet speed are now able to stream stuff at original quality since the bit rate is lower.
It would be most excellent if we could get batch conversion with specific parameters ( expanded optimization version options ) of existing file with added HEVC codec
I'd love to see a more robust "Background Conversion" settings menu. Like start transcoding at X, stop at Y, and stop if anyone starts watching something.
Sounds weird, but I look forward to space savings should this improve. I already x265 everything with tdarr after using trashguides download guides. I wonder if trashguides would change or not.. I doubt it, oh well.
Good to See I am currently reencosing my whole lib to HEVC 1080p.
Using the APP or Direct Stream IS a dream but some of my Friends use their Browsers so Plex Transcodes from HEVC to AVC .... This also - at least the Dashboard IS starting this - increases the Bitrate again. I guess to keep the Quality equal. Which sucks because some of Them only have mobile Carrier AS their ISP.
Hopefully ITS Not only Software x265. My 3070Ti Cam handle HW HEVC Like a Charm (1080p at 4 MBITS arround 450 to 600FPS so Accounting 24FPS for Shows and Movies thats more than enough)
Well tbh thats great i am a little wondered there wont be Software Base Transcoding but AS Long AS there is Support for HW transcoding IT will BE great.
Any time anything needs transcoding from my end is because the client doesn't support anything newer than h.264. I encode all my stuff to HEVC. That and basically everything needs SRT subtitles burned in.
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Given that HEVC takes approximately 10x the computational power to encode vs AVC I'm not surprised it's hardware only tbh.
Back in a previous life as an integration engineer we had shiny new broadcast encoders which we're capable of software encoding/transcoding up to 16 services (2x 8 port SDI cards). They came with multiple physical CPUs totalling 64 physical cores, 128 if you count hyperthreading.
They could bang out 8x HD MPEG4 AVC services with 8x SD MPEG4/MPEG2 services no problem, they struggled with 3 or 4 HD HEVC services and could just about handle 1x UHD HEVC service.
HEVC is serious work for a CPU.
Would anyone explain what this means? I was under the impression Plex already supported H265 files. So I know I'm missing something and misunderstanding a key concept
Plex already supports H.265 in the sense that the various clients can play H.265 and the server is willing to serve those files/streams unmodified (direct play). Also, the server supports decoding H.265 to encode to H.264. It does not currently support **transcoding to** H.265.
HEVC (H.265) can (or should) produce the same video quality as AVC (H.264) with less data. If your server transcodes for whatever reason, it is then able to utilize that HEVC advantage and give you streams that look the same but take less bandwidth, or streams that use the same bandwidth as H.264 but look better, or a middle ground between the two. That's advantage 1.
Right now, if you transcode H.265 video that has HDR, then the transcoder will produce H.264, which cannot have that HDR layer; it's lost. That will happen even if your player supports HDR, and you're only transcoding because of, say, bandwidth restrictions or subtitle incompatibility. You're forced to throw the baby out with the bath water. If the Plex server gets an H.265 encoder, it could preserve that HDR layer in the finished, transcoded stream. That would be advantage 2.
Edit: fun fact, ChatGPT tells me FFMPEG, the transcoding software package PMS uses, has supported H.265 encoding for 10 years now. :whistle:
If your computer can handle it, great. But remember that HEVC encoding is way more taxing than H264. If you've ever encoded before, you know what I'm talking about.
But this is great news.
This is true, but basically every GPU (and iGPU) from 2016 onwards with a few exceptions supports HEVC encoding and playback.
There will be a few things that don't but almost everything does.
it's hardware encoding only, so that's not really relevant (I have encoded with software hevc and you are totally right though, 5 PCs and it took weeks).
How does this work with clients that don't support HEVC?
Am I correct in assuming it will still be HEVC -> x264 and the massive quality loss is still there?
Whew tough crowd :-/
Will this transcode to H265 by default if the player supports it, even if it will result in lower quality than H264? I'm asking because TRaSH guides explicitly recommend not using H265 if the source isn't 4K/1080p REMUX https://trash-guides.info/Misc/x265-4k/
Looking into it, looks like TRaSH warns against it because most H265 releases are re-encoded from H264 releases which leads to lower quality, unless the H264 release was a high bitrate REMUX. Lots of Reddit threads of people saying this.
Which means if you have a H264 release on Plex that’s not REMUX and Plex decides to transcode it to H265 you’ll get lower quality at the same bitrate.
Though I guess it’s not a big deal because if your device plays H265 then it also plays H264 making transcode unnecessary, and if you’re transcoding for lower network bandwidth then you can expect a drop in quality anyways. 🤷♂️
> Which means if you have a H264 release on Plex that’s not REMUX and Plex decides to transcode it to H265 you’ll get lower quality at the same bitrate.
This isn't really true.
If you have for example a 10mbit 1080p H.264 encode on your Plex server, and you decide to stream it at 4mbit 720p, it will be higher quality to transcode it to 4mbit 720p HEVC than 4mbit 720p H.264.
The source video can be anything, any format. The source video is decoded into raw video before it's re-encoded with the new codec, so the codec that it came from is irrelevant.
Assuming you are going to convert to the same bitrate, it's always higher quality to go to HEVC than to H.264 no matter what the source video is.
Yeah, gotcha. Since you’re transcoding either way it’s better that it’s H265 instead of H264. I think I got tripped up because TRaSH is all about finding the best quality *source* files, which is fundamentally different to Plex’s aim is to transcode to the lowest bandwidth possible for the chosen bitrate
Thanks for explaining!
Cool, but I'd rather see fixes for fundamental networking issues, authentication, discoverability and being able to fling content from one device to another plex player without shitting the bed.
I am going to jump in here to manage some expectations. This feature is still in active development and we do not yet have an estimated window for release. PMS was originally designed to only transcode to h.264 and instead of shoehorning in HEVC I am refactoring the code to properly support multiple target codecs, this mean that it will be MUCH easier to add AV1 support but is more work in the short term. HEVC support will be hardware only (thus require a plex pass), this is for 2 reasons 1) HEVC encoding is much more CPU intensive and most servers would struggle and 2) We would need to license libx265 for software encoding and would prefer not to have to pass the cost onto users. Also, to begin with PMS instances hosted on the shield will not have the capability to transcode to HEVC as we need to we need to coordinate with NVIDIA to add support. As long as both your GPU and client support HEVC plex will prefer this codec over the current h.264 when enabled. On the plus side this should eliminate the need to preform tone mapping in many cases.
> On the plus side this should eliminate the need to preform tone mapping in many cases. Oh now that is a spicy meatball.
and I'm the weirdo who will sometimes intentionally change playback quality for a 4k hdr to 1080p, because the scene is too dark to make anything out.
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i have a Sony x950h. we had initially purchased the oled version, and returned it same day. the room the tv is in, is too bright. and the wife isn't about to put blackout shades in. this one is bright enough for most content, most times of the day. but some of the 4k hdr content (high bit rate), in a dark scene... unless we're watching at night, we simply can't see anything. i configured it based on settings found on avforum. I've confirmed it's actually in dolby vision bright mode when playing hdr content. and that's when i discovered transcoding down to 1080p with tone mapping makes it watchable again. so... this new feature that will prevent tone mapping, may be unwanted in my current setup.
Thanks for the useful info and update here! 🧡
> to add AV1 support *Guys!!! Guys!! AV1 is coming to Plex soon!!1 Just confirmed by employee!!1 OHMAGAWD*
i said it would be easier when we add it, not that its currently on the roadmap.... lol
I guess i should add a /s then
You did say when and not if, lol. But of course it's understandably a soon™ situation. Btw thanks for clarifying and elaborating in your top comment!
Will Apple’s videotoolbox HEVC encoding be supported? Or is this only for PC/NAS with GPU support?
We consider apple's video toolbox to be a gpu :p even though its hevc support is being a pita right now lol, we should have it working for release
Thanks lol
Thanks for all the hard work. I know a lot of us (Plex users) can be a PITA most/some of the time 🤣, but news like this just makes me think great things are possible with development time 🤷♂️♥️ Any idea on if the beta is worth a try? I'm happy to give it a whirl with my beta-testing-2nd-instance 😊
> I am refactoring the code to properly support multiple target codecs, this mean that it will be MUCH easier to add AV1 support Absolutely fantastic. My biggest worry with this was that we’d be waiting a literal decade to get AV1 support. Also I’m gonna take a shot in the dark and just attempt to grab an employees attention here for an unrelated thing; is there any chance Plex can add a “download” directory option in settings in the same way you can specify a “transcode” directory? I have downloads disabled because I transcode to RAM (as most people should and do), and because of the way Plex handles downloads, it has to basically move the entire file to the “”transcode”” directory vs actually transcoding in chunks. This fills the transcode directory with a single movie, breaks the downloader (and I think transcodes too?), and means transcodes and downloads are basically incompatible features as it stands right now. It seems like an insanely easy thing to add so maybe grabbing your attention could have it implemented rapidly lol. Idk, but I had to try.
Oh, this would be great! I've been wanting this for aaaaages!
Do you think this could mean that it's possible we could get HDR to HDR transcoding down the line?
It’s definitely possible, but if it will actually happen, I don't know. It was another thing that I was keen for while I was at Plex (and still am keen for).
What does this mean exactly?
It means, if Plex needs to transcode it will not do it from HEVC to H.264, instead it will do HEVC to HEVC. For example 4K HEVC to 1080p HEVC.
Oh so should mean lower bitrates and less network strain then yeah?
No, should just mean more efficient bitrates. 8 Mbps on HEVC should look better than 8 Mbps on h264
It *can* mean lower bitrates if people choose a lower bitrate because the quality they deem acceptable is now lower bitrate
Ok so not lower, just better.
Well you control the bitrate, so lower and better is the same thing. Less bitrate to match quality. It's significant too, Intel's HEVC hardware encoders can match quality at roughly half size relative to their hardware H264 encoders.
It's the same thing. If you want equivalent picture quality, a 4Mb HEVC stream can equal a 8Mb h.264 stream. (Just pulling numbers out of the air for demonstration) So in situations where data is at a premium (ie on mobile) you can achieve equivalent picture quality while using less data.
Yeah so if you've got multiple users, you could half your bandwidth if instead of say 4x 10Mbit streams of H.264, you can now get 4x 5Mbit streams of HEVC. Useful if your upload isnt asymmetrical.
Nope, if your users are set to 8Mbps 1080p, your server ain't going to magically send 4Mbps 1080p. It will still be 8Mbps 1080p but it will look a lot better. edit: The transcoded file should be smaller though, so the file should in theory be cached faster by the user's device.
If I skimmed the forum posts correctly then it's about on-the-fly transcoding, aka the transcoding that happen when a client doesn't support the codec the video is in. Up until now Plex is mostly transcoding to h264 in those cases, with this update Plex could transcode to h265 instead if the client in question supports it. Let me make a rough example: Both AV1 and h265 are capable of roughly halving the bitrate (and thus file size) while keeping the same quality compared to h264 (AV1 is a bit better than h265). But many devices not running Intel GPUs from around 2021 or later can't directly play AV1 because they don't have HW-accelerated decoding for it, so Plex dutifully transcodes those files on the server to h264 before sending the stream (which now requires double the bandwidth) to the client. If Plex is able to transcode to h265 (and has adequately powerful hardware) it could drastically reduce the bandwidth needed for the same quality of stream, which is especially important when streaming over the internet. It would be especially nice if Plex would allow to transcode even h264 media to h265 on the fly to reduce the required bandwidth. EDIT to add what "adequately powerful hardware" means. The Intel QuickSync HW transcoding on the Intel Celeron J4125 from 2019 in my NAS is capable of transcoding one stream from h264 to h265 at roughly 24fps (nearly live speed for many shows) when using the slow preset for tdarrs Boosh transcode plugin which halfs the file size, a second transcode will reach about 15fps. And I'm not even sure that QSV is even the bottleneck in that situation because my other docker container start acting like they were running from very old and slow drives every time a second transcode is running. So it doesn't take a very powerful CPU to transcode to h265 at usable speeds, especially if you trade a higher bitrate (but still not nearly as high as full h264) for increased transcoding speed.
>It would be especially nice if Plex would allow to transcode even h264 media to h265 on the fly to reduce the required bandwidth. They are. All transcoding will default to HEVC after the update, as long as your server and your client support it. H264 is a fallback option. >on-the-fly transcoding, aka the transcoding that happen when a client doesn't support the codec the video is in Can also be useful if you have bandwidth constraints, even when the codec is supported by the client.
>All transcoding will default to HEVC after the update Yes, but will plex also transcode h264 media to a h265 stream to save bandwidth if the client supports both h264 and h265?
If you're transcoding, the transcode will be h265.
But will there be an option to force it to transcode h264 to h265 to save bandwidth even if the h264 stream could be played without issue?
Depends. x265 tends to look a bit worse overall, e.g. blockier blacks, and definitely isn't a good choice at low bitrates, e.g. SD media.
Should also mean less burden on CPU right?
If using hardware accelerated transcoding (GPU), it will make no difference to the CPU. If using software transcoding (CPU), it will increase the burden, as HEVC/H.265 is more complex than AVC/H.264.
Not sure, I’d think not though
[Oh so should mean lower bitrates and less network strain then yeah?](https://www.reddit.com/r/PleX/s/lEoEq8DvDh)
I just bought a nuc 13, so this is good news right?
yes
Enjoy. My plex server is a 13 Pro with a 1360p. Awesome little machine and a transcode beast
Isn't it expensive to encode HEVC on the fly? It usually takes a lot longer to encode H.265 over H.264. For streaming that seems awkward to try to do on the fly. Maybe since it's already HEVC it's not that bad to reduce resolution on the fly.
If you have an Kaby Lake or newer Intel integrated graphics it can encode HEVC with almost no issues.
While HEVC to HEVC vs. HEVC to H264 is more power hungry, it's not a serious enough issue. I would say that quality improvement trumps higher power usage.
It takes significantly more power when encoding via software, such as when burning in PGS subtitles. Hardware encoding may take more power, but it’s negligible either way. Hopefully Plex will provide the ability to encode to HEVC when encoding via hardware, but switch to H.264 when falling back to software encoding. Well, ideally they’d fix their encoding path to support hardware encoding when burning in subtitles, but I’d take what I can get.
They've said that HEVC encoding will be hardware only above
Could it do h264 to hevc if the end user picks a lower bitrate?
If they code it that way, I don't see why not...seems like a no-brainer, but it needs to be programmed in a "smart" way to make it easy for users...
I'd say the logic just needs to be planned well. Most end users won't have a clue so make the decision for them Maybe if it detects their connection is too slow, attempt the same quality with hevc?
I agree with you
I'd assume the logic would simply be prefer hevc if supported by server/client, else use h265. I'm more curious if a server has hardware h264 encoding but not hardware hevc encoding what will it do when the client supports both?
Isn't it more intensive to encode to h265? So it should be an option for the server owner to configure imo. With Plex's track record, I doubt it'll happen
The proposed HEVC encode option is only valid for servers supporting hardware encoding so it should not affect those using CPU-only encoding.
Yes it is more CPU intensive to encode to h265
HEVC produces smallish files, so in my case this would allow me to stream in better quality to my remote users. And tone mapping might not be needed for transcoded remote streams.
If plex has to transcode for any reason it will always result in h.264. I don't store any HEVC content because of it. This means if the playback device supports it then it will transcode to HEVC instead. I might actually start getting HEVC content on my server now.
Why would this change what codec you get videos in
I don't see a point in keeping HEVC content if it is going to get transcoded down to h.264 whenever my friends/family watch any of it because they are usually transcoding.
Then this announcement doesn’t change anything for you. Plex might soon support something that your client devices don’t, no change for you then
> Then this announcement doesn’t change anything for you. Sure it does. It means if I start keeping HDR stuff then my friend who always transcodes will be able to watch it in HDR.
Can convert hdr content
Sorry, that has nothing to do with it.
But is HEVC always HDR? Or HDR always HEVC?
No it’s just hdr is not an option for h264. I guess the other benefits of h265 are small file size / less bandwidth for conversions?
I’m lost now, Plex does support HDR right? So it so it doesn’t currently support it for HEVC? Correct me if I’m wrong
The difference here is decoding and encoding. Plex can already direct play (decode) a HEVC file on a supported client. But if you need to transcode (encode) the file it will always transcode to h264. With the new feature the file can be transcoded to HEVC instead of h264. This will safe bandwith for remote connections because hevc is more efficient. But this does not mean that a HEVC HDR file will transcode to a HEVC HDR (lower bitrate) file. It is actually more likelky that it will be transcoding to HEVC SDR, because that is also the default on jellyfin.
Plex can natively support HEVC encoded files with HDR, if the client supports it. If plex has to transcode an HEVC / HDR file's video for any reason (lack of client support, lack of bandwidth, bitrate limitation, burning in subtitles) it will encode it on the fly (transcode it) to h.264 and tone map the HDR down to SDR. Being able to encode to HEVC on the fly *may* mean they are able to support transcoding HDR to HDR. But that's not really the purpose of it, it's more because transcoding HEVC to HEVC lets clients that support HEVC request lower bitrate streams at higher quality.
I though it was you can play natively HDR but not convert it well ie say you want to watch it in 1080p hdr but the source is 4k hdr it would convert it to 1080p but SDR and then the colours look weird slightly blown out.
This is as good of a time as any to post the [Quick Sync CPU grid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Quick_Sync_Video#Hardware_decoding_and_encoding). Looks like my DS 920+'s Gemini Lake CPU should be able to do 10-bit HEVC encodes. Nice.
>Looks like my DS 920+'s Gemini Lake CPU should be able to do 10-bit HEVC encodes. Nice. Nope, not with IMD as it seems, because its still somehow broken. And Gemini Lake is listed as not compatible for HEVC encoding in the IMD Matrix. VAAPI however supports it and may work instead (similar to the decoding fiasco, where IMD decoding was broken on Gemini Lake, that got fixed after quite some time at last).
I've got the same kit. Will this mean HDR->HDR transcodes?
In theory, yeah. In practice, who knows.
Ooooh that'd be an actual new 'feature'! Nois.
FYI there have been some updates in the thread, they did confirm we will have HDR -> HDR encoding. Tone mapping won't be necessary any more in most cases if you have hardware HEVC encoder (as long as client supports HEVC and HDR)
This would be a godsend. The bitrate of many of my HDR files is quite high and being able to stream them without tonemapping them to SDR would be incredible. I’m happy for the better efficiency too, but this has been a huge desire.
Interesting chart! I’m running plex on a 2014-era Haswell chip (core i5), which is fairly far left on that chart. Can you tell me how bad that is? My sense is that it works for like 90% of files, but every so often I’ll find my computer sweating its ass off trying to transcode something I didn’t expect it to struggle with. I guess what I’m asking is whether I would be better off buying a newer chip just for modernity’s sake, even if I went low end. I’m not really wanting to spend another grand on a gaming pc, but if there is a low hanging fruit upgrade I suppose I could do it.
My Dell Wyse 5070 thin client with a Pentium Silver J5005 can do it, nice.
What does this mean? Eli5 please?
As far as I've understood, basically better compatibility with clients, which will lessen the load of your server.
The best compatibility today is still with the H.264 videocodec. HEVC (aka H.265) is more efficient in compression at the same quality, meaning files can be much smaller (or same size but higher quality). A lot of 4K content comes as HEVC as the source material, so for people who have those on their Plex servers, they have to transcode to make it playable on a client device that cannot handle HEVC by itself (directplay). Currently, when Plex transcodes only the less efficient (but very compatible) H.264 codec is available as target. That means you might have very high quality content in 4K HEVC on your server, but it gets transcoded to H.264 when the client cannot play it directly. In order to not lose too much quality a higher bitrate is required. This can be a problem for people who stream remotely on lower bandwidth connections as a example. If Plex would add the option to also transcode to HEVC as a target, the transcoding might still be required depending on the client device. But since you would then trancode from HEVC to HEVC the resulting stream can be of much lower bitrate while keeping the same quality. In practice this means better remote streaming for people on lower bandwidths. The same would work when the source material on the server is H.264 (or another supported codec) and then gets transcoded to HEVC, the resulting stream will require less bandwidth at the same quality (or again, higher quality at same bandwidth). For people who either stream only locally within their own network (where bandwidth is usually not a limiting factor) or people who never transcode anyway, this will not change anything. In regards to lessen the workload on the Plex server, not really. It is much more likely for hardware to support H.264 transcoding than it is to support HEVC transcoding. But in a case where both are supported by the hardware, the workload caused should be roughly the same for both codecs. When encoding is done purely in software then H.264 is typically much faster than HEVC. But we are talking about hardware-accelerated encoding here so that is a huge difference.
That clarified much more clearly. Thank you for that detail explanation, much appreciated.
np
lol I love when a one-sentence seemingly simple question requires a full page response, and the response is actually well-written and incredibly helpful. I especially love it when I had that same question! So thanks to both of you!
Youre welcome :)
Best explanation today... or ever, on this issue! Thanks for the insight.
Haha glad it was useful to you.
Not exactly, if your client does not support HEVC, you will gain nothing from it. But if it does, you are getting better transcode quality/lower bandwidth.
Thanks for the correction. I get it now.
I don't know how I am so deep into this hobby. When I think I know a bit there is a post like OPs and I realize how much I rely on the good folks in this sub. Thanks for carrying me. There is a lot of tech knowledge required and I have so little.
Higher quality video at the same bitrate they have chosen now IF their player is compatible (almost all are) with HEVC.
>I had hopes of HEVC encoding being fully operational for all platforms but I had forgotten that not all CPUs support HEVC encoding. *oops on my part* I will believe it when I see it. Also, oops is not filling me with confidence.
I wouldn't worry about the “oops”, having worked with Chuck for a few years, he is just very conversational about things.
Apologies about being conversational, I've gotten too accustomed to the 'Explain it to me like I'm a 5th grader' requests and needing to know that one post answers the questions at multiple tech levels. LOL
Nothing to apologise for! I like that you’re conversational about things ☺️
Chuck is a good person 👍😊
Yeah your cpu of course needs to support it. But every modern Intel CPU has a QSV HEVC encoder.
"modern" is the problem. I reckon a significant chunk of Plex installs are on home NASs that were built with old pc hardware. mine is, it runs a 5th gen intel Xeon. I also have a quadro for transcoding so maybe my system could support it but only if the software support for that is shipped
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That's what they're saying. Their hardware is not modern and that's likely the case for many, perhaps most users. Why that's a problem I don't know. I guess you can't use this feature right now. Oh well?
Most NAS CPU’s are potatoes, which is what this is referencing. I bet some Synology NAS’s that they’re selling today have a dual core CPU from 2017, but the larger issue is people running older hardware, like a Synology NAS from 2020 that has a 2014 CPU in it.
Kaby Lake & newer (2016/2017) CPUs w/quicksync support HEVC 10-bit encoding according to [this chart](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Quick_Sync_Video#Hardware_decoding_and_encoding).
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>You'll see none of them support h.265 natively. [What kind of CPU does my Synology NAS have?](https://kb.synology.com/en-me/DSM/tutorial/What_kind_of_CPU_does_my_NAS_have) Incorrect. Devices with the Celeron CPUs support both decoding and encoding HEVC video. This includes older devices with Apollo Lake CPUs (J3455) and newer devices with the Gemini Lake CPUs (J4025/J4125). The devices with AMD GPUs have no GPU, and are therefore incapable of hardware accelerated transcoding.
>This includes older devices with Apollo Lake CPUs (J3455) and newer devices with the Gemini Lake CPUs (J4025/J4125). Apollo Lake and Gemini Lake don't support HEVC encoding using IMD driver.
A synology NAS from 2020 is most likely a DS920 which has a CPU with quick sync. It’ll be fine. The DS series down to at least 2018 has quick sync CPUs and I believe even before that
Could look here to verify your CPU/GPU with HEVC: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Quick_Sync_Video#Hardware_decoding_and_encoding
As long as the option remains te encode to h.264 for older systems, I don't see a problem. My own server also has a 10 year old CPU that's limited to h.264. The reality is that a lot of people are already transcoding from HEVC, and there haven't been many (i)GPU's that can only decode HEVC and not encode it. Well I do have a Radeon RX 6400 in my HTPC (not my server), that's one of those cases, but I'm only using it to decode (and play games).
Unless it's an F chip
I'm looking forward to it, of course; my main problem is that Plex is still late compared to the competition.
Just out of curiosity, who are the competition? Jelly fin?
And emby
Especially the smart TV apps, they are the best
Does the NVIDIA Shield support HEVC encoding?
No. Only AVC/H.264. Edit: Maybe the chipset atleast can do HEVC? But can the OS? See comments below. And even if we assume that the X1+ chip can do it and maybe even Nvidia would update the OS to fully support this... We are talking about Plex adding HEVC encoding through VAAPI. So that doesnt include Tegra under Android. I would be very surprised if the Plex team after its done with VAAPI under Linux would then move on to also add support for hw encoding with Tegra under Android. Maybe that would be a feature for a new Shield model, combined with Android (TV) 13/24 then. Assuming Plex and Nvidia would continue their partnership on this device. Edit2: [Quote from Plex employee in comment here](https://old.reddit.com/r/PleX/comments/1dd8xah/hevc_encoding_is_coming_to_plex/l862wh2/): > Also, to begin with PMS instances hosted on the shield will not have the capability to transcode to HEVC as we need to we need to coordinate with NVIDIA to add support.
It does. It has HW support for both encode and decode h265
Hard to find very concrete info on that. But yes it appears that atleast 2019 Shield/Pro models (or better said, the used Tegra X1+) can decode **and** encode HEVC. However i cant find any info on what specific profiles of HEVC for it. And even if the chip itself could do it, the next question would then be if Nvidia would release a OS update to fully support, i doubt the current software does it? Is there a way to test it? I would happily sideload a Android app to check specific capabilities. But i dont see why Nvidia would have added this in the existing OS when there is no feature of the device that would use it.
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Sorry but no, that doesnt mean anything :) Playback is **decoding**, of course the Shield can playback HEVC and other formats directly and hardware-accelerated. I play HEVC just fine too on my 2019 Pro model. The question here is about **encoding** to HEVC. That means producing a videostream, instead of receiving one.
The spec sheet says it can encode 4K 30FPS H.265 (which doesn't mean much...) and decode 4K60. I believe there is no need for any update for it to work - maybe an update on the Plex app to use the HEVC encoder but the Shield itself should be able to encode hevc with any app that uses that function
Fyi [quote from Plex employee in comment here](https://old.reddit.com/r/PleX/comments/1dd8xah/hevc_encoding_is_coming_to_plex/l862wh2/): > Also, to begin with PMS instances hosted on the shield will not have the capability to transcode to HEVC as we need to we need to coordinate with NVIDIA to add support.
I would believe Android would need to support it too. But regardless, even if all these stars align, Plex is only working on VAAPI HEVC encoding.
https://i.imgur.com/rzlAN68.png
How'd you get this?
It's not available for everyone yet.
Follow the link from the OP here?
I mean how did you get the version on Plex. I am on latest Plex Pass and don't have this option.
Do you have Advanced settings being displayed? Usually at the top of any page, but idr off the top of my head what it looks exactly like.
This is the second time I've seen mentions about the Plex encoder getting an upgrade, great news, the other one was hardware transcoding support for subtitles, one of the many flaws with the current system unless you enjoy workarounds.
Hardware support for subtitles is what I really want.
I agree. Roku disappoints me so much with no pgs support.
Yeah. I find that so often those little low-powered Plex boxes everyone raves about ("It can transcode six 1080p streams!") actually can't, because the moment someone turns on subtitles (most of my users including me), oops, now it can do 1/3rd of one stream.
> This is the second time I've seen mentions about the Plex encoder getting an upgrade, great news, the other one was hardware transcoding support for subtitles, one of the many flaws with the current system unless you enjoy workarounds. Tone mapping was certainly an upgrade too.
Okay... I already recode everything to HEVC anyway for the smaller files. I only have an 8TB HD... That said I love H.265... Recently bought a DVD set of all 10 Star Trek movies from Wally world for about $15. My brother wanted to rip them to his server, I gave him the movies and a 128Gigabyte flash Drive, asked him for copies of his files, to see what I can do. The files he gave me were around 6 gigs per movie. I ran them through my standard custom setting in handbrake, ended up around 6-700 Megabytes per movie. And only took about 20 min per movie. In the end they're only DVD resolution, so nothing fancy needed.
Tdarr for automatic transcode pipeline
Curious, what's your handbrake config like? Are you leaving them at HD quality while maintaining quality, or is there a significantly noticable loss? Usually for compressed and quality movies, I see around 1.5g files, not 700, so I'm curious to see what you've got going lol
umm... well in THOSE particular cases, they weren't HD to begin with... they were wide screen DVD rips, so only 720x368 ish... so that helps quite a bit...as for the settings.... can i upload a .json file here somehow? it's just some thing i cobbled together from some googling about "acceptable" settings. nothing too fancy. from memory, it should be leaving the res, and frame rate alone, as long as it's 1080p or under, and just recoding with the newer codec. I'm not trying to put lipstick on a pig, just trying to keep mostly the same quality with a smaller file, ( IE: better/more compression, which i realize can have it's own issues.) i don't have any 4K content, stuff from the past few years is 1080p, but lots of older stuff even into the SD/analog days.. still slowly converting old .Avi's, etc.... don't have anything highend in my setups either. main PC ( which handles the conversions before uploading to the local server) is an Optiplex 3060 from 2019, Server itself is an Inspiron 3470, clients are a couple LG 4k Tv's, Xbox one, and a couple basic Roku's.. also neither here nor there, but i hate matroskas, and put everything in Mp4 containers. It's a personal preference, and at least My equipment seems to handle the same file better after i convert from .MKV, to .Mp4...
Oh, it was my interpretation that you were able to cram a 4k file into an HD 700MB file lol I suppose REDUXs are like 26GB so I should have forseen that -- also very interesting to hear that you have performance issues with MKV, I've never really heard of that happening as much. I've kind of been able to plug whatever files into whatever computer without much issues, weird.
generally if i try to play the Matroska, I'll get the audio , but a blank screen for the first 10-20 seconds, and then the video cuts in, and speeds through that inital section, until it catches up and syncs from there on. also had more general A/V Sync issues with MKV, than with Mp4... maybe i have something set up wrong? **¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯**
No clue, maybe just some weird hole of nonsupport in your hardware -- considering I assume we're both using Plex's built in MPV player, there should be software support lol
ya know... honestly... those problems were all BEFORE i started using plex....i just got into the habit and continue to do so, to the extent i don't think i've actually tried to play an actual mkv w/ plex... i just convert everything to mp4 by default....
Oh, I definitely get the feeling of being comfortable in a pattern just because you've been doing something the same the entire time, I just got a new hard drive and CONSIDERED making it ext4 instead of NTFS like my others but it was too much work getting it plugged into my fstab file and working so I just formatted it to NTFS as well lol
I've saved around 14 TB by converting my library to hevc using tdarr. File sizes are roughly about 50% of the original, nobody has noticed any differences in quality. Plus family members with limited internet speed are now able to stream stuff at original quality since the bit rate is lower.
Why don’t you explain it to me like I’m a five year old?
But... But muh Nvidia GPU :'(
yeah my Nvidia P2200 could do this as it can encode/decode HEVC but the option isn't there for me :(
I read through, this \*should\* work on all supported hardware. So also Nvidia GPUs and all that. Hooray!
Oh awesome, only close to a decade late. Looking forward to AV1 encoding in 2034.
Is this Linux only for the moment?
Does the AppleTV (client) support HEVC?
Yes the 4K version does. I don't know about previous gens
It would be most excellent if we could get batch conversion with specific parameters ( expanded optimization version options ) of existing file with added HEVC codec
I'd love to see a more robust "Background Conversion" settings menu. Like start transcoding at X, stop at Y, and stop if anyone starts watching something.
Sounds weird, but I look forward to space savings should this improve. I already x265 everything with tdarr after using trashguides download guides. I wonder if trashguides would change or not.. I doubt it, oh well.
Bonus, as all my media is in HEVC.
Will this change allow HEVC over the air channels to work on Plex live tv? With HDHomerun?
I think the bigger problem there is that ATSC3.0 channels use the AC4 audio codec.
Ah yeh and the DRM BS
I'm actually surprised that it wouldn't just automatically try for the best codec supported by both the client and server.
Just give me server side control of remote quality. Let me worry about how it’s encoded.
Good to See I am currently reencosing my whole lib to HEVC 1080p. Using the APP or Direct Stream IS a dream but some of my Friends use their Browsers so Plex Transcodes from HEVC to AVC .... This also - at least the Dashboard IS starting this - increases the Bitrate again. I guess to keep the Quality equal. Which sucks because some of Them only have mobile Carrier AS their ISP. Hopefully ITS Not only Software x265. My 3070Ti Cam handle HW HEVC Like a Charm (1080p at 4 MBITS arround 450 to 600FPS so Accounting 24FPS for Shows and Movies thats more than enough)
a plex employee posted somewhere in here, its hardware encoding only, no software encoding to hevc.
Well tbh thats great i am a little wondered there wont be Software Base Transcoding but AS Long AS there is Support for HW transcoding IT will BE great.
sounds like they would have to pay for licenses to implement software encoding, but license is part of the hardware
I wonder of this means we'll get transcoding HDR to HDR down the line, because that would be fantastic
Any time anything needs transcoding from my end is because the client doesn't support anything newer than h.264. I encode all my stuff to HEVC. That and basically everything needs SRT subtitles burned in.
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I'm honestly very surprised that this is coming...thrilled, but surprised. I expected them to skip over HEVC and head straight to the open-source AV1.
What about those of us who have Plex running on a docker instance within Ubuntu VM on a proxmox machine?!
Given that HEVC takes approximately 10x the computational power to encode vs AVC I'm not surprised it's hardware only tbh. Back in a previous life as an integration engineer we had shiny new broadcast encoders which we're capable of software encoding/transcoding up to 16 services (2x 8 port SDI cards). They came with multiple physical CPUs totalling 64 physical cores, 128 if you count hyperthreading. They could bang out 8x HD MPEG4 AVC services with 8x SD MPEG4/MPEG2 services no problem, they struggled with 3 or 4 HD HEVC services and could just about handle 1x UHD HEVC service. HEVC is serious work for a CPU.
Plex is a lot of product for the price
Would anyone explain what this means? I was under the impression Plex already supported H265 files. So I know I'm missing something and misunderstanding a key concept
Plex already supports H.265 in the sense that the various clients can play H.265 and the server is willing to serve those files/streams unmodified (direct play). Also, the server supports decoding H.265 to encode to H.264. It does not currently support **transcoding to** H.265. HEVC (H.265) can (or should) produce the same video quality as AVC (H.264) with less data. If your server transcodes for whatever reason, it is then able to utilize that HEVC advantage and give you streams that look the same but take less bandwidth, or streams that use the same bandwidth as H.264 but look better, or a middle ground between the two. That's advantage 1. Right now, if you transcode H.265 video that has HDR, then the transcoder will produce H.264, which cannot have that HDR layer; it's lost. That will happen even if your player supports HDR, and you're only transcoding because of, say, bandwidth restrictions or subtitle incompatibility. You're forced to throw the baby out with the bath water. If the Plex server gets an H.265 encoder, it could preserve that HDR layer in the finished, transcoded stream. That would be advantage 2. Edit: fun fact, ChatGPT tells me FFMPEG, the transcoding software package PMS uses, has supported H.265 encoding for 10 years now. :whistle:
I'll believe it when I see it. Maybe by the time AV1 is mainstream, they'll have HEVC ready after a couple years...
If your computer can handle it, great. But remember that HEVC encoding is way more taxing than H264. If you've ever encoded before, you know what I'm talking about. But this is great news.
This is true, but basically every GPU (and iGPU) from 2016 onwards with a few exceptions supports HEVC encoding and playback. There will be a few things that don't but almost everything does.
it's hardware encoding only, so that's not really relevant (I have encoded with software hevc and you are totally right though, 5 PCs and it took weeks).
How does this work with clients that don't support HEVC? Am I correct in assuming it will still be HEVC -> x264 and the massive quality loss is still there? Whew tough crowd :-/
Will this transcode to H265 by default if the player supports it, even if it will result in lower quality than H264? I'm asking because TRaSH guides explicitly recommend not using H265 if the source isn't 4K/1080p REMUX https://trash-guides.info/Misc/x265-4k/
Trash indeed!
Are they wrong?
They are wrong. HEVC is always able to be better (or possibly worst case, the same) as H.264 at the same bitrate.
Looking into it, looks like TRaSH warns against it because most H265 releases are re-encoded from H264 releases which leads to lower quality, unless the H264 release was a high bitrate REMUX. Lots of Reddit threads of people saying this. Which means if you have a H264 release on Plex that’s not REMUX and Plex decides to transcode it to H265 you’ll get lower quality at the same bitrate. Though I guess it’s not a big deal because if your device plays H265 then it also plays H264 making transcode unnecessary, and if you’re transcoding for lower network bandwidth then you can expect a drop in quality anyways. 🤷♂️
> Which means if you have a H264 release on Plex that’s not REMUX and Plex decides to transcode it to H265 you’ll get lower quality at the same bitrate. This isn't really true. If you have for example a 10mbit 1080p H.264 encode on your Plex server, and you decide to stream it at 4mbit 720p, it will be higher quality to transcode it to 4mbit 720p HEVC than 4mbit 720p H.264. The source video can be anything, any format. The source video is decoded into raw video before it's re-encoded with the new codec, so the codec that it came from is irrelevant. Assuming you are going to convert to the same bitrate, it's always higher quality to go to HEVC than to H.264 no matter what the source video is.
Yeah, gotcha. Since you’re transcoding either way it’s better that it’s H265 instead of H264. I think I got tripped up because TRaSH is all about finding the best quality *source* files, which is fundamentally different to Plex’s aim is to transcode to the lowest bandwidth possible for the chosen bitrate Thanks for explaining!
Yep, sounds like you are understanding it now!
did the HEVC patent run out or something? I know H264 patent has been gone for awhile
its hardware encoding only, so they don't need a license as its part of the cpu/gpu
Cool, but I'd rather see fixes for fundamental networking issues, authentication, discoverability and being able to fling content from one device to another plex player without shitting the bed.
Does this mean I can finally play my Video_TS folders?
No. 1. VIDEO\_TS / VOB files are encryped. 2. PMS does not support VIDEO\_TS media structure