Have you ever streamed a movie from Plex and thought, “This shouldn’t be transcoding right now,” only to see it transcode? Well, I was experiencing just that—and the fix was easier than I expected.
I Assumed Chrome Would Handle Video Playback the Best
Steaming media is one thing that the modern web excels at. I stream media in my browser hours a day sometimes, so it’s gotta be the best choice for streaming, right? Well, not always.
I recently started watching through my back catalog of movies on my Plex server during my lunch break. I eat lunch in my office so I’m already at my computer. At this time, I don’t have a TV in my office, just my computer.
So, when I started watching movies on lunch, I was using Chrome because I figured Chrome would be the best choice for the job. I was very wrong.
I was actually surprised to find that much of my library won’t direct play from my Plex server in Chrome. The codecs just don’t line up. My server was having to transcodeeverythingI was watching, and there was plenty of buffering, stuttering, and even straight up playback errors.
While I could transcode everything on my server to a more compatible format, I have never run into this problem before when watching my Plex server. I typically use my Apple TV to watch Plex, which uses a native player and direct plays.
Chrome and Safari both supportthe HEVC and H.265 codecs. However, for some reason, both browsers can sometimes have issues with those codecs in Plex.
When my desktop wouldn’t direct play no matter what I did, I started to seek out what could be the problem for that. Turns out Chrome was the issue all along.
Plex Offers Official Apps for Windows and macOS for a Reason
I’ll be honest, I didn’t expect Plex to have a native Windows or macOS app. In my journey to figure out why my server was constantly transcoding, however, I stumbled across them and found that a lot of people reported that the native apps fixed my issue.
It makes sense that Plex has official apps for desktops just like they do consoles, phones, and streaming media players. Adedicated desktop appmeans that Plex can bake in support for whatever codecs they want, and the system can simply play it back that way.
A dedicated app allows Plex to control the experience front to back, while a web browser requires them to rely on third parties to keep things up-to-date.
So, I downloaded the Plex app on my Windows desktop, and later on my MacBook Pro, and transcoding magically stopped.
Using Plex’s App on My Desktop and Laptop Kept Transcoding to a Minimum
I was surprised how well the native Plex apps worked to keep transcoding to a minimum on my server. All of a sudden, my media was playing back with direct play instead of having to change containers or resolutions.
It was a simple solution to find, and I almost couldn’t believe it. I originally thought the issue would have been with my Plex server configuration, or maybe a faulty GPU setup. I’m glad it was just the app I was using.
Of course, there are still some cases where my server does have to transcode. Sometimes I want a different resolution than the native resolution of the media. Sometimes I’ll turn on subtitles, which have to be transcoded live into the media. Or, I am simply on a bad enough network connection that it has to step the quality down to make it play back smoothly.
Regardless, at this point, my server rarely transcodes when streaming from my desktop, and all I had to do was change from using Chrome to using the native app.
Plex
With Plex, you may keep a single, unified Watchlist for any movie or TV show you hear about, on any service—even theater releases! You can finally stop hopping between watchlists on all your other streaming services, and add it all on Plex instead.
Are you running Plex in your homelab? It’s honestly one of the best parts of self-hosting content.I prefer to use Plexover physical media these days. It’s more reliable, easier to access, and I don’t have to worry about discs getting damaged.
Setting up a Plex serveris easier than you might think, too. You can run Plex on just about any hardware, andripping your physical movie collectioninto Plex is pretty simple. So, if you haven’t tried out Plex yet, you should spin it up and give it a shot.
