Hi I'm a Plex newbie and am trying to get to grips with a transcoding issue - I'm hoping someone can enlighten me as to what's going on.
So I'm playing video from a local flex server (on a linux box build round an i3-3225) to an ATV3 with plex connect, in general this seems to work well. I understand that the ATV can't cope with MKV files but was under the impression that the server should be able to remux (aka direct stream?) an MKV file if the codec was compatible (e.g. h264) and that this would basically leave the video untouched and place little demand on the CPU.
But when I actually try this the results seem to indicate that it's actually doing a full transcode. For example I just tried a 720p h264 MKV (manga film) and the server indicates it's transcoding the video (but not the audio which is AAC), the CPU is up at 100% (though does throttle after awhile) but most annoying the video quality is clearly degraded in scenes with fast movement. So I'd say it's transcoding and not doing a great job. Might it be something to do with subtitles? The bit rate is 680 kbs and it's a 24p frame rate)
Even worse a 1080p h264 MKV won't play at all, it just sits there buffering (well it plays for a few seconds then get's stuck). Again the server indicates it's transcoding and the CPU is saturated. Bit rate is 2257kbs and frame rate 24.
Sorry for the long post to boil it down I guess the things I don't get are:
1) Why is it really transcoding and not just remuxing?
2) For the 720p even though it's transcoding why is the quality to bad - it's not totally saturating the CPU?
3) For the 1080p how come it's struggling so much, the CPU isn't super new but it's not terrible either
