New to UHD

[rbkopelman]

A nube question about UHD: Please forgive if I posted in the wrong place. I recently bought a UHD disk drive from Billy Carlson (works great!) & ripped a 4k UHD HDR disk using makeMKV. No problems at all. But… it seems that mkv files don't play nice with Plex so I converted the mkv files to mp4 using HandBreak as I have been doing with Blu-ray. Again, everything worked well. However, once translated, the mp4 file is MUCH smaller in size. While I expected some reduction, this seemed like a lot of reduction. Since this is the 1 & only UHD disk I've ripped, I have no idea if everything is working or not. Both mkv & mp4 still report Width 3840, Height 2160, Aspect Ratio 1.78, Video Resolution 4K, Video Frame Rate 24p. However, the 2 copies differ substantially (I think) in the following: mkv: size 92.25 GB, Bitrate 68190 kbps ——— mp4: 4.16 GB, Bitrate 3073 kbps. I have some Blu-ray rips to mp4 that are comparable in size, or greater, than the mp4 conversion of the UHD. But the Blu-ray rips were H.264 & the UHD was HEVC. The difference could also be the run time, but I think that is unlikely.

So, is everything working or not? Am I still getting the 4k UHD HDR resolution & presentation that I ought to be getting, or am I losing something in the conversion to mp4? I am not knowledgable enough to know if I'm doing things right at this point or not. Any thoughts or guidance would be most appreciated.

[polskasubie]

what kind of device are you running the Plex on? When you say doesn't play nice on Plex, what does that mean? buffering? something else?
I run Plex on an android player and my 4K movies play without issue because my android player can handle the ethernet load. Unless your player is an NVidia Shield... there is a good chance the file size is too large for your player to handle. Also, if you are trying to watch 4Ks over wifi... you will probably have issues as well.

In regards to Handbrake... you are compressing the file so it def will not be the full 4K experience. Is hard drive space an issue? Are you running a NAS?
There are a lot of factors that could cause sub par watching of your 4K movie.

[rbkopelman]

The Plex server sits on a dedicated Mac Mini running an M1 (Apple Silicon) chip. The Mac is connected via ethernet to my main router.UHD TV is connected to a mesh node via ethernet & the backhaul is hardwired. Signal to the TV is supplied via Apple TV capable of UHD/HDR via HDMI. AppleTV is also connected to router via ethernet.

I'm not experiencing any major issues. I'm wondering if I'm getting rhe resolution I should be getting. Does this file size reduction look reasonable or am I converting incorrectly.

If I try to run the mkv video through Plex, it tells me that the video needs to be converted for playback & contains HDR.It says that color will appear distorted & wants me to up my subscription level. That is why I converted to mp4. I suspect there is some issue with Plex & HEVC.

Plex runs the mp4 file just fine

[polskasubie]

that is a strange issue... as all my files are mkv files and have no issue playing via Plex...

Plex supports MKV files with H.264, hevc (H.265), mpeg4, msmpeg4v2, msmpeg4v3, vc1, vp9, wmv3 video codecs, and aac, ac3, alac, e-ac3, flac, mp3 audio codecs. Plex MKV playback failure could boil down to the following causes:

• The MKV file contains other codecs that Plex can't read.

• The MKV file comes with a bit rate that is higher than Plex requests or stores the soft subtitle streams.

• The Direct Play and Direct Stream option is disabled in your Plex.

• The MKV file following the naming convention for multi-file movies ends up as a single record in your library.

[polskasubie]

some other info i came across...

You may well already know this, but just as a refresher (and for anyone else who stumbles upon this), as a rule of thumb, Direct Play is better than Direct Stream, which is better than Transcoding.

Direct Play is when the container, the audio stream, and the video stream are all compatible with your playback client, and require no work on Plex's end in order to play.

Direct Stream is when both the audio stream and the video stream are compatible with your playback client, but the container is not - this requires your Plex server to repackage the audio and video streams into a new container before sending it to your playback client.

Transcoding is when either your audio or video streams are not compatible with your playback client, and need to be re-encoded in realtime for playback (not the end of the world with audio transcoding, but video transcoding is really tough on your CPU).

So, with all of that out of the way, here's what I've found:

The Plex Web Client (IE: a browser tab) will Transcode MKV files if you attempt to play one. It may successfully transcode, it may stutter and buffer, or you may just get an error message that playback isn't possible.

However, the standalone Plex clients, such as the Plex app for Windows, Mac, Android, etc. can Direct Stream MKV files without any problem, using very little CPU resources - so you are far better off trying to use one of these clients instead of the web client.

To further confuse things, h.264 video files are pretty much universally compatible, and will work with all Plex clients. h.265 video files on the other hand tend to be finnicky with browsers, and you may run into playback issues... just another reason to try to use one of the standalone Plex apps whenever possible.

[dcoke22]

I use Plex on my Apple TV 4K (3rd gen, 2022) to play 4K rips in .mkv containers and it works fine using Direct Stream. It also worked fine on the previous Apple TV 4K (2nd gen, 2021). Which AppleTV do you have?

For Plex, I prefer the .mkv container over the .mp4 container.

Transcoding your 92GB 4K rip to a 4GB .mp4 file suggests that a lot of data was thrown away in the process. Even if the .mp4 file still has 4K resolution, I bet it doesn't look nearly as good as the original rip.

[rbkopelman]

Which AppleTV do you have? It appears to be a 2nd gen.

Transcoding your 92GB 4K rip to a 4GB .mp4 file suggests that a lot of data was thrown away in the process. Even if the .mp4 file still has 4K resolution, I bet it doesn't look nearly as good as the original rip. That was my hunch. It is why I asked.

The Direct Play and Direct Stream option is disabled in your Plex.
The MKV file following the naming convention for multi-file movies ends up as a single record in your library.

I had both Direct Play & Direct Stream enabled in Plex so I'm guessing that is not an issue. I will look up Plex naming issues AGAIN. This might be the problem. (GRRRR!)