How Much Upload Speed Do I Need To Share Plex Media

Since 4K videos are growing more and more popular, nosotros are doing our best to provide 4K streaming services. But that being new technology, also requires quite a lot of computing ability on the server side, as well as much college cyberspace speeds in club to accept it working as expected.

Please follow this guideline and rules to get the best of the 4K streaming! Not listening to these advices might atomic number 82 to a worse 4K experience than intended.

What does 4K ready mean?

We take a lot of customers that are using their seedboxes for streaming purposes. In that manner, our Stream plan is currently the most efficient plan when it comes to streaming in 4K. Customers do look to have high-quality videos without any delays. During this fourth dimension, our Stream plan has shown its effectiveness for high-resolution streams having no interruptions.

Therefore, these are the primary capabilities for transcoding on Stream seedbox plan:

4K resolution 20mbps HEVC (h265) codec transcoding, CPU is capable of doing that
Potential problems (local cyberspace speed + device compatibility)
Avoiding audio transcoding (that means avoiding Dolby 5.1 codecs and using them when you accept the hardware)
Way to diagnose exactly why it is transcoding
Basically, push as many clients to straight play (which is what we desire)
We have witnessed many customers having issues when turning on "burn down-in" or embedded subtitles. In that case, we strongly recommend either remove subtitles (set the setting to None every bit shown in the screenshot below) or only disable the embedded subtitles (avoid transcoding to "burn-in" when using subtitles for streaming).
Last but not least, we accept a tip for using i of the tools especially when it comes to debugging your Plex streaming. We strongly recommend installing Tautulli and PlexIt (both bachelor in the One-Click-Installers). Tautuli is a cracking monitoring and tracking tool for Plex Media Server which allows you to discover what yous're currently watching; whether or non it's a directly stream; if it's transcoding, etc. On the other side, PlexIt is a Chrome extension that volition queue up videos from supported web sites and shop the details to your Plex Account for playback on Plex Apps.

Note that we highly suggest yous to employ Plex app instead of Web browser!

Web browser

For best performance and feel:

Download h264 4K video content
Utilise MP4 format as information technology has much greater support amidst the browsers and less CPU power is required

If for some reason y'all were unable to find video content you want to download in h264, yous should download and so h265 video, but delight refer to our guidelines for h265 video content.

One of the aspects for the improve experience is your device:

Enough powerful CPU for 4K decoding without delays
Fast net(minimal requirement for watching 20mbps video is at least double of that, otherwise you might feel buffering)
It's recommended for device to exist connected via cable and not wifi

Is my video been transcoded or directplayed?

You can hands determine that...

For instance when you start playing video in your browser become to the bottom right corner, there should be a list of buttons.

Click on the equalizer button (playback settings) marked xanthous on the motion picture, and a new dialog volition be opened.

If your device has capabilities to play the picture show without transcoding to other formats, you will see something similar this:

Quality : Original

If your devices does not have capabilities to play the flick in original format you will encounter something similar this:

Quality: Catechumen

This means that video has been transcoded to a video codec that your device supports.

Guidelines for 4K transcoding (what to await)

Furious plan is recommended if you are transcoding
4K videos of 20megabits per 2d require at least 40mbits download Internet speed

And so if you lot experience buffering of any sort please:

Please check actual bitrate of the HEVC movie

Bitrate should not exceed 20000kbps in gild for the Plex server to have enough CPU power to transcode to h264.

Check your device CPU usage, open Task manager and detect CPU and GPU usage
Check your network speed, likewise if possible switch from WIFI to ethernet cable or at to the lowest degree use 5GHz WIFI. (in many cases your home WIFI only cannot transfer at speeds required)

Please use world wide web.speedtest.cyberspace to check speed of your network

If all these bank check out, please contact back up and ask them to bank check the seedbox if information technology is having potential bug.

Android TV box

Here, the state of affairs is much improve as almost all newer generation (2018 and up) boxes pretty much back up all video formats and containers.

To make sure that you take all codecs you lot need and they are all supported, please try to install this app on your STB.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.tyniw.mediacodecinfo.application
This volition list all codecs supported on the device, please bank check the VIDEO list for MPEG-4 AVC(H.264) and HEVC presence. Both should have at least DECODER capabilities next to them. This would hateful that nigh all video content would be watchable without transcoding.
If your TV is 4K resolution also please make sure that you lot use loftier quality HDMI cables that back up this kind of resolution and bandwidth.
Android TV box should be connected via ethernet cable.
If y'all cannot employ ethernet cable to connect your device to the internet, please endeavour to switch to 5GHz WIFI.
If you are for case watching a 4K HEVC moving-picture show that is 20mbps, please have in listen that you lot would need to have at least 40mbps of download speed to watch a picture without "buffering" periods.
As well you should know that Plex application for Android requires a 5$ activation fee to remove trial, this will allow you uninterrupted playback.

Plex desktop application

Here the situation depends much on your graphic card and whether it supports HEVC(h265) decoding or not.

Intel iGPU'due south starting from 6-th generation should all support HEVC decoding
All NVIDIA GPUs starting from 2016 should back up HEVC decoding, please refer to the link below to confirm you lot have a HEVC compatible GPU. https://developer.nvidia.com/video-encode-decode-gpu-support-matrix
All AMD products starting 2017 should support hardware decoding of HEVC(both APU'south and GPU's).

If for some reason your system does not discover hardware decoding for HEVC, in your playback settings y'all volition have "quality" set to "convert" instead of "original"

How to tell if y'all are streaming the video without transcoding?

Ideally, you should stream without transcoding involved... That way you ensure that yous get original quality of the video content and y'all put less stress on the seedbox and your device while watching the video.

But how to tell? It is rather simple really...

It does non thing which device or platform you are using to watch Plex on, you lot should have settings for quality.

This is was taken from spider web browser streaming video from plex, it is located at the bottom of the screen.
Delight click on the blaster icon marked xanthous, it should open your playback settings.

Please note that quality is set to Convert(Maximum), what that means is that Plex server on the seedbox is transcoding video to a format that your device is able to play. Please click on that setting and endeavor to notice in listing choice "Original".

This will ensure you get maximum quality and most guarantee yous that you have no issues at all when playing video content.
If for some reason yous tin can non discover "Original" setting in Quality, this means that Plex server has adamant that your device is not compatible with the video format you are trying to play, and Plex is trying to catechumen information technology to a video format that your device supports.

What to do if my device is not able to playback h265(HEVC) content?

In that case we suggest you find exact video format that is compatible with your device, in most of the cases this is h264 codec.
As well you can contact our support team they will be able to guide you what exactly can be done in this instance.

What cyberspace at dwelling house exercise i need to have to be able to play 4K content?

Well, if yous open up upwards video data, you will see that this particular 4K video has 18142kbps bitrate(18mbps) which is suitable for our Furi programme to transcode and stream.

i) Nosotros actually recommend having at least 50mbps home internet for playing video that is 20mbps bitrate.

two) We also recommend that you avoid WIFI on the device you are playing the videos merely considering in many cases domicile wifi cannot achieve speeds that are needed for video content to play without interruptions.
If you can delight switch to ethernet cable, if not, delight use 5Ghz WIFI for your device.

So yep, many things can potentially affect your viewing feel, and your home internet connection is one of them.