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Finger Cookin · 12-02-2018, 08:13 PM

A little Googling suggests Plex updated it's Chromecast app in 2018 so that behaves like the PC interface. This article lists a lot of formats that should play without transcoding - but as your Plex server is on the beefy desktop, transcoding shouldn't pose a problem.

When I encode 1080p content using x265, I use handbrake with the video set at Constant Quality: 21 (the lower the number, the higher the video quality/less compressed) and with audio encoded to 5.1 AAC at a 224 bitrate. That would get a file that began around 5 GB down close to 1 GB, give or take 100 MB. The settings I've described look fairly good to me, but videophiles and audiophiles would have opinions on that for sure.

I'd suggest playing around with the settings until you get a result you can live with, both in terms of encoding time (if you choose to convert content using x265) and file size.

EDIT: Oh, one thing in addition to subtitles that can cause constant transcoding is bit depth. Most media has been in 8 bit on PCs and TVs for years and years, but with 4K and HDR you're getting 10 and maybe 12 bit color gradients. Last I checked Plex only natively supports 8 bit depth - or will support 10 bit and 12 bit if your GPU does? I dunno the details on a lot of this, it's not a rabbit hole I've spent a lot of time down.

12-02-2018, 08:13 PM	#28
Finger Cookin Franchise Player Join Date: Jun 2014 Exp:	A little Googling suggests Plex updated it's Chromecast app in 2018 so that behaves like the PC interface. This article lists a lot of formats that should play without transcoding - but as your Plex server is on the beefy desktop, transcoding shouldn't pose a problem. When I encode 1080p content using x265, I use handbrake with the video set at Constant Quality: 21 (the lower the number, the higher the video quality/less compressed) and with audio encoded to 5.1 AAC at a 224 bitrate. That would get a file that began around 5 GB down close to 1 GB, give or take 100 MB. The settings I've described look fairly good to me, but videophiles and audiophiles would have opinions on that for sure. I'd suggest playing around with the settings until you get a result you can live with, both in terms of encoding time (if you choose to convert content using x265) and file size. EDIT: Oh, one thing in addition to subtitles that can cause constant transcoding is bit depth. Most media has been in 8 bit on PCs and TVs for years and years, but with 4K and HDR you're getting 10 and maybe 12 bit color gradients. Last I checked Plex only natively supports 8 bit depth - or will support 10 bit and 12 bit if your GPU does? I dunno the details on a lot of this, it's not a rabbit hole I've spent a lot of time down. Last edited by Finger Cookin; 12-03-2018 at 07:49 AM.