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I've got a bunch of movies in a folder that's on a laptop running a Plex server. Some movies play fine, and others don't buffer at all.

Is there an FFMPEG conversion command that will convert them all to a format that Plex will just play natively?

Stephen Rauch
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testname123
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  • What have you tried so far? FFMpeg's default output should be compatible with Plex. – david25272 Oct 29 '17 at 22:53
  • My question is more about what plex expects to see if I do not want to burden it with the transcoding task. For instance, I have two mp4s, and one plays fine and the other buffers nonstop. I'm not sure what the difference is or what to ask ffmpeg to do. – testname123 Oct 30 '17 at 00:08

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Plex provides list of supported media formats (albeit a bit hidden) for Smart TVs, and games consoles on their web pages but not for windows or Mac as far as I am aware - I think the logic is that they support everything but some things need to be transcoded.

They do provide (again well hidden) an example ffmpeg command line here at https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/201358273:

ffmpeg -i inputfile.mkv -crf 18 -map 0 -acodec copy -scodec copy -c:v libx264 -threads 0 -preset veryslow outputfile.mkv

You can also use plex itself to look at the media format, in a similar way you might use probe: https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/201998867-Investigate-Media-Information-and-Formats

Mick
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