I was the same way then I upgraded to a Sony masterclass oled with Dolby vision and it was just as jarring an improvement.

EspeciAlly documentaries in 4K hdr it’s the only way to watch those beautiful shots

Yep all the people saying just watch 1080p don't understand its not the resolution that's awesome it's the tone mapping and specular highlights that are amazing. They require better compression like HEVC. I've gotten a few 1080p versions of newer shows with HDR believe it or not and they look amazing.

Yeah me too. Bought the cheapest Sony 4K HDR model, X70 series I think. And I never even bother to download 1080p again. The HDR color alone like Malaysians would say "racun (poisoned)" me LOL!

How so? My 4k home movies don't transcode for family remotely at all.

You can do it on handbrake.

In my tests though, it still does not ton map correctly if the 4k file is HDR

​@@Bytemybits You could filter to just 4k non HDR ones, and keep a separate library for just HDR. However that point is still an issue until they implement the tone mapping. It's on the roadmap. At least I keep reading that. By the way, great videos. I really enjoy all of your content and have learned a ton from you!!

Doesn't this option just use plex transcoding to create the 1080P file, and therefore have all the issues of transcoding?

@@EsotericArctos I'm not sure, I think they tonemap correctly now, don't they? I moved all my movies to 1080 a while back so I'm not really able to respond to that.

Here in the UK 4k would be useless. On general terrestrial TV we have only a few 1080 channels, most of them are 1080i not even 1080p.

Geryd Blackmore true but we do have Netflix shows in 4K, and new movies are usually in 4k

bb2ridder Netflix 4K is not better bitratevise than a HD ND disc

@@39zack but its better than a 1080p NF stream, the one thing you would be comparing it too...

@@gerydblackmore5484 Ouch, LONG, LONG, LONG!!! To be fair, it is 1080P. Well, it's 1080i, but unless you have a TUBE HDTV as I did back in the day with a 42" Rear Projection 1080i TV. Here in the U.S. Most TC channels are 1080i, with some being 720P. 720P using for things like ESPN. Sports type channels with a lot of fast action. Now if you have a 1080P TV, well it can't show 1080i. The same goes with 720P being shown on a 1080P TV. It can't!! So it has to be converted on the fly. So 1080i, means Interlace. This means all the even lines are shown in the first frame and then all the odd lines are done in the second frame. As in Interlaced. 1080P is Progressive. It shows all the Lines at once per frame. The same goes for 720P. TV's can only show the video in its native resolution. In the US, we have 60HZ, which means showing 60 frames per second. So with 720P showing 60 frames per second, you'll get a better picture for fast-moving objects. A ball is thrown or kicked. Not have the Ghosting. But the Resolution is raised up on the fly to fill a 1080P TV Screen. With a 1080i TV source. You have basically 30 frames per second instead of 60 frames. You want a better resolution for your TV channel, you pick 1080i. The TV takes the Odd Lines and the even lines and combines them together and shows them both at once. Then shows that frame 2 times. Because you still are 60Hz and need 60 frames. So the odd and even lines get combined and then doubled and shown on the screen in its 1080P Native Resolution. It gets even more complex with Movies that are in 24 frames per second. You have to turn that into 60 frames per second to be shown on a TV in the U.S. To do this, they do 3:2 pulldown. This means the first frame they show 3 times, and the next frame 2 times, then 3 times, then 2 times. Like 11122333445556677788999 This turns 24 frames into 60 frames per second. But because it's not the same, some people can see this effect. This is where 120HZ and 240HZ TV's come into play. For 120HZ, each frame is shown 5 times. 111112222233333444445555566666777778888899999. Now you are back to even frames. That turns 24 frames into 120 frames. The same goes for 240Hz, but now 1 frame turns into 10 frames. Some people think the effect makes things look cartoonish. With a 4K TV, you give it a 1080i signal it does the same. Combines the odd and even lines, and then show 2 frames, but it's also scaling it up to the 4K resolution screen. Again, a 4K TV can't just show 1080i or 1080P, it has to scale it up to its native resolution. If you try to play a 4K video on a 1080P TV, it's going to be clueless. It doesn't know what 4K is. Which means you need to transcode the 4K video down to at least 1080P. That is power-hungry. So it' best to have a 1080P version and a 4K version. I have a whole different 4K Movie area for my 4K movies. I keep them separate. But for Direct Play, while the movie may be direct play, I'm still having to transcode Audio, which for 4K is also power-hungry. My NAS should be able to play 1 4K movie at a time. I'm having issues with PLEX running on my new 75" 4K Samsung QLED TV. It's my only 4K TV currently. I think it's PLEX issue running on the TIZEN OS. Watching the resources with the Plex Dash app, for CPU and RAM usage, I have more than enough of both. It plays fine for the first 1-2 minutes and then I start having buffering issues. I'm just waiting now for a new 4K AppleTV. It seems to work OK playing on my desktop computer on my 34" Ultra Widescreen Monitor, but it's 1080P, not 4K. If anything it's working harder transcoding the video also and it plays. In the end, I was perfectly happy with the 70" 1080P TV I had gotten from my brother. He upgraded to a Sony 85" Bravia 4K TV. It is huge and nice. But I was happy with the 1080P TV. It did 3D and that was kind of cool. Then it took a dump on me. Between the new TV, and a pretty nice new Surround Sound receiver. Because my older one doesn't support 4K. The receiver supports 2 independent subs, so I ended up getting another Sub. I still want to get some Atlas Speakers. I'm forking out more money to get Netflix in 4K. In the end, I still think 4K is overrated!!! I think for any real benefit with 4K, you need a 100" screen minimum at about 6-8 feet away!!!! At some point, my 50" Panasonic Plasma in my master bedroom will take a dump, and then I'll have to get a 4K TV for there. I love my Plasma!!!! I had a 50" plasma in my family room also that was going out and was replaced by the 70" 1080P Sharp. That TV really had some poor off axes viewing. The Plasma, you could be way off to the side and it still looked great. If you don't have 4K now, don't be in a rush to get it. Really, it's about the only kind of TV's you can buy these days. At least here in the U.S. 720P is pretty rare, and 1080P, almost impossible except small TV's I guess. We have 8K now creeping along out there. That's just insane. Do you have room for a Movie Theater size screen in your house? 4K for TV is very slowly creeping out in the U.S. in test markets. New 4K HDHomerun I have ordered. But TV shows coming out in 4K? Not anytime soon. That's years away. It took years just to get HD cameras everywhere for TV. It's just very expensive. 4K, it takes up a tom more space. Need much faster hardware to process and edit than 1080P. For streaming?!?!?! 4K is maybe really real 1080P quality. If you're getting 1080P, it's really about 480P quality. Maybe a bit better. Get your 4K TV when you have no choice in the matter. You TV died, now what type of thing. Just be prepared to switch everything else to 4K. ROKU 4K or Firestick 4K, or 4K AppleTV. 4K surround sound receiver,. 4K Netflix and other streaming services that have that option. It's a lot of other costs people don't think about.

I've never had plex do this. In my case, it always transcodes the 4k file. I thought for the longest time that it would always transcode the first file saved for that movie, but I've since found cases where it still transcodes the 4k file (or defaults to it). I wish it was as smart as you are suggesting, but I haven't experienced it myself.

Yes, I have experienced this too. It may also depend on the version of the client app that is trying to play it, but I have nothing to back that claim.

Yea, it has gotten better as of late with regards to plex being smart and picking the lower quality version to stream. I keep a 1.5gb 1080p duplicate copy to go with anything I have in 4k hdr. In the past I always had to tell people I share with to manually go to "play version" if they notice its 4k or when it buffers to pick the 1080p version but lately in most cases plex is just picking the one it can stream automatically

Seems like it's the easiest method.

I’ve done the same with Blu-ray and DVD, I’m carrying dumb devices for kids and TiVo which don’t handle 1080p very well. Also nice to stream under 5mbps for my poor home connection. Edit: it’s fine I never stream except for vacation and I’m not going anywhere soon even if I could afford to hence my rapid Plex library expansion.

I do the same thing and as far as i can tell ive had no hdr issues converting

i just tested it again and it did not carry over the color :/

Not all 4k is HDR, but more often than not it is. Even if it's not HDR but still bt.2020, it's going to look off. Bt.709 4k would look fine (Bad Santa 2 comes to mind).

However, I've found that even with optimized files, you have to choose to run the optimized file. I have friends and family who will start up a movie (limited to 720p) and it will default to transcoding the 4k file instead of the available 1080p file or the already existing "optimized" version (same resolution but may or may not be the same bitrate)

he's saying not to transcode it because plex handling 4k sucks right now. As a principle what you are saying is spot on, hes just saying that as of right now plex sucks at transcoding 4k and especially if it's HDR.

@@chomp7927 actually no, he's saying dont do it because.. "waste of resources" - regardless if it sucks or not

@@mailmanonfire odd that you drag this up from months back when it was true back then, but now that Plex can handle transcoding HDR down it actually changes things. If you care going for purely monetary concerns then smaller lower quality files that look OK are good enough. But if you were going for having the best quality on hand and letting Plex serve you the best your device could handle then back when this video came it out wasn't in the cards and keeping two copies, while it would give you all the best options at any time, would be a waste of resources. But that changes now. Now you can store that best quality file and only need the one file to get the best on any device using Plex. The only "waste" left is the high usage needed to downsample that but that will only get better as time goes on but as of now it's at least possible. 3 months ago it wasn't but now that's all changed.

@@chomp7927 And the fakt that he is tying to get a good image with hdr10 on a 1080p monitor... please now how something works, befor saying something is wrong.

@@Svixdelux 1, you're talking about a year old thread, things have changed since then. 2, there are 1080p monitors and TV's and phones that can do HDR10 so that doesn't matter, and now that plex can down-sample for your device it's moot anyways. 3, for the love of god if you want to necro a year old thread about a topic that has completely changed already and try to sound like you know what you're talking about learn to fucking spell first.

I need to try this. I'm on plex since almost the beginning and I don't know it's capable of doing it.

I've unfortunately been in the camp where Plex seems to almost always prefer to just do my 4k rip even when I have a 1080p rip in the same directory.

@@davidreddick3016 I've always been curious about why I've had such good luck with this. Could it be the files? The clients? Settings on the client? Settings on the server? I dunno at this point.

People have been requesting tonemapping for years. Not sure how much «the good folks» at Plex really care.

For my the HDR 4K files seems a lot less washed out when I watch them on plex, vs VLC for instance.

this guy does not know what he is talking about GPU accelerated transcoding can handle 4k transcoding like its nothing

@@utkarsh1874 Exactly!

What? So you just never learned how to use a transcoder?

Transcode all you want, for me storage space is important 1080p is just fine although my vision is bad so, past 1080p makes very little difference my primary concern is having a nice selection in my collection and having easy access on any device anywhere! So all of my movies or shows are highly compressed and still look quite good!

How big is the 4K file typically after its encoded in handbrake? What quality setting?

@@BrianGarside You ask 10 people that question and you are going to get 10 different answers. BUT, I've had good luck converting my 4K files to *H.265/MP4* with an average bitrate of 10Mbps (10000K), 2-Pass Encoding, with a Constant Framerate. This has minimized any issues playing the file across any OS/Device. And I'm hard pressed to see ANY difference in quality on my 4K sets, but that's just MHO. Audio is even more of a personal preference, but I try to keep all original tracks intact, even the commentary tracks. The newest version of Handbrake also has options for 7.1 channels, so make sure you are using the latest version. Codec I tend to use AAC, bitrate needs to scale to the number of channels. _I can't stress enough how opinionated people are on this, audiophiles will probably lambaste me,_ but I use around 192kbps for stereo, 320 for 5.1, and 512 for 7.1. The file size drops to on average 10GB per +2hr film. Around 6-7GB for a 'short' 90min film. Fair warning - depending on the device you run handbrake on, converting a 4K movie will take a LONG time. An older i5 PC with only a few cores/threads will take over a DAY per file, for example. Hope this helps. (Edit: If these settings work for you, you can scale that video bit-rate for your other files, as well. Everything else staying the same, a 1080p video would be good with 2500K or 2.5Mbps video bitrate in the H.265 format, since it's 1/4 the resolution.)

@@edwardgreenjr167 You encode just like I do h.265. I think I do ~9k for video but with MKV to allow subtitles, for audio I only do Auto pass on DTS MA or True HD. Great info. Thanks Edward. I use my GPU so it encodes at a reasonable time span on my i9k.

Exactly what i do. Handbrake the 4k and 1080 versions and keep them both. Way less space than a raw 4k and all my clients direct play without washout.

@Hugh G. Rection I'm glad someone said it, saved me the hassle!

that is exactly the point, most of my friends use their mobile phones

That's what my 4K is in. Ya, it takes about 4 times the resources of 1080P transcoding. There are a number of variables. So really, all you can do is get a 4K video and test it on your system and see how it does. You can watch Plex DASH to see how much CPU and RAM it's using compared to a 1080P version. 1080P Direct play one TV and 4K directly play on a 4K TV. Generally, you are transcoding the Audio while the Video may be Direct Play. Then see how 4K transcodes down to 1080P or 720P may be for streaming online away from home or for friends and see how much in resources it's going to suck up doing that. Does it make sense to have 4K, no 4K, or both 1080P and 4K copies.

i would recommend Unraid... that's what i'm using

It will but keep in mind if you play high bitrate (remux) 4k stuff you'll experience stutters. That's why most people recommand 1080p for Plex or whatever service

Good to know. Always been a tough decision between Atmos (MKV) and DolbyVision (MP4).

@@surject there is a way to have both, working on a write up on my boyfriend's blog, look for it in the next few months, I will say, it requires a lot of storage space

@J J Yeah 10,000 for server and 100$ for TV..lol

Yes, this exists in Plex already, and I'm quite surprised that Jason didn't know about it. It's nothing new

i think he's still talking about hdr to sdr tone mapping

The Roku does not have a trueHD or Atmos passthrough, so plex will transcode the audio but not the video. the Nvidia Shield does have passthrough TrueHD and Atmos and Plex will not decode either as the Nvidia shield will do it

It's probably already MP4!!!! MKV is just a wrapper. www.howtogeek.com/200736/what-is-an-mkv-file-and-how-do-you-play-them/

I doubt it. I believe they don't give one crap about it.

@@timramich they did it ^^

I use mkv

I use a program called MakeMKV. It'll rip DVD's Blu-Ray's and even HD DVD's!!! www.makemkv.com/ You can use another program called Handbrake to compress the file down. Pick audio types to support, etc. handbrake.fr/ So you can RIP your Discs reasonably fast. DVD's are pretty quick. So rip a bunch of discs. Then you can use handbrake and batch process all those ripped discs and that can take a lot of time, depending on what you want to do. So let the computer do its thing while you're away. Come back, compare sizes, see if they look the same. Play on PLEX on your TV and see if that works for you. Or change some settings until you figure out what is best for your needs. There's a lot of help out there. there are default settings, etc.

@@jbdragon3295 I currently use DVDFab to rip blu ray/DVD and Handbrake to deinterlace (or at least try to) DVDs. For some reason no matter what I do, DVDs mostly always come out bad. I mean I could be just spoiled by Blu Ray but when I play the disc, it looks decent but when I rip it, motion looks terrible and its still interlaced even with deinterlace on

No. It's not. They've had like 5 years to get this feature going, but they keep focusing on retarded ass features relating to OTA and DVR stuff, free programming from no-name places with ads, content from studios (which working with them will eventually mean the studios demand Plex block copyrighted media). They bluntly state that they're not interested in HDR tonemapping and don't give a crap what thecm customer thinks. I wonder what will happen when ATSC 3.0 gets mainstream. Will they dick around with HDR tonemapping still or actually get off their asses?

That is bad idea for customers who have huge library , I have 28TB at least 20TB of it is 4K so I need to make another 20TB cluster of hardisks to have 1080p version of it and go convert these videos ? That is expensive and not cheap solution nor it is efficient as he claim to be in the video

@J J I'm doing the whole 2 copies. With a separate Movies 4K folder. I only have 1 4K TV right now in the family room. I'm not doing 4K streaming over the Internet as my Upload bandwidth is only around 11Mbps. Downloads is much faster but it doesn't do me or anyone else wanting to stream 4K movies remotely. It's just not going to happen. Besides the 1TB Comcast Cap!!! I have a pretty large NAS right now. Just over 27TB of space. I don't have a ton of 4K movies right now. I still have 5.5TB free right now before needing to expand more. I don't need everything in 4K anyway. 1080P is still my goto format and really looks just fine. Some movies that I really LIKE, then I get in 4K. But still have a 1080P version and that is the one that gets transcoded for everyone remotely. It's not a Resource HOG. Space-wise when you think about it. It's not all that much, making it worth it. In time, as I get another 4K TV, in a few years as 4K matters more, and maybe it's time to think about upgrading my NAS to something much faster that'll be out a few years from now. It'll have movie movies, slowly building up more 4K. Then the 1080P duplicates can slowly go away. Giving me more space. Right now for me, it makes no sense to toss the 1080P versions. It'll be years if ever before anyone outside my Network will be able to stream anything from me in 4K.

I keep a 1080 copy to go with my 4k hdr, the space is negligible when talking 35+gb for a 4k movie whats 1.5gb more hurt.. i keep everything in the same library so there is 2 copies and in most cases plex automatically picks the 1080p copy when someone streams that movie.

JB Dragon you talking about different scenario ,

Anyone actually keeping 4k isn't having space issues, even if you played out your theoretical scenario of people keeping 1-1 copies if they removed all their old movies they are only getting 1/6 or so of their space back. For people serious about 4k space isn't an issue because you have to cross that barrier already to play in the big leagues. Plus those people, like yourself, already have quality GPUs to push it better. If you're using a $300+ gpu in just your plex server you again are already at the state where storage medium is not your problem

Chomp Roth I have 28TB and they are at 90% usage and I am holding back from converting 1080P of the 4K content because I don’t have space so don’t generalize saying who have 4K have the space for it not all do, also I don’t even have raid nor a seperate Nas and all this 28TB only single copy which is big risk and a problem so I don’t see how you think ppl have hardisks left and right as you dream in the perfect world . Many ppl who have 4K can’t afford to have separate 1080P duplicates of their library. Still I even have to expand which is not possible and still I should be having back up but also not possible because of the lack of hardisks so don’t generalize that lame generalization just to defend plex blindly plz don’t be a fanboy and be logical here

Chomp Roth if you still think that anyone who have 4K don’t have space issue , reply again and I am willing to live stream it to you to show you how I have issue and can’t add stuff due to that not even have a back up of it because of 4K take so much space so having separate library is stupid solution for many users and I am one of them but doesn’t matter because in your opinion it’s a fact and it’s impossible for ppl who have 4K to run out of space hhh don’t know how you make such a claim anyway send me hardisks plz since you think so naively like that

4k and 4k HDR are two different things. 4k vs 1080p more detail but nothing special. 4k HDR vs 1080p wow! Huge difference.

@@ckirkyg most things you can get in 4k hdr. But yes. Not a huge difference between 4k ana 1080

Most 4k discs aren't 4k. They mostly only have HDR to offer. Streaming services seem to have more actual 4k content than 4k discs offer.

@@timramich and how did you determine that?

@@phillipzan2005 Most are upscaled from 2k. I'd say somewhere in the 1% range of releases are actually 4k. Hollywood doesn't want to spend the money on hard drives and CGI would take 4x longer to render in 4k.

Then how do you play it on your TV without plex? Do you carry your computer into the room every time you want to watch a 4k movie?

@@myusernamerocks3 I only play 4K movies in my home (local network) as I have access to my 4K library on Plex using my login. I do not share that library outside of my network. So I can watch it anywhere at home where there's a 4K TV.

Only intel has good igpu all else is trash...

I just got my first 4K a couple months ago!!! A 75" 4K Samsung QLED TV. I only did that because the free 70" 1080P Sharp TV took a dump less than a year after getting it from my brother who upgraded his TV to a 4K 85" Sony Bravia. That 70" replaced my 50" Panasonic Plasma which I loved. Super wide viewing angles and a great TV. The Sharp, you off to the side a little bit and it's so faded. The 3D that it supported was cool. Really, after getting my 4K TV, I don't get the Hype. I was happy with that 1080P 70" Sharp. The video, so long as you were right in front was nice. I didn't have to upgrade any of my other hardware. I was happy. I went from 50" to 70". That was a huge change in size. My new 4K TV is 5" larger in size. I then had to get a new Surround Sound receiver that supported 4K. I went with a higher-end one this time. So that wasn't cheap. I ended up getting a second Sub since it supports 2 independent Subs. This new one is Wireless. Works great. I still need to get my other sub fixed. So I'm using a smaller sub on that side of the room. I need to replace the Plate Amp on the sub. It was replaced once before. Right now, 4K, take it or leave it. Really, don't worry about 4K until you need a new TV because your current one died on you. You really are forced to buy a 4K TV these days.