▪ Plex supported video formats for Direct PlayĪSF container (Video Encoding: vc1, wmv2 Audio Encoding: wmav2)ĪVI container (Video Encoding: mpeg4, msmpeg4, msmpeg4v2, msmpeg4v3, vc1, wmv3 Audio Encoding: aac, ac3, mp3) So, what formats can be Direct Played by Plex? What's the best format for Plex? Plex supported file formats Transcoding is the thing you want to avoid, because it can exhaust your CPU and deliver buffering playback. It requires very little CPU usage on your Plex Media Server. Īmong them, Direct Play is the ideal way you want your Plex server to handle a file it is streaming to a client device. Transcode: Any of the above is not supported, so Plex transcodes it on the fly to convert it into a format that the client can understand and play.

There're three ways to choose.ĭirect Play: Client supports the codecs that the video file was encoded with, bandwidth is enough, no quality restrictions, no burned-in subtitles.ĭirect Stream: Same as above but the container format is not supported. Then, Plex server will decide to use which way to transfer files to the client based on the client's capabilities. When a Plex client connects to the Plex server, it tells the server what those capabilities are. But every client device has different capabilities, which means each Plex client also possesses different capabilities.

Unlike other media software supporting limited media formats, Plex accepts almost any file format you can add to it, with the exception of DRMed sources, ISO, IMG, VIDEO_TS, or other disk image formats.

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