Play 4K videos from Plex with no buffering

Play 4K videos from Plex with no buffering

The new Plex Media Player for PC supports 4K

Some of you already know and use Plex but for those of you unfamiliar with it think of it as software for watching/listening to your locally-stored media files, such as video, movies and music, on the living room TV screen over WiFi. This version is for a PC/HTPC placed in the living room.

Plex says that they have built the new software for the living room PC from scratch. It no runs on the foundation of Kodi/XBMC but is instead powered by open-source mpv, which Plex believes has better support for media files. Plex promises that it can play virtually any video, music or photo format that you throw at it.



With the new software Plex is also adding native support for 4K video and the HEVC format. Other new features include a 4K user interface, mouse controls, multi-channel music support, a native Raspberry Pi port, and more granular audio delay settings.

However, not all 4K videos are supported for Plex. Some 4K (ultra high definition) devices are recognized by the Plex app. We’re working to bring 4K playback support to other devices, too. 4K/UHD content matching the following will Direct Play on supported devices:

Container: MP4
Resolution: 3840×2160 or smaller
Video Encoding: HEVC (H.265)
Video Frame Rate: 30fps
Video Bit Depth: 8

How to Get all 4K videos work with Plex quickly?

4K content not matching the above properties will be transcoded to 1080p. Transcoding 4K content is a very intensive process and will require a powerful computer running Plex Media Server (sometimes buffer in a long time). 

So according to our many tests, we found the best way of playing 4K videos from Plex with no buffering is to transcode and compress the 4K videos to Plex supported formats for nice playing no buffering. Pavtube Video Converter (Pavtube Video Converter for Mac) is a professional 4K to Plex converter, which can convert any 4K videos including 4K MP4, 4K MKV, 4K H.265, 4K MOV, 4K AVI etc to Plex friendly formats. 

Hot search: Tivo to Plex ǀ MP4 to Plex ǀ AVI to Plex ǀ MKV to Plex

Free download the best 4K converter for Plex:

Other Download:
– Pavtube old official address: http://www.pavtube.com/video_converter/
– Cnet Download: http://download.cnet.com/Pavtube-Video-Converter/3000-2194_4-75734821.html

A full guide to Convert 4K to Plex for playing with no buffering

Step 1. Click “Add video” button to add your 4K video files to the program. Or directly drag the video you want to convert to the left item bar. 



Step 2. Set right output format. Click “Format” bar, and select H.265 or MP4 from “Common video” or “HD video” to fit Plex.



Tips: The default settings may not satisfy you, and you can click the “Settings” button to change the settings by yourself including video resolution, bit rate, audio sample rate, audio channel etc. for full screen playback smoothly. Or keep no changes, which is also a good choice.

Step 3. Click the “Convert” button on the main interface and the software will start to convert 4K to Plex friendly video formats immediately. When the conversion finishes, click “Open” to find the converted video files. Then you can effortless transfer the video files to Plex for playback with Smart TV, Apple TV etc.