Stream 4K Video to Apple TV 4K via Plex
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The long-awaited 4K-capable Apple TV box is finally here. With the new Apple TV 4K, you can watch movies and shows in amazing 4K HDR quality, streaming live sports and news. It also delivers great 4K content from apps like Netflix, Hulu and ESPN. For those people who have some 4K content stored locally on your computer, you now also get the chance to stream 4K video to Apple TV 4K via Plex Media Server since the Plex company which has recently pushed out an update to enable direct playback of video in 4K resolution with the Plex app on Apple TV 4K.
How about playing any 4K video on Apple TV 4K via Plex?
Although you can now direct play 4K video with the Plex app on Apple TV 4K, however, it doesn’t mean that you will get a smooth streaming experience with any 4K video on the device. From Apple TV 4K specification page, it only supports H.264/HEVC SDR video up to 2160p with the container file format of MP4 or MOV. It you try to stream 4K video with other incompatible container file format such as AVI, WMV, MKV, MXF, XAVC, XAVC S, TS, etc or unsupported compression codec such as Prores, Cinema-DNG, the Plex app on Apple TV 4K will not recognize that format. And the Plex Media Server will try to automatically perform a transcoding process. However, it is well known that 4K video transcoding is a very CPU-intensive process, if your computer’s CPU is not powerful enough to keep up with transcoding your media, you will notice pausing or buffering as the app waits for the server to catch up.
Related article: Stream 4K Video to Apple TV Mac | Get 4K H.265 on Apple TV 4 | Play MKV on Apple TV
Transcode unsupported 4K video for Apple TV 4K Streaming via Plex
For those people who wish to get a smooth streaming experience of any 4K video with Plex on Apple TV 4K, it would be much ideal for you to convert the unsupported 4K video to Apple TV 4K plex app direct playback 4K H.265/H.264 with a third-party video conversion app.
Although there are many tools can assist you to complete the job, however, you may be disappointed to find that some are too complicated to operate, others may only work on the Windows platform, there are still some program uses too much time when encoding the 4K video to H.265 codec. Fortunately, here comes our Best 4K Video Converter – Pavtube Video Converter. This cross-platform application is quite simple to use with a easy to navigate friendly user interface, the biggest merits of this application lies in that it enables you to fast encode unsupported 4K video to Apple TV 4K plex app direct playback 4K H.264 or H.265 formats thanks to its hard-ware encoding acceleration features. By using this application, you can get up to 30x faster H.265 codec encoding speed as long as you run your computer on Maxwell (GM206) or Pascal based Graphic cards that supports Nvidia NVECN technology or up to 6x H.264 codec encoding speed as long as you run your computer on Graphic cards that supports Nvidia CUDA or AMD App technology.
Tips: To get better output video and audio quality for the Apple TV 4K, just click “Settings” on the main interface to open “Profile Settings” window, then you can flexibly adjust the profile parameters including video codec, resolution, bit rate, frame rate, audio codec, bit rate, sample rate, channels, etc as you like.
For Mac users, you can go to download Pavtube Video Converter for Mac to perform the conversion on macOS High Sierra, macOS Sierra, Mac OS X El Capitan, Mac OS X Yosemite and Mac OS X Mavericks, etc.
How to Convert Unsupported 4K Video for Apple TV 4K Streaming via Plex?
Step 1: Load unsupported 4K video.
Download the free trial version of the program. Launch it on your computer. Click “File” menu and select “Add Video/Audio” or click the “Add Video” button on the top tool bar to import unsupported 4K video files into the program.
Step 2: Define the output format.
Clicking the Format bar, from its drop-down list, choose Apple TV 4K plex app supported 4K H.265 or 4K H.264 file formats.
Output 4K H.264 MP4 file formats
Output 4K H.265 MP4 file formats
Tips: Click “Settings” on the main interface to open “Profile Settings” window, here, you can flexibly adjust the output profile parameters including video codec, resolution, bit rate, frame rate, audio codec, bit rate, sample rate, channels, etc as you like to get better output video and audio quality.
Step 3: Enable GPU Encode Acceleration.
Click “Tools” > “Options”, in the opened “Options” window, click “Acceleration” menu, then check “Enable GPU Encode Acceleration” otpion so that the program will accelerate conversion speed when encoding 4K video to H.264/H.265 codec.
Step 4: Begin the conversion process.
After all setting is completed, hit the “Convert” button at the right bottom of the main interface to begin the conversion process from unsupported 4K video to Apple TV 4K Plex app direct playback 4K H.264 or H.265 MP4 format.
When the conversion is finished, click “Open Output Folder” icon on the main interface to open the folder with generated files. Add converted files to Plex for directly view on Apple TV 4K with Plex app with no buffering issue.
