Select playback quality?

[CDG-c0de]

I've checked quite thoroughly, but haven't been able to find the option for selecting playback quality... I have some very high bit rate files on my media server, and some of my client devices are on networks that cannot handle the bit rate. Is this option simply not present? And if so, what could possibly be the reason for that.... So far I'm really liking Plezy as it seems to be the only decent client for Linux, but this is kind of an essential feature I'd say....

[rohit-purandare]

I have the same exact question, I would love to be able to enable transcode

[hamcoremusic]

Bump on this, I would like to have settings for quality because I do not allow transcoding 4K streams off of my server, so recommending Plezy is hard since I cannot force people to change the quality to direct play.

EDIT: It looks like the developer explains in the FAQ that this isn't possible. See below

Plex's transcoding API doesn't give you a complete stream with all audio and subtitle tracks included. Instead, it returns a single re-encoded stream with the audio and subtitle selections locked in at the start of the transcode session. This means switching an audio track or subtitle mid-playback would require stopping the transcode and restarting it with new parameters — causing a visible interruption and rebuffering every time.

With direct play, mpv and ExoPlayer read all embedded tracks from the file directly, so switching audio or subtitles is instant. The app would also need to manage stateful transcode sessions (session IDs, heartbeats, cleanup), implement client profile negotiation, and go through the transcode decision API — a significant rewrite of the playback pipeline for a worse user experience.

On top of that, transcoding adds loading delay when starting playback, puts load on your server's CPU, and can introduce quality loss from re-encoding. Since mpv and ExoPlayer natively support virtually every codec (H.264, HEVC, AV1, DTS, TrueHD, AC3, AAC, ASS/SSA/PGS subtitles, and more), there's rarely a reason to transcode in the first place.