4k movies not being transcoded

[Beezer]

I'm running the Jellyfin app on a 1080p LG HDTV and have set the "Maximum Allowed Video Transcoding Resolution" to 1080 yet it still won't transcode unless I drop the video quality setting down to about 10 or 15meg. Is this a misconfiguration somewhere on my part or a limitation of the product?

[TheDreadPirate]

The quality selector is a bit misleading. The key to that setting is the bit rate. If you select "1080P - 15Mbps", but your 4K video has a bit rate of 12Mbps, it will still direct play at 4K since the bit rate is lower than 15Mbps.

[Beezer]

So, selecting a lower bitrate is the only way to trigger a transcode? Ideally, it would transcode all 4k to 1080 regardless of the bitrate.

[tmsrxzar]

So, selecting a lower bitrate is the only way to trigger a transcode? Ideally, it would transcode all 4k to 1080 regardless of the bitrate.

correct.

this is how some clients work, in your case it would be "not yet implemented"
in the case of Roku it has just recently been added and hasn't even been released yet
on Android it has not been added
on Kodi(?)
on web(?)
.... etc.

but it has to be implemented into the client in all cases, jellyfin server decides what to do based on what the client reports it can do and/or asks it to do