How to Play MP4 with Plex on Mac El Capitan/macOS High Seirra?

Date August 24, 2016 Author Catherine Category Plex, Video Tips

In my experience, twy things are amazing. One is MP4 video cause it seems that any device and media player can play MP4 file. Another is Plex because with Plex, you never need to worry that you can’t play any video. But when I met "Plex can’t recognize MP4" issue on my Mac Mini, I knew I was wrong. And I googled the problem and found there were many people just like me that have ever encountered MP4 playback issues on Plex:

"I have Plex server installed and I’m using it with my Roku. I’ve added a movie [MP4] to my movies folder, in the Plex server, but Plex isn’t finding it. I have tried restarting the Plex server, rescanning the library, putting the MP4 in a different folder, I have tried renaming the file. Plex server is just not finding the file/movie."

"Hi everybody, I have this file in the shared flex folder : the.walking.dead.s04e13.hdtv.x264-2hd.mp4.

• Video: MPEG4 Video (H264) 720×404 23.976fps 1124kbps [Video].
• Audio: AAC 48000Hz stereo 123kbps [Audio]

I have updated the library but the movie doesn’t appear in the list…. does plex server support this ordinary file?"

Similar Search: AVI to Plex | Blu-ray to Plex | DVD to Plex

I also searched for the reasons and solution to expect to solve Plex MP4 playback issues and now I shared them below:

Why sometimes Plex Can’t Play MP4?

Reason 1: Plex media player can only play MP4 with the codec H.264 or MPEG-4. However, as a video container, MP4 can be encoded with various codec. So MP4s files with unsupported codecs are not accepted by Plex media player.

Reason 2: If your MP4 files are TV Shows, the files would need to be in a section marked as TV Shows.  If its in a movie section the scraper will be unable to match the file to a movie since there is no movie by that name.  Typically in the a TV Structure should looks something like this with the root TV Shows folder shared in plex marked as TV Shows: TV Shows\The Walking Dead\Season 04\the.walking.dead.s04e13.hdtv.x264-2hd.mp4

For reason 2, you might be able to solve "Plex can’t read MP4" issue easily. But when your MP4 has wrong codec for Plex, you maybe need to convert your MP4 files to Plex.

How to Convert MP4 to Plex on El Capitan/macOS Seirra?

I made a research and knew that there are many video converter for Mac applications that could enable you transcode MP4 to Plex accepted MP4 files with right codec. The best mac video converter I find is called Pavtube iMedia Converter for Mac. This mac video converter can convert H.265/HEVC MP4, MPEG-2 MP4, MPEG-4 MP4, H.264 MP4, DivX, XviD and other codec MP4 to H.264/MPEG-4 MP4 for Plex. Besides MP4, it also can convert MKV, AVI, WMV, TS, MXF, AVCHD, XAVC, M2TS, VOB, ISO, even Blu-ray and DVD to Plex supported format. In the video conversion process, you are allowed to adjust video codec, audio codec, video bitrate, video frame rate, audio channel and other parameters to fit more in Plex. This Mac Video Converter is fully compatible with any Mac OS X system including 10.12 macOS Sierra, 10.11 El Capitan, 10.10 Yosemite, etc. So there is no any pressure when you convert MP4 to Plex on El Capitan/macOS Seirra with it. Learn >> Top 5 Reasons to choose Pavtube iMedia Converter for Mac.

Read: Plex other Problems and Solutions

Step-by-Step to transcode MP4 to Plex on El Capitan/macOS Seirra

Step 1. Import MP4 videos

Launch the program, click “Load file(s)” or “; Add video” to load the MP4 video file you want to convert on your Mac El Capitan/macOS Seirra into the program. Batch conversion feature allows you to add multiple MP4 files. MKV, AVI, MTS, M2TS, BDMV, VOB, ISO are also can be loaded to convert to Plex here.

Note: As far as I know now, plex over DLNA does not support subtitles without transcoding them into the stream.  To show subtitle when playing mp4 video with Plex, you can choose the subtitle streaming you want from "Subtitle" drop-down list at the bottom of the chapter list and Pavtube iMedia Converter for Mac will transcode the video and burn the subtitles into the stream.

Step 2. Select to output plex supported file format

Click “Format” bar and choose Plex supported MP4 from “Common Video” as output format, which can be recognized by Plex easily. If your source video is in 1080p and you want to keep 1080p resolution as source movie, you can choose HD Video > H.264 HD Video(*.mp4) for Plex Media Server.

Tip: Click “Settings” to open “Profile” settings window, click “Codec” to choose H.264, “Size(pix)” to select 1920*1080 or smaller resolution according to your own situation, “Frame Rate” to choose “30” and in Audio section, click “Code” to choose “AAC”.

Step 3. Start mp4 to Plex conversion on El Capitan/macOS Seirra

Finally, hit the “Convert” button at the bottom of the main interface. This MP4 to Plex Converter will start encoding MP4 to Plex friendly MP4 video on El Capitan/macOS Seirra automatically and will just take you for a while.

After the conversion, click “Open” to locate the converted movies. Then add the convert mp4 files to Plex to stream the media on PS4, Samsung TV, Apple TV, PS3, Xbox360 or other devices using DLNA (just make sure the same local network between Plex and TV at your home).

You may also meet other video playback with Plex, if so, you can visit the page below where shows you the solutions to any Plex video playback issues