I figured I’d drop this tip for anyone experiencing choppy playback with Plex and MP4 container files. I’ve experienced it, and I also came across a fix for it. It’s not the greatest fix, but it’s workable, and the result is good.

Apparently the problem is how Plex handles MP4 containers. The best solution is to simply move the video and audio data out of the MP4 container format and into Matroska. You don’t have to transcode anything, just switch container formats and it’ll play just fine. I prefer using mkvmerge for this. It’s a command line utility that runs on damn near anything. It’s a part of the mkvtoolnix library. You can download it here. The command is as simple as mkvmerge -o Output.mkv Input.mp4. The tool itself comes with a ton of features, but absolutely zero of them are necessary if you’re running Plex.

So, there you go. Have fun.