Native software-based AV1 playback in Plex on Apple TV 4K

To enable native AV1 software decode in Plex on Apple TV 4K you have to add your own xml to override on the server side.

You need to find the “Application Support/Plex Media Server/Profiles” folder and put the xml file there.

Apple TV 4K has a very powerful cpu that can software decode 4K30 HDR AV1, it can also to my surprise decode the Opus audio codec.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Client name="tvOS">
  <TranscodeTargets>
    <VideoProfile container="mkv" codec="h264,h265,hevc,mpeg2video,mpeg4,vc1,av1" audioCodec="flac" subtitleCodec="ass,dvb_subtitle,vobsub,eia_608,pgs,microdvd,movtext,ssa,srt" />
    <MusicProfile container="flac" codec="flac" />
    <PhotoProfile container="jpeg" />
  </TranscodeTargets>
  <DirectPlayProfiles>
    <VideoProfile container="mkv,mov,mp4,mpegts,mpeg,mpegvideo,avi,flv,ogg" codec="h264,h265,hevc,vp9,h263,mpeg1video,mpeg2video,mpeg4,vc1,av1" audioCodec="aac,ac3,alac,flac,eac3,dca,opus" subtitleCodec="ass,dvb_subtitle,vobsub,eia_608,pgs,microdvd,movtext,ssa,srt" />
    <MusicProfile container="mp3" codec="mp3" />
    <MusicProfile container="m4a" codec="aac,alac" />
    <MusicProfile container="mp4" codec="aac,he-aac,ac3,eac3,alac" />
    <MusicProfile container="flac,mkv" codec="flac" />
    <PhotoProfile container="jpeg" />
  </DirectPlayProfiles>
  <CodecProfiles>
  <VideoCodec name="*">
     <Limitations>
       <UpperBound name="video.width" value="3840" />
       <UpperBound name="video.height" value="2160" />
       <UpperBound name="video.bitDepth" value="10" />
     </Limitations>
    </VideoCodec>
    <VideoAudioCodec name="*">
      <Limitations>
        <UpperBound name="audio.channels" value="8" />
      </Limitations>
    </VideoAudioCodec>
  </CodecProfiles>
</Client>