Before I even start let me say that I know the suggestion is to put 4k into it own library…
99% of my movies are 1080p and that is my preference for space and quality balance. However, there are a few choice movies that I’ll want a 4k version of. I would rather my users get defaulted to the highest non-4k version but then have the option to select a different version if they were savy enough to do that.
Feels like it shouldn’t be a terribly complicated feature. Have a “include x quality in default version selection”. Or hell for my random case use if I could just manually reorder them I’d be happy.
What has worked for me is to add the 4k version of the movie to my library. Then use the Plex Optimize process to pre-transcode a 1080p version. Then the user can select the … menu and they will see “play version” It seems some clients will surface the “pick version” menu anytime they click play but some won’t. Whenever I get a new 4k movie I optimize it until remote people have watched it and the I usually get rid of the optimized version. I also do it when I download a copy of the movie for offline playback (which believe it or not does work successfully….sometimes. But better than the never it was for a long time)