[sonofdibnah]

I would like some advice re' this "always transcode" option. Having been a plex user for a few years, I was always under the impression that , avoiding transcoding as much as possible was paramount to smooth streaming from the server? 
I dont have any content with resolution higher than 1080p.
But I do have a lot of movies / shows, with subtitle folder in the same folder as the video file. 
I assumed that kodi playing the subtitle from a local source , it doesnt need to transcode ?
So my question really is , do I need to enable this "always transcode" option ?

Strange question @ontap, especially as your tone suggests that everything runs well for you "as is". The simple answer is that if it works for you without transcoding then you should not enable transcoding. You should only enable any of the transcoding options if the device you use as the client is unable to handle the format or the connection that it uses can't support the full bitrate. For example, I transcode H265 to H264 when running Composite on a S802 (LibreElec) box. S802 can't play H265 as it's an old chipset. What this means is that the box can be used to watch all my plex content and doesn't need to be binned.