Plex movies always buffering and skipping

fbeye · 14. April 2024

Hello

I can get more specific details in a bit but for right now I believe I have 12 4 TB drives in RAID 5 configuration. The network interface card on the server is a 10 Gb card which connects to a 10 Gb Cisco switch which runs on a really nice CAT 8 ethernet to my one gig TV, Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5. Plex servers on each device does the same thing to any movie that is 4K.

The server is an HP pro DL 380 generation 10 with what I believe is a really good built-in raid card designed for the service itself.

I am all for accepting that raid five might not be the right raid for fast throughput and and can easily change to whatever raid it may be. I’m open to getting rid of the hardware raid and going software through OMV. These are all things that I downloaded so I really could care less about integrity and or back up. This is just for my movies that I downloaded. But before I change any raid which I’m open to I was wondering if maybe there’s something on the server itself more specifically Plex settings that I could change? Just seems that even if the raid was not the fastest and at 1BG end device, why am I buffering? Also Plex, latest, is in docker format and NO transcoding is happening, all direct play.

gderf · 14. April 2024

Are the 4K movies being transcoded? If so you may be CPU bound. Network and filesystem throughput are almost never to blame for buffering.

fbeye · 14. April 2024

Hey there. The movies themselves are 4K 7.1 Surround 50-60 Gb each. I am doing Direct Play.

I do not have transcoding playing… Ive even monitored the Plex server and shows Direct Play.

As far as CPU goes, I have not “specified” CPU usage in the Docker but it is 2 CPU’s 64 Total to use. Maybe this is an option? Also system has 384GB RAM, and that is not specified either.

gderf · 14. April 2024

Maybe start asking in the Plex forums?

fbeye · 14. April 2024

Yeah I’ll try that. Just figured maybe it was a common thing. Thank you my friend

gderf · 14. April 2024

Do lower resolution files play properly?

fbeye · 14. April 2024

In truth it’s been a while but if I recall, even watching Lincoln in 1080P was fine.

fbeye · 14. April 2024

I don’t know much about TOP or all those apps but maybe I’ll run it whilst I play a 4K. Maybe it’ll tell me if using 1 CPU, and if so maybe that’s the problem.

gderf · 14. April 2024

htop would be a better choice.

olduser · 14. April 2024

It's probably the client. Anything currently offered by Amazon or Apple or Roku or Google won't work. It seems to be semi-official right now that "streaming" is considered UP TO the total bitrate of ~8MB/s. Anything over that and a pure "streaming" device doesn't have to play it and won't.

You can use Kodi just to test the device. If it's the network, Kodi will have a pop-up stating something like "The read source is too slow", meaning your NAS is too slow. However, if Kodi just buffers without saying that or throws that pop-up very rarely, then it's the device.

There's devices by dune-hd and ugoos and a few others that will play it along with Dolby Vision but, sadly all of them cost ~200usd. A commonly found used one for about ~150usd is the Nvidia Shield Pro 2019 ($200usd new), but it has bugs and is already in EOL (no updates for already over a year). I have one and I wouldn't say it's total garbage, but it's not as good as the newer modern devices (plus Ads suck!).

If I had to buy one today, I'd probably buy that ~210usd ugoos but, I'd have to research things because there really is a lot of these devices now. Technically, if you don't use HDR or Dolby Vision, you can get a cheap N100 device and that will work using tone mapping (or not).

fbeye · 14. April 2024

But I mean, surely the PS5 and Xbox Series X have top notch streaming capabilities. And I install Plex on those.. Just seems weird they are not capable of doing it.

olduser · 14. April 2024

On the Series X, Kodi plays a remux of "Aliens" 1986 with Dobly Vision just fine. It also plays a remux of "Trainspotting" 1996 with a possible throughput of 13.1MB/s. There's higher bitrates. Sadly, it's still the Xbox and doesn't play _ALL_ Dolby Vision profiles correctly. For instance a 4K web rip episode of "Ted Lasso" only ~12GB in size still plays in purple and green.

Good luck!

fbeye · 14. April 2024

Well, not sure. I installed Plex Client on 3 different devices, running Plex Server on Docker.. I use HDR/ 7.1 Atmos or DTS..No Dolby Vision. When it plays it's awesome..It just...Buffers.

Teschbert · 14. April 2024

Did you consider the encoding/decoding limitations of plex playing videos?

Especially for 4k there are some limitations ...

There is a detailed documenation on plex website (support files)

Edit: I've heard that Infuse is playing better/more reliable/more formats than plex. And Infuse can be connected to plex-database

fbeye · 14. April 2024

I guess I really did not.. I just assumed 20 feet of Ethernet and everything updated /good it could stream a 4k Movie.

Teschbert · 14. April 2024

And I'm pretty sure that its not a newtwork issue

fbeye · 14. April 2024

Hey

This is my current compose.. Anything see off?

Code

version: "3.8"
services:
  plex:
    image: plexinc/pms-docker:plexpass
    #mem_limit: 64G
    container_name: plex
    network_mode: host
    #deploy:
    #  resources:
    #    reservations:
    #      devices:
    #        - capabilities: [gpu]
    environment:
      - PUID=1000
      - PGID=100
      - VERSION=plexpass
    #  - NVIDIA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=all
    #  - NVIDIA_DRIVER_CAPABILITIES=compute,video,utility
    volumes:
      - /srv/remotemount/Server/TV:/tv
      - /srv/dev-disk-by-uuid-49fe686e-e61f-451b-94f3-f11f9df5625c/containers/plex:/config
      - /srv/dev-disk-by-uuid-49fe686e-e61f-451b-94f3-f11f9df5625c/Server/movies:/media
      - /srv/dev-disk-by-uuid-49fe686e-e61f-451b-94f3-f11f9df5625c/Server/tmp:/tmp
      - /srv/dev-disk-by-uuid-49fe686e-e61f-451b-94f3-f11f9df5625c/Server/tmp:/transcode
    restart: unless-stopped

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Teschbert · 14. April 2024

The question is: how are your videos encoded? Resolution, Bitrate, tonemapping, sound, ...

Plex is not able to play everything.

You should check this.

fbeye · 14. April 2024

An example is

Code

Video
ID                                       : 1
ID in the original source medium         : 4113 (0x1011)
Format                                   : HEVC
Format/Info                              : High Efficiency Video Coding
Format profile                           : Main 10@L5.1@High
HDR format                               : Dolby Vision, Version 1.0, dvhe.07.06, BL+EL+RPU, Blu-ray compatible / SMPTE ST 2086, HDR10 compatible
Codec ID                                 : V_MPEGH/ISO/HEVC
Duration                                 : 3 h 2 min
Bit rate                                 : 49.5 Mb/s
Width                                    : 3 840 pixels
Height                                   : 2 160 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 16:9
Frame rate mode                          : Constant
Frame rate                               : 23.976 (24000/1001) FPS
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0 (Type 2)
Bit depth                                : 10 bits
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 0.249
Stream size                              : 63.1 GiB (93%)
Language                                 : English
Default                                  : No
Forced                                   : No
Color range                              : Limited
Color primaries                          : BT.2020
Transfer characteristics                 : PQ
Matrix coefficients                      : BT.2020 non-constant
Mastering display color primaries        : Display P3
Mastering display luminance              : min: 0.0050 cd/m2, max: 4000 cd/m2
Maximum Content Light Level              : 801 cd/m2
Maximum Frame-Average Light Level        : 188 cd/m2
Original source medium                   : Blu-ray

Audio #1
ID                                       : 2
ID in the original source medium         : 4352 (0x1100)
Format                                   : MLP FBA 16-ch
Format/Info                              : Meridian Lossless Packing FBA with 16-channel presentation
Commercial name                          : Dolby TrueHD with Dolby Atmos
Codec ID                                 : A_TRUEHD
Duration                                 : 3 h 2 min
Bit rate mode                            : Variable
Bit rate                                 : 3 403 kb/s
Maximum bit rate                         : 5 616 kb/s
Channel(s)                               : 8 channels
Channel layout                           : L R C LFE Ls Rs Lb Rb
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate                               : 1 200.000 FPS (40 SPF)
Bit depth                                : 24 bits
Compression mode                         : Lossless
Stream size                              : 4.34 GiB (6%)
Title                                    : Surround 7.1
Language                                 : English
Default                                  : Yes
Forced                                   : No
Original source medium                   : Blu-ray
Number of dynamic objects                : 11
Bed channel count                        : 1 channel
Bed channel configuration                : LFE

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gderf · 14. April 2024

How are you determining that a video is "playing directly"?

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