|
If I have a 1080i Transport Stream that I want to watch via my Apple TV running Plex, but it jams up a few seconds in and never recovers... I should probably just convert to a similar bitrate 1080p file in HandBrake and deal with a bit of quality loss, yeah? It's an h264 stream and it works fine in the browser plugin and VLC separately, but no dice on Apple TV or my iPhone. I tried remuxing to MKV but no joy, same issue at the same point.
|
#
?
Aug 1, 2017 18:22
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 8, 2024 21:35 |
|
|
The entire point of Plex is not to have to handbrake poo poo. What's wired and what's on wifi here?
|
|
#
?
Aug 1, 2017 18:30
|
|
|
TheScott2K posted:The entire point of Plex is not to have to handbrake poo poo. What's wired and what's on wifi here? Apple TV is wired, server is wireless. 6.5mbit bitrate that's being direct streamed with the audio being reencoded. Don't think it's the connection as this is an 8gb 3hour file compared to some 40gb 2 hour files that play flawlessly and it always hits in the exact same place on both Apple TV and iPhone. It's possibly some bad frames that's throwing the iOS player, I could always chop the first minute off and see if there's any improvement (or force it to transcode, but then I might's well just HB it).
|
|
#
?
Aug 1, 2017 18:52
|
|
|
I'd start by running a wire to the server just to see what happens. Eliminate the obvious (bad connection) before moving on to something trickier. Is it Direct Playing the file, or transcoding it?
|
|
#
?
Aug 1, 2017 18:57
|
|
|
TheScott2K posted:I'd start by running a wire to the server just to see what happens. Eliminate the obvious (bad connection) before moving on to something trickier. He mentioned only the audio is being transcoded, with the video being sent as a copy (direct streamed). But yeah, I'd also suggest running everything on hardwire to rule out a bad connection.
|
|
#
?
Aug 1, 2017 19:12
|
|
|
I feel fairly knowledgeable about setting up the hardware and software to get a Plex server up and running, but the whole transcode/direct play/audio codec piece gets sort of lost on me. Is it even something to be concerned with if it seems like there isn't much control over it? My setup is a Plex server running on an ubuntu VM on a FreeNAS box which streams to my Windows 10 HTPC which is hooked up to my Panasonic VSX-1018AH-K receiver. I use the PlexKodiConnect addon within Kodi. I assume that means I direct play with audio passthrough so I'm getting HD audio. When I watch via web app on my laptop away from home, is that direct play? Does it matter?
|
|
#
?
Aug 1, 2017 19:14
|
|
|
If it persists I'd bring it up on r/Plex or the Plex forums. 1080i MPEG4 is a weird one for Plex, the server or iOS app could be doing something silly that nobody's pointed out to them yet that might be an easy fix on their end. When Plex DVR first dropped my server was transcoding the 1080i MPEG2 TSes before sending them to my Xbone despite that device fully supporting MPEG2. I asked why on r/Plex, it was fixed the next day.
|
|
#
?
Aug 1, 2017 19:16
|
|
|
KingKapalone posted:When I watch via web app on my laptop away from home, is that direct play? Does it matter? Transcoding requires more CPU/power usage, so in a way it matters. Ideally you want your server to always be Direct Playing or Direct Streaming so as to lessen the workload of your server when streaming from Plex and also receive the best quality stream possible, but there are instances where either client devices or your internet connection limit the ability of your server to Direct Play/Stream content remotely. There are several factors that determine whether or not the content being sent to a remote client from your Plex server is being Direct Played/Streamed: 1) Your internet upload bandwidth has enough headroom to support whatever content is being streamed, i.e., if you have a 10Mbps upload connection, you should have no problem Direct Playing content from your server to a SINGLE remote client device that's been encoded at a bitrate of 8-9Mbps. Otherwise if you try to Direct Play a 10 to 12+ Mbps file on your remote device with only a 10Mbps upload, you will experience buffering. In that case, telling Plex to transcode down to 9Mbps and below would remedy any buffering issues, but your content is no longer being Direct Played. 2) Plex, by default, streams and transcodes MKV over HTTP which can Direct Play content, but can also fallback to HLS for transcoding since transcoding using HLS is more resilient to streaming errors/failures. IF your client device is receiving an HLS transcoded stream, it's likely the file in question isn't being Direct Played, but Direct Streamed (Remuxed) instead, i.e., video could be sent directly, but audio (likely AC3, DTS, or whatever 5.1+ audio stream) is being transcoded to AAC, or the other way around where video is being transcoded down to a lower bitrate, but audio is being sent directly. 3) The Plex web app lacks certain codecs, so it's likely whenever you watch content from your server on your laptop remotely, the content is either being Direct Streamed (see above), or is being sent as a full audio/video transcode. To remedy this, don't use the Plex web app and instead install the Plex Media Player for Windows: https://downloads.plex.tv/plexmediaplayer/1.3.5.689-a36fa532/PlexMediaPlayer-1.3.5.689-a36fa532-windows-x64.exe You can check to see whether or not content is being Direct Played/Streamed or fully transcoded by clicking on the status icon on the top right of the web app/Plex Media Player, and viewing the "Now Playing" section. teagone fucked around with this message at 19:41 on Aug 1, 2017 |
|
#
?
Aug 1, 2017 19:31
|
|
|
KingKapalone posted:Does it matter? To answer this - it is only typically an "issue" if you are short on compute resources relative to the number / type of streams being requested. If you're only ever going to have one stream, your server isn't doing anything else, and your CPU is at least as good as a Core2Duo, then you shouldn't need to worry about whether or not it's transcoding.
|
|
#
?
Aug 1, 2017 19:40
|
|
|
IOwnCalculus posted:To answer this - it is only typically an "issue" if you are short on compute resources relative to the number / type of streams being requested. If you're only ever going to have one stream, your server isn't doing anything else, and your CPU is at least as good as a Core2Duo, then you shouldn't need to worry about whether or not it's transcoding. In an ideal scenario, you don't want your server transcoding so as to receive the best quality stream possible where the content being sent is untouched by the Plex transcoder. This is rarely an issue with a local setup, but as I mentioned above, there are factors that can limit whether or not you can Direct Play/Stream content remotely.
|
|
#
?
Aug 1, 2017 19:44
|
|
|
TheScott2K posted:I live in a FiOS neighborhood and Cox Cable's customer service shifts into loving overdrive once the person on the phone puts my address in. They must have a flag that says to the CS agent "there is competition in this area so act like you give a poo poo!"
|
|
#
?
Aug 1, 2017 21:16
|
|
|
snuff posted:I'm in Denmark and competition is fierce. I've haggled prices down and speeds up, and if they won't play changing ISP is literally automatic since the new ISP takes care of all the paperwork. Sounds like ISP paradise. Competition is rare here. If there is a choice, it's usually between a DSL provider that maxes out at 3Mbps and cable/fiber at 100Mbps+. Not really much of a choice. Canceling a ISP/cable company can take hours of phone calls, sometimes multiple transfers to different departments. Only to be billed 2 months later for a cable modem and/or TV boxes they say you didn't return, that you never actually had. (Comcast I'm looking at you)
|
|
#
?
Aug 1, 2017 21:22
|
|
|
I canceled Comcast about six months ago and switched to RCN. It was a 7 minute phone call plus a short drive to the Comcast storefront to return the equipment. Got a check for the prorated part of my contract a month or so later. Sucks to be you, I guess.
|
|
#
?
Aug 1, 2017 21:27
|
|
|
The Comcast stores seem to actually get stuff done quite well. Dealing with the phone service is just a nightmare. I can't wire up currently (it's on the list of things to do, but means going through ceilings etc) but going to test the file I HBd overnight that's actually bigger, see if I can find errors in that .ts etc when I get home. I'll keep the original until I can wire, although wifi on Apple TV tends to be better as it's only a 10/100 socket.
|
|
#
?
Aug 1, 2017 21:31
|
|
|
Does anyone have much experience with Plex Cloud? I've been having some trouble with streaming the stuff I've uploaded. Sometimes it can take a while to even start the stream (maybe a minute of staring at a blank screen after hitting play) and sometimes it'll just error out. When stuff does stream it'll occasionally complain that my internet connection isn't good enough to stream the video, I have a pretty decent connection (I just ran a speedtest, 107Mbps) which is more than enough for 4k streaming, it should be fine for the mediocre bitrate that I've encoded my cloud stuff in. I understand that Plex does something along the lines of running stuff from your cloud provider (I'm using Dropbox) through their servers for transcoding or something like that (I could be completely wrong about that), I'm in the UK; does Plex have servers in the UK? Could that be the bottleneck?
|
|
#
?
Aug 1, 2017 22:23
|
|
|
Kid posted:So for the past week or so I have been having an issue with Plex where my video will just stop every 10 minutes or so. I need to close the video and reopen/resume it to continue. If I just hit play without closing it, it plays the next episode instead of resuming. I think I had this same issue a while back, I complained about it on the official forum, they acknowledged it was an issue, and I think I forgot about it until now because my setup's been working fine? IIRC it was a connection issue, partially related, I'm sure, to my weird network setup. What types of connections are your server and client using? Both wired, both wireless, etc.? Veotax posted:Does anyone have much experience with Plex Cloud? I've been having some trouble with streaming the stuff I've uploaded. I didn't bother trying Cloud because I have nowhere near the upstream bandwidth for it to be worth the effort to upload my poo poo somewhere else, but it sounds like the issue you're having is maybe hardware-related on their end. In other words, maybe whatever device that's trying to transcode your stuff is overloaded, etc.
|
|
#
?
Aug 2, 2017 09:46
|
|
|
Hm, maybe I'll poke my head into the Plex forums and ask about it or something.
|
|
#
?
Aug 2, 2017 12:43
|
|
|
Atomizer posted:I think I had this same issue a while back, I complained about it on the official forum, they acknowledged it was an issue, and I think I forgot about it until now because my setup's been working fine? IIRC it was a connection issue, partially related, I'm sure, to my weird network setup. What types of connections are your server and client using? Both wired, both wireless, etc.? Both wired. hmm, guess I'll just keep trying and hope it starts working again.
|
|
#
?
Aug 2, 2017 16:57
|
|
|
Plex Live TV is finally out for AppleTV and Android mobile devices. Roku and FireTV still in the works. https://www.plex.tv/blog/control-time-space-sort/ I tried this out on AppleTV and ra pretty slow compared to Channels, but stream quality was great. No DVR on AppleTV for some reason though.
|
|
#
?
Aug 2, 2017 18:05
|
|
|
If it's better than the HD Homerun app on the Xbox One then I'm down.
|
|
#
?
Aug 2, 2017 20:33
|
|
|
NyetscapeNavigator posted:If it's better than the HD Homerun app on the Xbox One then I'm down. I recently had a dental filling that was better than the HDHR app.
|
|
#
?
Aug 2, 2017 21:05
|
|
|
FCKGW posted:Plex Live TV is finally out for AppleTV and Android mobile devices. Roku and FireTV still in the works. Come on Plex hurry up and release it for FireTV (or Nvidia stop charging $200 for your Shield TV) and I can finally kill my WMC PC
|
|
#
?
Aug 2, 2017 23:36
|
|
|
WhyteRyce posted:Come on Plex hurry up and release it for FireTV (or Nvidia stop charging $200 for your Shield TV) and I can finally kill my WMC PC WMC continues to be the only valid excuse for owning an HTPC
|
|
#
?
Aug 3, 2017 00:43
|
|
|
TheScott2K posted:WMC continues to be the only valid excuse for owning an HTPC Words can't express how pissed off I was when the internal gfx on my Ivybridge CPU started acting up and I had to pay $25 for some low end Nvidia GPU just to keep that thing limping along another few months.
|
|
#
?
Aug 3, 2017 00:50
|
|
|
WhyteRyce posted:Words can't express how pissed off I was when the internal gfx on my Ivybridge CPU started acting up and I had to pay $25 for some low end Nvidia GPU just to keep that thing limping along another few months. Someday they're gonna turn off the guide data. Just turn that poo poo right off.
|
|
#
?
Aug 3, 2017 01:09
|
|
|
teagone posted:In an ideal scenario, you don't want your server transcoding so as to receive the best quality stream possible where the content being sent is untouched by the Plex transcoder. This is rarely an issue with a local setup, but as I mentioned above, there are factors that can limit whether or not you can Direct Play/Stream content remotely. Thanks for the info. Currently my parents are watching from their house through PlexKodiConnect and are getting DirectPlay. My girlfriend is also watching from Safari on her iPad and video is transcoding H264 to H264 (I think I told her to limit to 4Mbps because who needs 1080p on an iPad, and audio is DCA to AAC. I have gigabit so I should be able to support them at full 1080p without slowing my own local usage I'd assume.
|
|
#
?
Aug 3, 2017 02:25
|
|
|
TheScott2K posted:Someday they're gonna turn off the guide data. Just turn that poo poo right off. A month ago my guide stopped updating and I thought that's what happened. I entered panic mode and put Kodi on there and told everyone in my house to just deal with learning the new interface while I tried to figure out if I should just panic buy a Shield TV or gamble on that Xiaomi box not being crap for me. Luckily it started working again
|
|
#
?
Aug 3, 2017 03:24
|
|
|
KingKapalone posted:Thanks for the info. Remote streaming has no impact on your local usage since content you're watching is just being sent over your home network. That said, since you have a gigabit connection (assuming gigabit down and up), there's really no need for your girlfriend to have to limit her video bitrate on her iPad. Unless you have a bandwidth cap, or lack QoS/just don't want her hogging up more of your internet upload speed, I say let her stream remotely at original quality, especially if it's an iPad with a retina display. DCA is DTS audio, and on the iPad (and as such, iPhones, or likely any tablet/phone) DCA tracks will always be transcoded to AAC regardless if the iPad is streaming remotely or is on your home network streaming locally since the iPad can't decode DTS audio streams.
|
|
#
?
Aug 3, 2017 03:38
|
|
|
I'm gonna guess this thread has some people using Make MKV in it... anyone know if there's a reason the best audio option (like DTS HD) is deselected by default?
|
|
#
?
Aug 3, 2017 16:20
|
|
|
TheScott2K posted:Someday they're gonna turn off the guide data. Just turn that poo poo right off. Problem is there's only one alternative for encrypted cablecard channels, and it doesn't have a traditional guide because SiliconDust is afraid of a lawsuit from the owners of TV Guide (who I believe claim to have a patent on grid based program guides). My area only encrypts a few of my stations, most of which have some streaming app (Discovery, E!, WGN), but if you live in a one-time Time Warner area you're not so lucky (so far Charter hasn't turned back TWC's "encrypt everything" approach). And even if you don't use cable, probably the best alternative on Windows is NextPVR as a backend with Kodi as a frontend, and while NextPVR is a nice made system for something one hobbyist coder is making, it has it's weaknesses (I haven't been able to get time shifting to work very well at all.)
|
|
#
?
Aug 3, 2017 18:19
|
|
|
Cable companies see it as a plus because less cablecard users means more box renters, but if that ability goes away I could see a lot of those people just turning off the cable TV.
|
|
#
?
Aug 3, 2017 18:22
|
|
|
TheScott2K posted:Cable companies see it as a plus because less cablecard users means more box renters, but if that ability goes away I could see a lot of those people just turning off the cable TV. This has never really been the case because Tivo (what a great number of CC owners were using for a time) supports DRM. WMC builders are always too small to pay attention to.
|
|
#
?
Aug 3, 2017 18:26
|
|
|
Craptacular! posted:Problem is there's only one alternative for encrypted cablecard channels, and it doesn't have a traditional guide because SiliconDust is afraid of a lawsuit from the owners of TV Guide (who I believe claim to have a patent on grid based program guides). The patent for the grid based guide is actually owned by a company that used to be known as Macrovision (yes that macrovision) and now known as TiVo since they bought the TiVo corporation last year and assumed their name. Their primary business is being a video related patent troll. They intimidate companies into licensing their patents and when that doesn't work they take them to court. Google licenses a lot of patents from them one of which is "a function allowing users to assign a title to a video they uploaded." Patents are loving bullshit.
|
|
#
?
Aug 4, 2017 05:05
|
|
|
GutBomb posted:Patents are loving bullshit. Patents have their place, but the real problem here is software patents.
|
|
#
?
Aug 4, 2017 13:57
|
|
|
I'm away from home this weekend, and I brought my AppleTV with me for Plex. But for some reason, the only quality options are "Original quality", "1.5Mbps 480p", or "0.7Mbps 320p" I'm pretty sure I don't have the bandwidth to do original quality, but what happened to all the 720p and 1080p transcode options?
|
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2017 02:59
|
|
|
What's the quality/bitrate of the original video? Only time I've seen that few of option was with DVDrips.
|
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2017 03:03
|
|
|
OldSenileGuy posted:I'm away from home this weekend, and I brought my AppleTV with me for Plex. But for some reason, the only quality options are "Original quality", "1.5Mbps 480p", or "0.7Mbps 320p" See if you get more options trying to AirPlay from from your iPhone/iPad.
|
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2017 03:07
|
|
|
tonic posted:What's the quality/bitrate of the original video? Only time I've seen that few of option was with DVDrips. Original video is a 720p mkv file. Just checked the Plex App on my Macbook, and that at least also gives me a 2Mbps 720p option. EDIT: And my iPhone only gives me the same options as the Apple TV (though it also adds a lower 0.3Mbps 240p option). Weird.
|
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2017 03:10
|
|
|
Also, as an aside, anyone with a Twitter account can win a copy of StableBit's CloudDrive software by following the instructions on the app's download page here: http://stablebit.com/CloudDrive/Download Think the criteria is that your account must have a few followers (I have ~680) and show normal activity/use. I won a copy of DrivePool last week to use for my brother's Plex server, and I just got the notification earlier this evening that I won a copy of CloudDrive. There's a really good guide in the Plex subreddit detailing the proper settings to stream media from a CloudDrive mounted on your Plex server. Can read that here: https://www.reddit.com/r/PleX/comments/61ppfi/stablebit_clouddrive_plex_and_you_a_guide/ I have a 100GB box.com account I can finally put to use!
|
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2017 03:14
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 8, 2024 21:35 |
|
|
OldSenileGuy posted:Original video is a 720p mkv file. What's the bitrate of the source file? When you select the video in the Plex app on your MacBook, hit "i" on your keyboard to bring up the mediainfo and that'll show its bitrate.
|
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2017 03:16
|
|