I’ve got a plex server on a raspberry pi, and my new Hisense with Android TV connects fine via wifi and doesn’t buffer at all, but my maybe 3 year old TCL Roku-based tv, that is a wired connection, seems to buffer every 30 seconds. Is there any sort of known “oh yeah, older Roku TVs suck with plex” that’s an easy answer, or would troubleshooting necessitate a whole lot more?
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# ? Jun 29, 2022 11:41 |
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# ? Jun 13, 2024 05:27 |
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it's probably just a weak chip in the tv, it is 100mbit so you're not hitting that limit.
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# ? Jun 29, 2022 11:48 |
forest spirit posted:it's probably just a weak chip in the tv, it is 100mbit so you're not hitting that limit. I figured probably the case. Curses and drat, I was hoping to use this tv to stream episodes of Daniel Tiger and stuff when my kid is sick. Is the workaround “get a chrome cast or fire stick and make that do the processing and it should work better” or is the tv itself a bottleneck Edit: just watching a 720p episode of a childrens show works fine so at least I’ve got that! I guess the chip just isn’t powerful enough for 1080p+ SgtScruffy fucked around with this message at 13:04 on Jun 29, 2022 |
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# ? Jun 29, 2022 12:56 |
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SgtScruffy posted:I figured probably the case. Curses and drat, I was hoping to use this tv to stream episodes of Daniel Tiger and stuff when my kid is sick. Is the workaround “get a chrome cast or fire stick and make that do the processing and it should work better” or is the tv itself a bottleneck There's no real reason for 1080p not be decoded on anything in the last ~10 years. If I had to guess the 1080p stream had to be transcoded instead of Direct Play. This article should give you the information to see if the Plex Server is transcoding or not. Having it stutter every ~30 seconds it sounds like the Raspberry Pi is transcoding and it's running at ~90% of real time, so given a little buffering the Raspberry Pi quickly catches up but eventually falls behind. I'm guessing the Raspberry Pi has enough horsepower to transcoder the 720p or it was Direct Play (the video was just sent over to the TV to play) EDIT: Even network streaming takes very little, it's more dependent on stability. For a 1080p stream you only need ~10 megabits/second (so like 1.2 megabytes/second). The only problem is if it's a real bad network connection but most home connections should be good enough for streaming gariig fucked around with this message at 20:29 on Jun 29, 2022 |
# ? Jun 29, 2022 19:41 |
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Is the Roku TV by any chance a 720p 32" screen? I have one of those kicking around in the garage and the chip it runs on is so painfully slow that even the UI crawls, but it does fine as long as I have my Plex server transcode video down to 720p first.
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# ? Jun 29, 2022 21:46 |
IOwnCalculus posted:Is the Roku TV by any chance a 720p 32" screen? I have one of those kicking around in the garage and the chip it runs on is so painfully slow that even the UI crawls, but it does fine as long as I have my Plex server transcode video down to 720p first. Nope - it's a 55 inch TCL R-series. Something that I would think would have some oompfh to it. gariig posted:There's no real reason for 1080p not be decoded on anything in the last ~10 years. If I had to guess the 1080p stream had to be transcoded instead of Direct Play. This article should give you the information to see if the Plex Server is transcoding or not. Having it stutter every ~30 seconds it sounds like the Raspberry Pi is transcoding and it's running at ~90% of real time, so given a little buffering the Raspberry Pi quickly catches up but eventually falls behind. I'm guessing the Raspberry Pi has enough horsepower to transcoder the 720p or it was Direct Play (the video was just sent over to the TV to play) The catch is, I can open a file on my newer tv and it'll take maybe 30 seconds to load at first, but will be smooth all the way through - and it shouldn't need transcoding. If I try to open that same file on the other TV, which is hardwired rather than wifi, it'll do the stuttering/buffering. Both are connected to the raspberry pi. I also tried connecting the "slower" tv to wifi for curiosity, and it's the same thing.
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# ? Jun 30, 2022 00:16 |
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SgtScruffy posted:I’ve got a plex server on a raspberry pi, and my new Hisense with Android TV connects fine via wifi and doesn’t buffer at all, but my maybe 3 year old TCL Roku-based tv, that is a wired connection, seems to buffer every 30 seconds. What does the server dashboard say is happening when you play an affected video on the TCL TV?
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# ? Jun 30, 2022 01:15 |
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And try loving around with your Plex tv app audio settings. I don't remember my stupid Plex issue entirely but it did involve audio somewhere
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# ? Jun 30, 2022 01:31 |
OK I think I may have figured it out, and part of it was me being a dummy. Looking at my dashboard, the particular file I'm testing it on the TCL is direct stream for video, but audio is DTS Stereo, which requires transcoding. So that makes sense that the raspberry pi is choking a bit. And I think the "it works on the other tv!" may have been me saying "other files work smoothly therefore this is clearly a problem with the TV!", so definitely me being a dummy and jumping to conclusions
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# ? Jun 30, 2022 01:55 |
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Transcoding is a neat feature of plex, but yeah, it can cause a lot of issues on the server side if the server hardware isn't powerful enough depending on the media transcode and whatnot.
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# ? Jun 30, 2022 03:25 |
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since Plex server for windows is apparently going to crash 4 times per week for me and has been doing so for the past 6 months with no end in sight, is there a way to have windows "force" the program to open itself after it crashes and force closes? I know installing it as a service is a method but that's a huge PITA because then you can't update it normally. very cool that I have to do this instead of plex fixing whatever the hell it was that started this 6 months ago
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# ? Jul 1, 2022 00:43 |
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Use the Linux version.
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# ? Jul 1, 2022 00:50 |
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Something something Docker something.
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# ? Jul 1, 2022 01:04 |
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Does windows have anything like Cron that would let you kill and restart it every day? Or some sort of process monitor to restart it, like systemd or runit? I'm also a Huge Linux Nerd, but I'm trying to be more helpful than advising you to switch operating systems.
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# ? Jul 1, 2022 01:20 |
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yeah, use the container version with a compose file set to "restart: unless-stopped" and it will gracefully come back up after a crash
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# ? Jul 1, 2022 01:33 |
cruft posted:Huge Linux Nerd, but I'm trying to be more helpful than advising you to switch operating systems. Does not compute
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# ? Jul 1, 2022 01:37 |
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Warbird posted:Something something Docker something. Yep
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# ? Jul 1, 2022 02:22 |
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I can't think of a single solitary Windows program that regularly crashes on me other than plex server. 🤷♂️ I will just install it as a service. I'll just have to be a little more behind on updates if I'm going to have to do it manually from now on. Not the end if the world I guess
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# ? Jul 1, 2022 02:32 |
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Did you do the simplist google search of "windows tool to restart windows applications? If no, why not? If yes, do none of these look appealing? https://www.raymond.cc/blog/keep-application-running-by-automatically-rerun-when-closed/ also, there is usually very little reason to be on the bleeding edge newest Plex server release.
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# ? Jul 1, 2022 06:06 |
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I have scheduled task that runs a batch file that restarts plex nightly and that mostly solves my “Plex is bad on windows”
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# ? Jul 1, 2022 12:40 |
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Did they fix downloads on iOS? The most recent update mentioned something and they seem to be working better now.
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# ? Jul 1, 2022 14:34 |
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They’ve been in a semi usable state for a bit now, though the recent update as improved things. Still work to be done though.
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# ? Jul 1, 2022 14:59 |
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LRADIKAL posted:Did you do the simplist google search of "windows tool to restart windows applications? If no, why not? If yes, do none of these look appealing? Yes. Every program I tried that supposedly keeps an application running never actually restarts it like the programs say they will. I think those programs stopped working after win7. None of them worked for me. The scheduled task isn't a bad idea but I would imagine it sucks if you happen to be watching Plex in the middle of the night when it goes out for a bit.
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# ? Jul 1, 2022 15:58 |
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Blooster posted:The scheduled task isn't a bad idea but I would imagine it sucks if you happen to be watching Plex in the middle of the night when it goes out for a bit. If I am watching plex at 3 am I have bigger problems Edit: also the client will probably reconnect on its own anyways
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# ? Jul 1, 2022 16:27 |
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Sir DonkeyPunch posted:If I am watching plex at 3 am I have bigger problems Feelin personally attacked by this post
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# ? Jul 1, 2022 16:31 |
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EL BROMANCE posted:Feelin personally attacked by this post friend, you can schedule it for whatever terrible time you choice to regularly not need plex mine is apparently actually scheduled for 5 am Here's the script: code:
It's pretty easy since you have to leave the desktop open ANYWAYS for plex, you don't have to worry about updating a password, since Task Scheduler will handle "run while user is logged in" without any hassle
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# ? Jul 1, 2022 17:16 |
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Now that it's natively supported, you could potentially spin up an Ubuntu VM on your WIndows machine and run Plex in that, lol.
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# ? Jul 1, 2022 17:21 |
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The Plex server is a GUI app on Windows?
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# ? Jul 1, 2022 17:46 |
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Blooster posted:I can't think of a single solitary Windows program that regularly crashes on me other than plex server. 🤷♂️ Have you looked at logs to find out why its crashing? Has Plex support had a look?
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# ? Jul 1, 2022 17:51 |
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This is what a service is for
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# ? Jul 1, 2022 18:10 |
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cruft posted:The Plex server is a GUI app on Windows? No.
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# ? Jul 1, 2022 19:03 |
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Bonzo posted:Have you looked at logs to find out why its crashing? Has Plex support had a look? It seems random what show or movie is causing it to crash but where would I look to know for sure? Logs are always a disaster for me trying to make heads or tails over them frh fucked around with this message at 19:19 on Jul 1, 2022 |
# ? Jul 1, 2022 19:17 |
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MikusR posted:No. it's an application, that requires being run in a desktop session under supported usage, so there's a "GUI" if you want to call the icon in the notification area a gui. You can't get rid of it entirely, unless the program isn't running
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# ? Jul 1, 2022 21:47 |
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Sir DonkeyPunch posted:it's an application, that requires being run in a desktop session under supported usage, so there's a "GUI" if you want to call the icon in the notification area a gui. You can't get rid of it entirely, unless the program isn't running Weird!
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# ? Jul 2, 2022 00:00 |
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Blooster posted:It seems random what show or movie is causing it to crash but where would I look to know for sure? Logs are always a disaster for me trying to make heads or tails over them https://support.plex.tv/articles/windows-mac-app-logs/
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# ? Jul 2, 2022 00:37 |
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FWIW I have a second PLEX server running on Windows, which hasn't crashed in ~2 years so this is far from a universal issue. However, "something makes it crash on my Windows install" is pretty much why you pull any server tasks with 100% uptime as a desirable as far away from Windows as possible.
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# ? Jul 2, 2022 01:52 |
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Khablam posted:FWIW I have a second PLEX server running on Windows, which hasn't crashed in ~2 years so this is far from a universal issue. Desktop windows, on a machine being used also as a desktop for sure. It just makes everything harder and hackier.
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# ? Jul 2, 2022 02:02 |
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Khablam posted:FWIW I have a second PLEX server running on Windows, which hasn't crashed in ~2 years so this is far from a universal issue. Same here... My home server is a Windows 10 box. (was Windows 8 prior to that) Has been running Plex, torrent, sonarr, BlueIris, and various other server type stuff for years. It is setup to boot on power, auto login to Windows (and stay logged in). Even survives through Windows Updates (which are scheduled to happen at 3AM). It just... works. Long as the hardware is stable there really shouldn't be any issues with the software crashing constantly. I've only had it totally "crash" twice as far as I can remember. Once of those was a Windows update that disabled auto-login and thus Plex didn't run on boot.
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# ? Jul 2, 2022 18:49 |
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Thank you. This is the link I found as well, but it did not really help. When I go to "C:\Users\Chris\AppData\Local\Plex Media Server\Logs" there's 69 (lol) different log files; the guide does not really say which one to look in. Also the FAQ says I have to do this right after the crash happens. Sometimes I don't know when it took place. Any ideas which log file I should be looking in? Once I go into the correct text document, what should I be looking for? It's just a jumbled mess. It might be pretty interesting and funny to see if this is something along the lines of season 3 episode 4 of Ferris Bueller the TV series causing the plex server crashing issues.
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# ? Jul 2, 2022 19:50 |
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# ? Jun 13, 2024 05:27 |
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Blooster posted:Thank you. This is the link I found as well, but it did not really help. When I go to "C:\Users\Chris\AppData\Local\Plex Media Server\Logs" there's 69 (lol) different log files; the guide does not really say which one to look in. Also the FAQ says I have to do this right after the crash happens. Sometimes I don't know when it took place. The ones called 1.log and 2.log are probably rotated logs, older than the same filename with just .log Since you're not getting a crash in the scanner, let's skip those for now. That leaves the Plex Media Server .log file. Next time it crashes, make a note of the time. Then go look in the log file for entries around that time. Read each one with an eye toward "does this entry sound problematic?" Frequently it will say "error" or something. Read everything above that one too, sometimes the thing that caused the error I'll be logged before the error. Congratulations on your first step in log file analysis!
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# ? Jul 2, 2022 20:06 |