Hello Everybody,
I saw a lot of videos on the internet showing the raspberrypi doing a great job with 1080p videos.
However, I tried severeal versions 0.9.9.something and still get the same behaviour, Yesterday I tried the new version 0.4.0 rc1 (same behaviour) : videos works correctly 2-3 minutes then every 4-5 seconds, I get a freeze during 1 second, after that 4-5 seconds of normal video and then back again with 1 second of freeze and again and again ... (I put 30% cache)
Any ideas ?
Thx
Use dlanor's overclock settings, make sure the video doesn't have a high bitrate (above 20Mbit sustained causes problems), make sure you use ethernet and not WiFi.
it could be also network BW issues if you're on Wifi.
it could also be a too high bitrate. that's where you should use transcoding. did you install the transcoding profile on PMS ?
It could also be that if you use transcoding, that your PMS server is full CPU.
it could also be a too high bitrate. that's where you should use transcoding. did you install the transcoding profile on PMS ?
If I understood correctly, the plex team will integrate the new profile in future releases of PMS. For most common devices they already have profiles.
If I understood correctly, the plex team will integrate the new profile in future releases of PMS. For most common devices they already have profiles.
Plex Trancoding process requires both. Client determining if it should require transcoding and server determining how to do so.
We havent sync our release with Plex Inc PMS releases, therefore there is a PMS profile file that needs to be added to the Profiles diretcory in PMS.
This file is can be downlaoded from the 0.4.0 announcement thread and some installation instructions are in there also.
As transcoding feature will need some adjustments this will probably need some update as well as handling all possible cases will take some time to settle.
I'm pushing the file to PMS guys each time it's getting modifications so that they ship it with their releases, but until this process gets completely finished, you might have to update it when we ship out a new release .. or wait for next PMS release.
Thank you for all your answers (just to be more specific, I'm not over wifi but all my movies are very heavy 1080p files (17-34 Go))
I'm going to take a look at the profile you talked before.
I keep you in touch
sorry can I just claify something .... I have installed 0.4.0 seems to be great however does the transcoding automatically install within the update? or do I need to amend any settings? I have a 20gb film which runs ok so long as I don't select direct play, if I do it sticks every other second. I thought direct play would restrict this to 20mbps via direct play.
Also if I play a film and say stop it mid way through and make changes to in prefrences say change from 20mbps to direct play then go back in and resume film it then states transcoding required and shows 20000mbps then is says please wait....however the film does not resume itself is this a error?
In summary is transcoding automatically installed in the 0.4.0 version or do I need to download other files so this plays smoothly via direct play?
kind regards johnnyb
Similar issue for me. Running RC1 on a 512MB pi that's hardwired to my switch. I've installed the .xml on my PMS .9.9.7 (Core i7). My server is plenty powerful and CPU is idle. I've only tested it on one video so far, but every 20 seconds or so the video would stutter for a second. The movie works just fine on the latest windows PHT. It doesn't seem that the pi requested transcoding for this high bitrate video, or the transcoded stream bitrate was too high - but how do I tell for sure? Once I switched out of direct play it played fine. The media info of the video in question:
Media
Video Resolution 1080p Duration 1:42:13 Bitrate 11074 kbps Width 1920 Height 856 Aspect Ratio 2.20 Container MKV Video Frame Rate 24pFile
Accessible Yes Exists Yes Duration 1:42:13 File /media/8877c208-5163-4653-9354-e949cc0ad90c/Movies/Sofia Movies/Frozen/Frozen.mkv Size 7.91 GB Container MKV Indexes sdVideo
Codec H264 Bitrate 9588 kbps Language English Bit Depth 8 CABAC 1 Chroma Subsampling 4:2:0 Codec I D V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC Color Space yuv Duration 1:42:13 Frame Rate 23.976 fps Frame Rate Mode cfr Has Scaling Matrix 0 Height 856 Level 4.1 Profile high Ref Frames 4 Scan Type progressive Width 1920Audio
Codec DCA Channels 5.1 Bitrate 1509 kbps Language English Bit Depth 24 Bitrate Mode CBR Codec I D A_DTS Duration 1:42:13 Sampling Rate 48000 Hz
Would you mind sending me a sample having this issue so that i can investigate ?
thanks :)
Hi guys,
back with a new feedback. I tried a few things and I have to say that all my problems just vanished. The result is ... impressive.
The solution ?
1° Using SD Card (class 10) + USB 3 Stick (Dlanor's method)
2° Implementing the Plex Home Theater-RaspberryPi.xml file in the PMS directory
3° Overclocking the PI with the Dlanor's method
Thank you all for your answers.
it seems in almost every case I have read overclocking the Pi when trying to play decently high bitrate files has worked. obviously there is a limit to how high you can go but overclocking seems to solve the pause/stutter issue with decent bitrate files
it seems in almost every case I have read overclocking the Pi when trying to play decently high bitrate files has worked. obviously there is a limit to how high you can go but overclocking seems to solve the pause/stutter issue with decent bitrate files
Hi guys,
back with a new feedback. I tried a few things and I have to say that all my problems just vanished. The result is ... impressive.
The solution ?
1° Using SD Card (class 10) + USB 3 Stick (Dlanor's method)
2° Implementing the Plex Home Theater-RaspberryPi.xml file in the PMS directory
3° Overclocking the PI with the Dlanor's method
Thank you all for your answers.
Would you mind sending me a sample having this issue so that i can investigate ?
thanks :)
Longchair, I PMd you a link to download a clip. i'll try Delanors overclock method on Monday to see if that fixes it but id rather have things work without doing so
Can you or dlanor link me to these? I'm having trouble finding 1 and 3
Here is my own install procedure for best results:
1: Use RasPlex installer or "Win32 Disk Imager" twice, to install the RasPlex image both on the SDcard and the USB3 stick.
2: Use the free edition of "Paragon Partition Manager" to expand the Ext4 partition (2nd partition) to fill out the unused area.
NB: This is important only for the USB3 stick, but I do it for the SDcard as well, just in case I later decide to use it stand-alone (which also requires re-editing its "cmdline.txt".) Expanding the USB3 partition might be unnecessary for a small Plex library, but for a large one it really is important, and in any case it would be pointless to leave 14GB of a 16GB stick completely unusable for RasPlex cache storage.
3: Edit the "cmdline.txt" file of both SDcard and USB3 stick to contain the following line:boot=/dev/sda1 disk=/dev/sda2 ssh quiet oprofile.timer=1NB: Having the same command line both on SDcard and USB3 stick ensures consistent behaviour for all hard and soft reboot methods.
4: If you want overclocking you can add the following near the end of your "config.txt" files like I do (again for BOTH devices).arm_freq=950 core_freq=450 sdram_freq=450 over_voltage=4As you can see by comparing these settings to the examples higher up in that file, I've chosen to go 50 MHz lower than the maximum frequencies shown in those examples, and 2 steps lower with the overvoltage level. Going higher would increase the risk of damage and I don't think the speed gain it would give is worth that risk.
Also, if your RPi is enclosed by some small cupboard or other unventilated container, then you should not overclock at all.
My own RPi has a standard RPi cover (with ventilation slits) and is sitting behind my TV set on top of a Netgear switch, but with air access on the other 5 sides, and it has no heat problems. It's been running 24/7 for quite a while now, so I think I would have noticed such problems by now.
Btw: If anyone thinks it would be useful to quote any part of this post elsewhere, you are free to do so.
The 1080p movie in post #10 still stutteres after an upgrade to RC2. After overclocking with dlanor's settings initial tests (watched for 2min) worked great. Is the expectation for proper 1080p playback for users to overclock their pi? Is there a RasPlex notification when transcoding has been forced when playing high bit rate media?
The 1080p movie in post #10 still stutteres after an upgrade to RC2. After overclocking with dlanor's settings initial tests (watched for 2min) worked great. Is the expectation for proper 1080p playback for users to overclock their pi? Is there a RasPlex notification when transcoding has been forced when playing high bit rate media?
for high bitrate 1080p that is the solution. it's all dependant on bitrate
Is there a RasPlex notification when transcoding has been forced when playing high bit rate media?
Normally a transcoding notification does show as a momentary popup when starting playback, but you should be able to check it during playback as well, by pressing the 'i' key on a USB keyboard and inspecting the strings displayed. One of them should include a substring saying either 'transcode' or 'direct_play'.
Forced transcoding with setting for "Direct Play" will only occur at a bitrate limit slightly above 20 Mbps, since even the fastest overclocked RPi will be unable to handle videos above that range. So if you know that the videos use so high bitrate then you know they will have to be transcoded, even without any notification. But the strings and notification are displayed as usual. The notification popup also contains a string saying that the bitrate is too high. I just tested this with a BDrip of appx 23.5 Mbps, which was automatically transcoded this way, so that seems to be working fine in 'RasPlex 0.4.0 RC2'.
Best regards: dlanor
