1080p transcode heavy stutter during 'heavy sound' such as opening music

Plex Media Server
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1

Hey guys,

Something I’ve been struggling with since moving to a Synology DS920+ - if playing back 1080p video to Chromecast, it struggles REAL BAD during opening music sequences, but not while playing back normally. If I start a video and it has a bit of ‘normal’ content, it plays fine up until the opening music/theme kicks in and then it stutters really badly, (like 1second play, 5 seconds buffer) which continues up until the opening theme finishes. Once the actual show resumes, stutter disappears.
Some troubleshooting I’ve done:

  • different shows
  • different seasons
  • have redownloaded new versions of shows
  • force convert to 720p (usually fixes but not always)
  • Reinstalled Plex media server
  • 3 versions of PMS tried so far
  • seems to be limited to Chromecast, Web player and android app seem to be OK when not Casting
  • 3 chromecasts/TVs tried. One CC is ethernet, one wireless CC and one Smart TV on wireless with ‘inbuilt’ CC.
  • CPU and RAM use on the NAS stay below 50% when playing so dont think its resources
  • the Synology ‘driver’ fix - despite finding posts saying this shouldnt be an issue anymore, I still tried it a few times. However I find that the preferences.xml file removes my changes very quickly, despite PMS not being allowed to Auto update. (I installed the package from plex site manually rather than from App centre and have disabled updates from non-synology signed packages so that it wont auto update.)
  • Reboots of everything of course.

Havent tried a docker install as i heard it wont hardware transcode then and that sounded like a bad idea.
Main Chromecast is an Ultra and its connected via the Ethernet adapter rather than wifi.

Server Version#:1.21.3.4021

Video files are 1080p in H.264 and sound FLAC Stereo. They are subtitled.

I kind of assume its struggling with the transcode when theres more sound going on but… that seems super weird to me. I dont claim to be that technical especially with linux so I could have missed something silly and easy. That’s why im here!

Anyone have any ideas? Can get logs if it seems helpful - assume i would start off a casted video and try to capture logs during that process?

*Edit - i am a plex pass user and hardware transcoding option is enabled.

3

Thanks for the quick response! I’ll try converting to AAC, assume handbrake or something will work for that.

5

Ah thank you for the program suggestions, will try them instead.

6

Unfortunately 1080p - H.264 - AAC Stereo files are actually worse - stuttering even during regular playback as opposed to just opening songs. Tested this with both files re-encoded with Xmedia Recode, and with newly downloaded versions coming as AAC just in case. Additionally these files were stuttering on Plex Web, not even chromecast this time.

Is there anything else to recommend?

8

I assume its not directplay since there’s subtitles though right? (I think subtitles basically always transcode to ‘burn in’ right?)

I’ll take another look i guess :frowning:

10

Ah the good ol’ magic driver fix does sort it out for AAC - they are playing beautifully. I found in the past that it seemed to revert and remove the Vaapidriver line from the preferences file, but it might not do that now that its not auto updating.

Will see how it goes, thanks!

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