Whenever I try to play 7.1 TrueHD on my shield, I get a spinning wheel for a long time and the video is unplayable. Sometimes, I get the error “the transcoder exited due to an error”. Sometimes, the video doesn’t play at all.
Attached is a log I captured from /internal/Plex Media Server/Logs/Plex Transcoder Statistics.log Plex Transcoder Statistics.1.log (81.3 KB)
Here is what I captured on app.plex.tv:
Feb 19, 2021 12:26:37.507 [12621] Error — [Transcoder] http://127.0.0.1:32400/services/iva/assets/241140/video.mp4?bitrate=5000&X-Plex-Token=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx: Invalid data found when processing input
Feb 19, 2021 12:26:47.428 [12622] Error — [Transcoder] http://127.0.0.1:32400/services/iva/assets/241140/video.mp4?bitrate=5000&X-Plex-Token=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx: Invalid data found when processing input
Feb 19, 2021 12:26:47.456 [11902] Warning — [Transcode/aa901636c13791df-com-plexapp-android] Transcode runner appears to have died.
The app is detecting that the container shows the file to be 2 hrs 6 min long, but the individual video and audio tracks show as only being 54s long. That could mean Plex didn’t like your file and couldn’t transcode it properly. I’ll need the correct PMS log and XML info to investigate further.
According to the specs for that TV, the Shield getting AAC 5.1 should be fine.
Something is wrong with how you are getting the zip file because it only contained 3 files from the server. There should be a lot more. Can you try getting the server logs manually, Accessing SHIELD Storage | Plex Support. I will need the server log to make sure the server is correctly producing the AAC 5.1 audio track.
This works, but you don’t have debug logging enabled so only actual errors are logged. This won’t tell me what I need. Please enable debug logging, recreate, get new logs.
You can already do that. From Plex Web, go to the PMS settings and under the Transcoder tab, there is a box to change the path. You’ll need to manually type in the path as it relates to the Shield. If you don’t know how to find this, install a file explorer app on your Shield, use it to find the path you want, note the path it used.
I can see the storage filling up, however the transcoder is still taking an impossibly long time. Playback is also very slow and choppy. This happens on almost every 4K movie that has to transcode. It doesn’t happen transcoding 1080p. Is the HDD too slow?
Also, as a side note, (this is a completely different issue related the other topics I posted) – syncing still doesn’t work. I try to sync a movie with the new settings and I get the error “the server’s disk is almost full” and 0% downloaded, which is the main problem in this thread
Your 1080 file was ~20 Mbps H264. That is getting converted to 7 Mbps H264. That’s easy for the Shield.
Your 4K file is also ~20 Mbps, but hevc. To maintain the quality when converting to H264, PMs has to bump up the bitrate. The output is now 94 Mbps. This is a lot of strain on the Shield.
Bump up the bitrate? I don’t understand how a 20 Mbps file goes to 94 Mbps when I thought transcoding is supposed to reduce the bitrate. Will lowering the quality help with this?
HEVC is a highly compressed format. When converting to h264, using the same bitrate would reduce the quality. i.e. 20 Mbps hevc → 20 Mbps h264 would result in video with noticeable degradation in quality. To make up for that, PMS increases the bitrate of the h264 output.
The Shield is not going to be able to handle transcoding high bitrate hevc files. It just doesn’t have the power to do it.
I was the OP from the thread you linked regarding the Sync issue. I guess so but just to double check: Did you change the PMS metadata location to an external drive? Not that I think it’s going to make any difference but just to cover all possibilities. After several posts and threads I have lost all hope this issue is going to be fixed to be honest. I would like to know if this is a limitation of the Shield (why is the Sync folder not moved to external storage like the rest of the PMS metadata? Why can we move the transcoding folder but not the Sync folder on a device with only 16 GB of internal memory?).
I thought this was fixed. I’ll need to double check. The Sync folder should be a subfolder under the transcode folder so it should move when you move that folder.
Yes. My metadata is also on the external drive in addition to my transcode location.
I thought Plex was aware sync still seems to be writing to the internal drive, which is why I can sync smaller files like music and podcasts, but never larger movies.
I thought Plex setup the sync location to always be internal on purpose and this couldn’t be fixed.
I’m quite positive this is not how it should be and hope this can be addressed.
This comment made me realize that I have set a custom Transcode folder in settings (to the same external SD Card where Metadata is located but to a different location). This setting is being respected by Plex when transcoding so I decided to give it another chance and start from scratch so this is what I did:
Remove the custom Transcode folder in settings
Restore Plex Metadata folder to the internal storage of the Shield
Move again the metadata folder to the external storage
I can confirm neither the Transcode nor the Sync+ folder are moved to the external storage, even when using default paths. Transcoding happens in the internal storage, even when moving metadata folder to external. You need to change the location of the folder in Plex settings. Even so, the Sync+ folder is not moved, it will still try to use the internal storage. As stated above, the sync feature is just not usable in the Shield apart from some small media files like music or small tv shows chapters.
