Hi I just updated earlier tonight (Windows Server) and ran into the issue. I just downgraded and its working again.
Will a new Server version be released to replace the bugged version?
The issue is not entirely with the server version but the codecs served to the server. There is no need for a server version update to resolve this. The backend fix has been made. Please try again and report back if playback is successful or not. If there is an issue please have Debug logging enabled and share your PMS logs.
2 Likes
I am having this message appear “Conversion failed. A required codec could not be found or failed to install.” after doing an update. Is there a fix being worked on or? Thank you
Thanks! Previously was getting failure with Windows server. Both clients that weren’t working (Plex for Windows, Web via Chrome) are looking good now.
I am having this message appear “Conversion failed. A required codec could not be found or failed to install.” after doing an update. Is there a fix being worked on or? Thank you
Plex Media Server Logs_2025-02-18_16-35-21.zip (931.0 KB)
@ayobami_t and @luminafiore your logs contain 429 messages for at least one codec. It’s likely that this is the one required for your transcoding playback.
Is it “spamming this call” if it’s operating as expected?
Don’t you mean that the backend is misconfigured and incorrectly blocking valid requests?
Thanks. That folder was empty. Copied over the files and everything works again.
I still get error messages using 2 different clients towards a Windows installation, MacOS and Android. Both clients are unable to play some items using Direct Play. Switching quality to force transcoding works on both clients, so it seems that some codec is not possible to download from the apps. Am I missing something on the server, or do we have problems downloading codec from apps as well?
The error message I get from MacOS client is “A codec required for playback could not be downloaded. Make sure you are connected to the Internet and try again. (Error 1008)”
I think honestly that comment was a bit rushed from their end, or just plainly dismissive.
It was a completely fresh Linux install for me, on first launch and first video load it failed with that error. I can’t possibly be ‘Spamming a call’. The server might be, but that’s without any direct input from myself short of trying to play a video, it’s intended function.
The issue of our backend serving bad codecs should be resolved. This is the SHA1 error you might have seen in your logs.
What could also have happened is whenever you attempt playback and codec is missing, PMS would attempt to download them again. However It fails (SHA1) again, again, and again. This then flags the IP address (where ever the PMS is installed) as requesting too many times (429).
So if you were flagged by 429 and continue to attempt playback you would continue to receive the 429 errors and not download the update codecs. If you never waited to reset whatever limit is set that triggers the 429 response, then you would continue to see this issue.
I’m not 100% sure that 
is 100% accurate with regards to timeout but the gist of the situation is right. If you are seeing 429 errors when attempting to download codec, you need to wait a bit then try again.
It depends on what you’re seeing in your logs.
Is it fixed for Windows yet? I can’t manually download the codecs and PMS still errors out 
Same here. No PLEX operation for about 5 days now. I’m currently evaluating replacements for Plex.
Back up and running with the manual copying of the codecs. Once that’s been done do I need to worry about Plex downloading new codecs?
I suppose I could test it by renaming the codecs folder and seeing if PMS does the codex download?
I’m also on an M4. Worked fine for me. Make sure they’re in the correct location and have the correct names.
But they say the issue should’ve been resolved now, so maybe just clear out the folder and see if it works out of the box 
.
@addykitty @RemohGramps Again this should be resolved. If you are still observing issues please share your PMS logs.
Still having issues with this issue. I am able to stream from LAN to LAN (PMS to iPhone) but if I am connected to 5G network I get this error with certain media. I’ve tried renaming codec’s folder, I’ve tried reinstalling an older version of PMS. Nothing is working. Yes, PMS is available outside the network and I can see the server and all media. Has this issue officially been resolved by Plex yet? Please help.
Yes. You’ll need to provide your PMS logs for anyone to provide assistance. At this point your issue is likely to be something else.
A post was split to a new topic: Hardware accelerator failed to decode picture
