An error occurred while attempting to play this video. Please try restarting both the Plex Media Server and this app

Remote server behind reverse proxy here, works fine with android beta. So not a general problem. Maybe your certs are bogus.

Nah. Certs are fine. All check out ok.

I think I’ve figured out the issue- at least in my situation.

Summary:
Using server side remote bandwidth limits breaks the Android client for non EAC3 audio content.

Detail:
Content that doesn’t have EAC3 audio (say DCA DTS, or AC3) will not play when server side bandwidth limits are turned on and Android client is on original/maximum quality.

To test (must be running a remote server, not local)

Set your remote server remote quality limit at 4mbps
Set your Android client to:

  • remote quality maximum
  • play smaller files at original = yes
  • turn off auto adjust

Then try and play a file on your Android client that has a higher video bitrate than 4mbps and has DCA DTS or AC3 audio.

The same settings do not effect playback on iOS or Web.

Turning server side remote quality bandwidth limits off fixes the issue. This isn’t an adequate solution as many users require server side bandwidth limits.

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There are certainly issues but I can say that running the latest Plex Server and the 8.1 Beta with Nginx as a reverse proxy with lets encrypt certs I no longer have these issues. I even attempted to recreate the issue you describe and don’t have the same results. I am am sure that each environment has it’s own unique issues but this certainly seems to be getting more stable with each release.

How can the most basic thing, playing a video file, still not work after 3 Months? This is a joke.

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I have no idea why this solution works for me because it certainly is not intuitive on the Plex Media Server settings. Go to the REMOTE ACCESS section in Settings. There is a field for Internet upload speed. It recommends that you run a Speedtest to determine your upload speed. Mine was 25 Mbps. I obviously put 25 in the field. With this constraint in place, I had frequent playback errors for certain DVR recorded programs. When I changed the speed to 300, the errors just stopped. Plex works fine with a much higher number in this field. My guess is the program is incorrectly referencing this field when on your local network. CHECK IT OUT FOR YOURSELF and reply back.

I have 1Gbps Upload, had no value set as it is not needed in my case. Tried adding a manual value, same error.

Same issue on Android 8.0.2 - with a wrinkle I haven’t seen anyone mention. Video playing fine, turn on subtitles, ā€˜restart server’ error pops up, that episode will no longer play on any Android device, but fine on web or PMP on Widnows.

So, I’m (tentatively) coming back to say it looks like the 8.1.0.17833 Public Beta has possibly fixed this issue for me. Of course, it’s much more complicated than that but I’m cautiously optimistic - since installing the Beta a couple of days ago - on both my Shield Pro (2019) and Android mobile phone, both of which exhibited the issue consistently for the last few months - I haven’t had a recurrence.

For me the issue was almost exclusively with .ASS subtitle files. I watch a lot of anime so this was frustrating - the same file would play perfectly well if I disabled subtitles but I hate dubs, so…

Oh, I had a weird situation last week where I tried disabling Secure Connections on the suggestion of a post :point_up_2: up there somewhere and, would you know - that worked! For a day! I changed nothing back, but it stopped working again overnight of its own accord. Make of that what you will.

But right now, and for the last two days, the Beta 8.1.0.17833 version of the Plex Media Player on Android, and using the ā€œNew Playerā€, appears to play files it would never do so before, consistently and without failure. :crossed_fingers:

I’ve just started using Plex and in the last week I’ve not been able to play any video remotely and always get this message, be it on an Android phone or a firestick. I’ve just tried this latest Beta version and it doesn’t work either. On my LAN it works; remotely not a hope. I’ve tried most of the ā€˜fixes’ in this thread with no joy. If I run Plex remotely through a browser (e.g. Chrome on my S9+) it works great, just not though the app.

I’m trialling Plex (on Synology NAS), Jellyfin (on Raspberry Pi) and Videostation/DS Video (on Synology NAS) and Plex has proven the biggest headache tbh. The Jellyfin Android app works like a charm, and I can’t understand why Plex has proved to be so problematic. I’d prefer to use Plex as it’s more mature and hope this can be solved soon.

I had this problem with Plex on my MiBoxS AndroidTV.
Disabling new player in app settings fixed it for me.

Yup. If you read back through this (admittedly long) thread you’ll see we already knew this. But it’s only a band-aid - not the solution - because: a) Plex are threatening to remove the old player ā€œany day nowā€, b) there is not even an option on Plex for Android to switch players any more, and c) the old player doesn’t have things like the newly-added Skip Intro functions, etc.

You yourself said that the new beta solved the problem. So the poster before you just needs to wait until the fixes are merged into the final and than he can stop disabling the new player.

Well, I said the beta fixed the problem for me (as have others, to be fair) but I’ve also had false hope before. So yes, fingers crossed that when the changes in 8.1 beta make it into the live build, this problem will be fixed for most people.

But this has been such a gnarly one to track down, I think there are probably multiple issues presenting in a similar way - we’ve had people with bandwidth limit issues, with DNS binding issues, with SSL/secure connections issues, with filetype/mediatype issues all turning up in here with similar symptoms. So until everyone can play their media on Plex, I’d say it’s not yet time to call it done and grab a beer.

True, often different issues come in similar ways.

A friend is getting this error on most of my videos (remote streaming) on Nvidia shield (2017). I play them fine on my Nvidia shield (2019) locally.

[Exo2VideoPlayer] Player error detected
 e: An exception occurred: com.google.android.exoplayer2.r: com.google.android.exoplayer2.d0: Cannot find sync byte. Most likely not a Transport Stream.

logging(1).txt (1.1 MB)

Remote client logs attached

My current fix is to run Emby server :unamused:

Is the beta working for people that had problems with content that has embedded subtitles? Currently I have to sync everything I want to watch on my tablet that has embedded subtitles.

Yes. Specifically my issue was with embedded SubStationAlpha (ASS) subs (ie: most scene anime) and since installing the beta I mention above, I’ve not had any issues either on my NVIDIA Shield Pro (2019) or my Android mobile phone.

Cool, thanks for the info. That is very good news.

I’ve been fiddling a bit more and getting nowhere fast. I went insecure and that made no difference. I even installed older versions of Plex for Android. Nothing I’ve tried will open a video on either an Android phone or a firestick remotely. Plex is a good system, but surely the facility to simply play a video remotely should be a priority to fix. At least I haven’t splurged any cash on a Plex Pass yet. As it stands I’m now using Jellyfin (totally free btw).

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Make sure the certs can be read by Plex.

Also are you using a custom URL at all?