Any ideas why plex ps3 app refuses to play this file?

Plex Players Gaming Consoles
1

Hey, this movie works fine on Samsung plex app, android and ios plex apps, however the ps3 app just takes a while then says this video is taking too long. Below is the movie XML pastebin
http://pastebin.com/xGnV8f4S

2

It’s a remote file and have tried all available remote quality settings in the ps3 plex settings panel to no avail.

3

Are you able to provide server logs for a time when you try to play the file?

4

Here is some server logs, I tried to trim it to just the stuff after the timestamp before i tried playing the video.
Hopefully it helps.

http://pastebin.com/krHHwsUE

5

I’m not seeing any errors jumping out at me, can you try turning off DirectPlay and DirectStream on the PS3 app and see if the file will play? Then post the logs for that time?

Thanks

6

Wow that actually worked, plays fine now. I’ll Login to SSH and post the logs tommorow so they can be compared. Figured plex would automatically determine ps3 can’t play the file and transcode when required so didn’t even give those 2 setting options a second glance.
Thanks.

7

The logic in the Plex server seems to be more inclined to stream files rather than transcode, probably because of the number of low power Plex servers (Nas boxes, etc.) so the logic is sometimes if a file is “close enough” it will directPlay or DirectStream. The upside is lower resource usage on the server, the downside is when a file is imperfect for some reason it can sometimes fail to play.

The PS platform is quite limited in it’s media type support to the point that I’ve seen x264 encoded videos simply refuse to play, I run them through Handbrake on it’s quickest possible reencode to exactly the same codec, profile and level then the file plays without issues. Most frustrating.

8

DavidIrwin is right here. This file should direct play. Only these things standout:

  • optimizedForStreaming="0" this is a big file w/o the moov atom up front. The PS4 may be freaking out because it can’t find the videos metadata. If you’re feeling adventurous you can move the metdata yourself. If the PlayStation works on the resulting file we’ll change our configuration to avoid direct playing mp4’s like this.
  • codec="aac" index="1" channels="6" bitrate="384" audioChannelLayout="5.1". 6 channel AAC should be fine but I haven’t tested it personally.

(My money is on the moov atom)

9

If this is a video file that you own the best thing to do is using Handbrake convert the Video to mp4 format - I have found that Plex has no problem loading the video using that format. I use my plex server locally plus over the internet and have had no issues for three years.