I have Rasplex on a RPi2 (1.01) and one thing that has bugged me since I started using it was the extreme slowness and unreliability when trying to use the skip or FF/RW functions remotely over the Internet. My family members who have this device (which I built) always comment that there is no reliable way to fast forward past commercials in my TV media, which is true…certainly not as reliable or easy as Netflix.
My server is fairly powerful and my WAN connection is 10M up (100M down). I think it simply has to do with the product - whether that means PHT or the RPi2 hardware. I have not tested anything else yet remotely, which is why I’m posting this for advice.
Is this just the way all Plex clients are remotely? Or all PHT clients? Is there something that would behave better, even at a higher price point? What about the new Plex Media Player preview? Anybody compare the behavior of the two clients remotely?
(Yes, the web client works well remotely, but any given laptop CPU is also 10x faster than a RPi2 and you can just “point” to the timeline to make it jump in a browser, so that’s not apples to apples.)
When you’re transcoding media and you skip, you’re telling the server to skip to a new point and start transcoding again. I notice that this will timeout when the server doesn’t provide a stream quick enough (which it has trouble doing when trying to stop and start a new transcode stream). My experience has been I can jump no more than two or three times in a row when transcoding on the local network. Remotely, maybe once before it times outs. But at 15-30 secs a jump, people want to skip through as it it was a DVR connected to the TV. So the server can’t keep up with the requests.
I suspect ‘jumping’ may need a longer timeout period on the client but will never work well when transcoding in it’s current form. And FF/RW will never work right. You’re asking the server to transcode quicker and it’s already transcoding as fast as it can.
The Roku client does this really well. It lets you search through stills on the timeline, then reinitiates the transcode from that point as if it was a new transcode. Thus you rebuffer and have a longer timeout period and not make several transcode requests in a row to the server to skip ahead. Works the best for remote servers.
Not irrelevant. Like I said, the Roku client works well because it doesn’t actual skip or fast forward the same way. Adding that type of feature to Rasplex would be alot of work. Doubt it will happen, but I’d sure enjoy Rasplex more if it ever came to pass.
Difficulty in fast-forwarding is probably my biggest issue with RasPlex at the moment, and that’s not suggesting it’s a small issue. It could push me back to PMP.
@benjaminwolf said:
Not irrelevant. Like I said, the Roku client works well because it doesn’t actual skip or fast forward the same way. Adding that type of feature to Rasplex would be alot of work. Doubt it will happen, but I’d sure enjoy Rasplex more if it ever came to pass.
@robertsig said:
Does anyone know if another client besides the Roku behaves in a similar way?
@sremick said:
Difficulty in fast-forwarding is probably my biggest issue with RasPlex at the moment, and that’s not suggesting it’s a small issue. It could push me back to PMP.
Has anyone thought to raise this as an issue on GitHub?
@NedtheNerd said:
OK, have added you to my ‘Ignore’ list, do you want me to make sure the whole team disregard any feature requests or requests for assistance from you?
That’s a pretty harsh reaction to a friendly joke, Ned. A decently funny joke at that.
You’ve been a big help to me in the past and I thank you for it. But I give as good as I get in this forum. I’m a positive, proactive user that offers help when I have time and knowledge to share. I evangelize Rasplex as a client to people who I believe could benefit from it. I even answered this support thread for an issue with your team’s client.
Threatening to cut me out of client support is a petty overreaction to a friendly gesture, Ned. I appreciate what you and the rest of the Rasplex/OpenPHT team are doing here. But if this wasn’t a failure in communication, I’m a little disappointed in you as a person.
If you ever take me off your ignore list and read this, maybe we can work out what went wrong here.
@NedtheNerd said:
OK, have added you to my ‘Ignore’ list, do you want me to make sure the whole team disregard any feature requests or requests for assistance from you?
That’s a pretty harsh reaction to a friendly joke, Ned. A decently funny joke at that.
You’ve been a big help to me in the past and I thank you for it. But I give as good as I get in this forum. I’m a positive, proactive user that offers help when I have time and knowledge to share. I evangelize Rasplex as a client to people who I believe could benefit from it. I even answered this support thread for an issue with your team’s client.
Threatening to cut me out of client support is a petty overreaction to a friendly gesture, Ned. I appreciate what you and the rest of the Rasplex/OpenPHT team are doing here. But if this wasn’t a failure in communication, I’m a little disappointed in you as a person.
If you ever take me off your ignore list and read this, maybe we can work out what went wrong here.
I was only joking too, I’d never put anyone on an Ignore list, Naughty list, yes!
@NedtheNerd said:
Will only work if the user has generated BIF files, not everybody does due to sizing, for a moderate library these eat up many Gb of storage.
Perhaps it should be a feature that can be enabled as opposed to a complete replacement to the original. But the current setup simply isn’t the best solution for remote transcoding clients.
