Server Version#:4.3.5.0756
Player Version#: 1.14.0.5470-9d51fdfaa
I Have A Problem When Streamin high Quality movies Remotely from MY Nas , using my Samsung TV , it always buffers , although my connection is decent , but still im facing alot of buffering which is annoying , can anyone help me to solve this problem ?
You mentioned high quality movies what format and type are we looking at here eg 4k 10bit etc?
When playing locally on you samsung TV plex will be transcoding the audio if it’s in dts / dolby etc but the video should playback fine.
I have a qnap 871 and can stream upto 4k on my Sony oled TV, but found that nvidia Shield to be the best I have tested for plex.
I also have apple tv 4k but can’t do 4k hdr direct playback or HD audio.
locally it works fine , i dont get any buffering , but remotely out of the network i start getting alot of buffering and some Noise in the audio , the format is mkv and most qualities that i play is either 1080 8 - 20 mb or 720 4 mb, i havent tried 4k yet coz the lower qualities are not working fine.
Plex clients detect if servers are local or remote. When local, they allow the server to stream at higher bitrates. When remote, they often request the server to transcode to lower bitrates.
Most clients allow you to define which bitrate is allowed in local/remote situations. Pls play with those settings until you get a satisfactory result.
What is the spec of your qnap?
Outside of the network it is your broadband upload speed that matters.
For example.
My qnap is i7 16GB ram and my broadband upload speed is 20Mbps.
If your upload is not great then like moody blue suggested you can adjust the bitrate within the client to get the required results.
I can transcode 4k with mine but plex does not support hdr tone mapping on remote play so it looks washed out and the bitrate i have setup lower to help eg on plex server for remote play I set it to 720p 2-3Mbps but I have multiple friends and family watching at times hence why.
Thanks
my problem is only remotely , and my QNAP is 8GB ram , i3 specs.
my upload spee is 20 mb/s , and when im in the network it works totally fine.
so maybe plex doesnt support high bitrate qualities remotely.
or is there away to configure it to do so ?
As said above, you need to configure the Plex client on your TV for various bitrates until you get a satisfactory result with remote connections.
Buffering is caused by two main causes:
Within you Plex server setting just make sure it the transcoder quality is set to “make my cpu hurt” for the best quality.
you have good upload on your connection to give you HD quality remote viewing but this is also depending on the end remote devices network connection i.e wireless or 3G/4G
other than that its what moody_blue said.
As a test you can also try Emby movie theatre which is similar to Plex, you can download and install it on your Qnap and view it remotely and see if you still have the issue.
Thanks
“Make my CPU hurt” does not apply to everyone.
This varies on a case by case basis.
ya i tried it but still im getting the buffering , seems i cant view more then 720 mb quality remotely, so higher quality doesnt work on my QNAP with i3 core.
i really cant find a solution and its annoying.
If you’re getting buffering, the last thing you want to do is “make my CPU hurt”.
Please provide an example of the XML (hover over it, Get Info , View XML) for one of those which does buffer.
Next, please advise if you are using subtitles and what the player’s settings are.
This will form the basis of predicting what PMS will do.
sorry im new to this , so how can i get the XML ?
XML.zip (8.0 KB)
as requested this is the XML file , for one of the buffering movies.
thank for the help
Please describe your QNAP to Samsung TV NW setup.
Cabling, wifi, etc.?
its not a direct connection , its connected to my Dlink AC3200 , and im remotely connected , my QNAP , has an i3 core 2.1 GHz , and 8GB ram , my connection is 20 mb upload
Ok… a we need to start getting into specificities here and not general answers.
So in PLEX terms, remote = off LAN. So if your Samsung is under the same roof as the QNAP that is LOCAL/LAN playback.
If your QNAP NAS & Samsung are on the same local NW (whether wifi, hard wired, or both) then you are in LOCAL playback.
So lets get more specific regarding the NW layout…
QNAP ---- (wired - 1GbE ) ---- Dlink — (wifi .2.4/5.x etc.) — Samsung (etc…).
What model Samsung TV is it exactly. Are you using a Plex client on the TV or using something like DLNA for example.
And in regards to 20Mb upload, depending on if you router has QOS enabled, what traffic shaping your ISP is doing, etc. you may be being impacted in multiple areas.
For the TVS-873, you have a AMD 421 series processor, not an i3.
Also what is your QNAP CPU usage during playback of the problem file?
@Mo5333 You have found that transcoding to 720p works without buffering, but as you are not satisfied with the quality, let’s see how to procceed from here.
Since the TVS-873 does not support HW transcoding, our options are a bit limited here. The first thing to do is to measure CPU utilization during 3MBps transcodes and higher, to determine what’s the limit. If you are not close to 90% utilization, then the limiting factor might be the communication speed.
It’s not a surprise to me that a ~4600 passmark CPU can’t transcode a 32Mbps video into something higher than 3Mbps. That’s life… The transcoding process is very heavy, and may be unaffordably high when high bitrates (in or out) are used. But without the help of HW transcoding your best option is probably the creation of optimized versions (you could start at 20Mbps and then lower the quality) to see if it is acceptable.
IMHO transcoding was a good idea some years ago, when we did not have 4K, 8K, etc. With such high bitrates, and specially with the usage of the HVEC codec, it’s very expensive to find PC’s fit for the job. Only the fastest PC’s will be able to transcode in such situations. So the solution for those that do not have such expensive processors is to have several versions of the same film. Yes, it’s a waste of disk space, but disk is not so expensive these days… Other solution might be to define our “home standard”, compatible (without transcoding) with all home devices, and recode every film to it before moving it to the Plex library. It’s what I’m doing, I keep the “full version” (full quality) in a library not accessible by Plex, and I convert all films to my own standard to avoid transcoding.
In what concerns WAN connections, with HVEC you can stream higher quality with the same bitrate, when compared with H264, so, if remote equipment supports HVEC, it may be a good idea to have a library with HVEC films (transcoding to HVEC requires so much power that I’m not aware of any CPU capable of doing it in real time).
i did the test moody suggested and found that my CPU cant stand a higher quality more then 720mb , is it possible to upgrade my NAS CPU to i7 core ? , i dont know if my NAS can stand an i7 Core or anyone has any experience in this ? to advice
nope… only upgrade path is beefier NAS model right now. Plex has said they are working on enabling HW transcoding on more NAS models, so if/when that happens for the TVS-x73 family then you could look at leveraging that to help.
