I’ve been looking into this but struggling to replicate the issue myself. Would you be able to create a sample of a video that fails to play as well as provide some logs? Knowing if you are direct playing or transcoding would help as well.
Well … after the recent Nvidia Shield Tv update, rolling back the version to the version shield came with is no longer an option as it crashes now. This was the only way to use Nvidia shield TV with plex. On Android tablets we have at least the option to use the “Android Player” … which for me is the only option to use Plex at all as without it videos just hang. Something with ExoPlayer is severely broken.
On the server side of things i noticed that if a device using ExoPlayer is playing a video, the network traffic goes up way beyon what is needed to play the video (100 mbytes/s and beyond). It doesnt do that if the target device is an older version or is using the native android player.
BTW, my Nvidia Shields (i have 2 of them) are both wired on a gigabit network. I’ve tried everything i can think of. My experience with Plex has been mostly pain and I kinda only stick with it because mapping all videos correctly was a lot of work. With the latest Nvidia shield update its not completely broken which causes quite some drama with my kids who have been used to using it.
I guess we have to get used to just playing stuff with VLC now.
I just found this out the hard way too. The new shield 7.0 update forces a Plex 6.14 version as it’s “base” version so you can’t roll back to any version prior and the 6.12 seemed to be the sweet spot for us.
Any luck with rolling back the Nvidia update or any other fix available possibly?
I’ll see if I can help out with this in the next few days. I’ve found it occurs on my 60fps videos with high bitrate. Any Plex version 6.12 or earlier will play it flawlessly but any newer version gives the “network is not fast enough” or just constantly buffers when it’s obviously not a network speed issue.
The workaround for now is to use Kodi with the Plex Plugin. It has zero issues playing all my files via direct play.
But in the long term i’m so dissapointed with Plex that i’m open to suggestions. Kodi itself would work for the Media library, but i’ve organized my media in a way that plex works best (naming scheme) which causes it to be complicated for Kodi’s scaper to make sense of it. It is an awesome feature to bundle the movie with extras together in a folder, but at this point this is the only feature that holds me back.
Is Plex waiting for a test file to investigate this issue further? I just tried making one but the cropped file plays fine. Wanted to check before spending more time creating a test file that replicated the issue.
We are investigating the issue, however we are still struggling to replicate, so can’t work out the cause and implement a solution. Any samples would help, along with logs and as much information as you can supply about your setup.
One question: Would it be possible to just bypass ExoPlayer like on Mobile Android (the option to use native player) on the Android TV app? I’m pretty sure it would fix the issue for me as it did so in the past when i could just roll back to an earlier version on the Shield. BTW … i have the same issue on all Android Clients, but on the Tablets, as i said, there is that option for the native player.
yet another of the “mysterious” defects from not just OP’s March complaint, but from late last year or longer.
“network not fast enough” / “server not fast enough” == “your fault for having bought a fireTV/Shield/whatever” or I guess “your fault for trusting plex”
how odd that most of the time if you quit / clear cache / restart PMS server-side, it can be convinced to work. (apologists would love to say “BUT MWAR YOU HAD TO CLICK A ICKLE BUTTON TWICE WHICH TOOK 0.2s OF YOUR TIME!!!”)
plexperson sixones I do thank you for your reasoned response, it’s more than we generally expect/deserve.
Here is a small file that replicates the issue, along with server and client logs. Hopefully that helps! Running on a Synology 918+ and ShieldTV, all gigabit networking. I also did some tests on the original files and remuxing from mp4 to mkv oddly resolved the issue. Which is potentially why just creating a sample file from the original would not replicate the problem. I ended up converting a smaller file the way I usually do, which ended up with a small file that fails to direct play. If there’s any additional info I can provide, please let me know! Thanks
Awesome that you tracked it down. For me, once i’ve played a file that causes the issue, it’s then having the issue on everything i play. The server Bandwidth for streaming a 10mbit file goes up to 600mbit, it makes zero sense. If i play from a device where i can disable ExoPlayer, the same file is fine and uses the ammount of bandwidth that is expected (loading in chunks going up as high as maybe 100mbit for short streches, but overall at a normal pace)
It looks to me like there is a weird “feedback” loop with ExoPlayer 2 where it constantly requests packets and overloading the server side with that.
Any update since the sample was provided? I can confirm that I experience the issue with the sample file on the current client for FireTV, but it works fine with 6.12.
Whats going on with this? I see this started in Feb and it’s still broken? I have 2 shields and both have the same issue. For not I have been using my Xbox and it works fine.
Any updates on this issue? I also have two shields and I foolishly updated them which now force Plex 6.14 or higher and it’s just painful to watch movies or TV shows. Heck, one shields if hardwired to a Cisco 3850 Gigabit switch and Dora the explorer TV shows in 240SD buffer/glitch. This is very disappointing. The issue is still present.
With Direct Play turned on with each of these devices I run into problems. Please note that this is not with ALL files, only some.
AppleTV --> repeated buffering about every 30 seconds
Shield --> takes a long time to play the movie and then only plays small amounts before buffering again
iOS Devices --> repeated buffering
I can solve these problems by turning OFF Direct Play. My issue is that this seems un-necessary. By doing this I am automatically transcoding ALL my files, even those that should otherwise play correctly.
I seem to have “solved” this problem by using the Plex Media Server “optimize” function on each of these affected media files. I use “original quality” to maintain the video resolution as much as possible. After doing this, these same media files stream without problem on each media streaming device.
I would love to get some feedback on other people’s experiences with this approach.
I am helping looking into this issue. I got the sample file and am able to reproduce the issue. It does appear to be Exoplayer 2 having an issue with this file type. I will provide an update once I have more information to share.
