Server Version#: Version 1.12.1.4885
Player Version#: * X-Plex-Version => 7.9.0.8439
Hullo all,
I’ve been fighting with my new Plex setup for a couple of weeks now, and I really cant understand the issues I’m having. I’m not an expert, but if you tell me what data to provide I’ll grab it and post it up to help diagnose. Apologies in advance for the length, but I’m going to try and give you every detail I can think of:
I’m running Plex Media Server on a new Raspberry Pi 3B+ with the Open Media Vault operating system. Everything is freshly installed (reinstalled this afternoon), with nothing else touched beyond adding file systems and enabling Plex.
From there it’s a wired connection into my router, and then to wireless or wired clients. For testing I’m using a wired connection to an Amazon Fire HD running the Plex app (again, freshly installed this afternoon).
The issue I’m having is that files buffer and stall like we’re back in 2002. They’ll play for maybe 60 seconds (though this varies, sometimes as little as 15 seconds, sometimes a good few minutes without issue) before halting in a buffer-like state and never resuming. Sometimes I get the message “Your network is not fast enough to stream…”, and sometimes I’m able to jolt the file back to life by opening the player settings menu and changing the quality to anything else, and then back to ‘Original Quality’ - though again this only seems to buy a little time, and doesn’t fix the issue.
Now, I know the network is fast enough to play the files. It does so without issue when Plex is removed from the equation (Using Kodi on the wired Amazon HD, and Xtreme Player on wireless iPad and Samsung S9). I’ve tested the very same files multiple times, and playback is perfect without Plex, and impossible with it.
Further: playback is ‘fine’ outside my LAN, when using Plex apps. There’s a certain amount of buffering before a file loads, but once it is playing it will continue to do so without issue over 3/4G or public wifi hotspots where presumably there are greater bandwidth limitations than on the 20ft cable run inside my house. In testing this I’ve used the exact same devices (iPad and S9) without altering any settings on the client or server side.
I’ve tried playing with Transcoder (incl. Buffering) and Web Player settings on the Plex server to try and encourage Plex to avoid transcoding at all costs - I’m aware of the hardware limitations and network bandwidth really ought not to be a problem in this setup. I’ve seen no noticeable improvement from anything I’ve tried in this regard.
I think that that covers it. I hope I’ve given enough information to maybe spark someone’s knowledge of where I’m going wrong here, because this is an utterly frustrating situation to be in.
