I’m new to the forums here but have been having some issues that are driving me insane. I run Plex off my home gaming pc (i7-6700 Skylake Quad Core 3.4ghz, 16gb DDR4 RAM, GIGABYTE G1 Gaming GA-Z170X-Gaming 7 motherboard, MSI GTX1070). Windows 10 runs off of a 250gb SSD, meanwhile Plex pulls all my media off of a WD Black 2tb 7200rpm 6gb/s 64mb cache (model WD2003FZEX). I am listed as having Comcast’s ‘Extreme‘ internet which dials me in at ~360mbps down and ~30 up…although I swore Comcast told me I was upgraded to gigabit.
Anyway, here’s is my configuration, all of which in my finished basement. My gaming pc has a Cat6 cable run from its own Killer Gigabit Ethernet port into another gigabit port on an Netgear Nighthawk X6S AC3000 router. As mentioned before, my up and down speeds are more than modest being hardwired. In my home theater, I have a Roku Ultra which has a Cat6 cable run from its 10/100 port all the way back into, you guessed it, the Asus router’a gigabit port.
My main issue is a constant issue with buffering on most, but not all, movies. It can get exact file types later if necessary but some 4K movies play phenomenally while others consistently buffer from the start of a movie until I’m given a “your connection time the server is not fast enough.” I will note my download speed on the wired Roku Ultra hovers around 91mbps. Oddly enough I have on occasion also received a “your server is not powerful enough.” However my main issue is relative to the buffering. If I were to switch the Roku over to wireless on a 5ghz band, the issue seems to rectify itself. I believe my download speed is around 85 or so via wireless. I have tinkered with direct play and direct streaming settings, yet the problem persists despite being on a local network. What am I doing wrong? Could the issue be some setting within the Asus router? Or should I not be using the router as a basic network switch? Hell, even the cable coming from the modem (NETGEAR - 32 x 8 DOCSIS 3.1) is Cat6. I wired all the cables myself and followed the appropriate color codes when placing ends in their respective plugs. Everything appears as it should be. Could my issue be related to movie file types? Or should I really be operating a dedicated NAS system? I’m at a loss for why Plex doesn’t consistently work.
The buffering does also spreads across to remote clients whom I share my library with. Anything from various types of TVs (Roku, Android OS) also receive buffering issues. I do believe I have my streaming quality capped and at each location the internet download speed is easily over 100mbps.
So, what am I doing wrong and what other types of information do you need? I can’t seem to get this figured out. My home theater is dialed in with a 110” screen on an Epson 4010 4K projector. When I originally had the theater in service and prior to capping off some Ethernet plugs, I was running the Roku wirelessly into my router. The buffering was so bad I had hoped finally fully converting to a wired system would alleviate the problem. Only as you’ve read, it now seems backwards. Wireless fixes my I home issue, while wired causes them! Help?
I suppose you’re dealing with a number of issues…
Generally speaking you need to consider that 4K refers only to the resolution of a video – there’s a lot of other aspects of your files that will impact how your player/server will deal with them, such as the codec (e.g. h264 or h265), the average/max bitrate, is the video encoded in 10bit (HDR) or 8bit (SDR), audio formats and particularly subtitles (image based vs. text based).
Your connection to the server is not fast enough
4K content can easily peak beyond your Roku’s maximum 100 Mbps connection.
This will vary depending if you’re using a file derived from a blu-ray disk or an “optimized” / re-encoded version.
The data transfer of a modern WIFI can be significantly higher. However, there’s tons of factors that will impact your connection (e.g. distance to the router, walls, interfering WIFI networks of your neighbors, other electronic equipment…).
Your server is not powerful enough
Transcoding 4K content requires a lot of CPU power. Your Roku might be playing a lot of media formats as-is. If there’s files it cannot play directly, the Plex Media Server will try to adjust the video so it meets the requirements of the device (this can be technical restrictions or client settings requiring the content to be modified).
There’s a benchmark that gives you an indication of the transcoding capabilities of a CPU. Transcoding of a 4K video (“PassMark”). Transcoding a 4K video usually requires a PassMark score of approx. 12000 (4K SDR @ 40 Mbps) to 17000 (4K HDR @ 50 Mbps). Your CPU has a PassMark score of approx. 10000 – so you might get lucky but generally your CPU is not powerful enough to transcode those 4K videos.
If you want your server to deal with 4K content you’ll need a device that’s powerful enough to deal with it. It’s unlikely you’ll find that in a NAS (their CPUs are usually even less powerful).
If your CPU has a supported integrated or dedicated GPU you might benefit from using its hw-accelerated transcoding capabilities (that will require a Plex Pass membership).
Thanks for the quick reply, I see what you mean but don’t know where I should start. Should I convert the files to a more friendly format or upgrade my cpu?
I understood that using the WIFI got the “your network is not fast enough” issue under control… so your focus should be on understanding what makes some of those files of yours “want” to be transcoded.
There’s a dedicated post on “the rules of 4K streaming” that might help you with that.
Your final conclusion will likely depend on the outcome of that.
As an example…
if all your transcoding is due to Plex burning the subtitles into your video… you can only “cure” that by either optimizing the file yourself (e.g. burning your subtitles into the video yourself) or go for a stronger CPU
if the transcoding has nothing to do with the subtitles you can do the math and check if your GPU supports hw-accelerated video transcoding / streaming – in that case it might be cheaper to go with a Plex Pass, making use of that GPU’s capabilities.
Correct. Initially running on WiFi caused problems a year or so ago. Once I got around to actually wiring things up, the wired connection was mostly reliable. Now, I’m looking at just about every video causing buffering issues via my wired connection…with with WiFi now working. I haven’t seen a “server not powerful enough” error in a while actually. So I think the issue has to be with file types and container types? I generally blindly download the highest quality movie. My home theater is a 7.1 atmos with that prior mentioned 4K projector. I really want to maximize my in home experience. Streaming to whoever else I share my library with can definitely de downgraded to 1080p.
So from what I understand, transcoding occurs when the video needs some form of converting to another client. If I’m bottle necking at my above listed cpu, should I look into upgrading?
Another thing I was thinking about earlier, my Roku Ultra only as a 10/100 Ethernet port. As of right now I’m capable of up to ~360 up and ~35 down speeds, although Comcast supposedly told me I was upgraded to Gigabit. Although I’m not seeing those speeds obviously, I’ll address that with a phone call tomorrow to be appropriated the right amount of bandwidth. That alone may fix my issues, yet the Roku’s port would cap me off. I am looking into an Apple TV however which runs a gig port.
I really sort of refuse to use WiFi, it has proven to be unreliable in the past despite my quality equipment. Let alone I framed and wired my finished basement, it would be an utter waste to not utilize what is otherwise quality Cat6 and alike.
So I guess what I’m asking is, what do you guys think?
I personally like the Apple TV 4K. However if you go with full quality sound (7.1, Atmos…) you might want to look into a Nvidia Shield as those are capable to also pass through that kind of audio while the Apple TV is limited in that area.
That being said the Apple TV is still a solid choice — especially since the new player is able to deal with much more formats natively.
As for upgrading your CPU… you might want to consider that. 4K content is still very demanding. Even if you look into a Plex Pass membership to make use of hw-accelerated transcoding, there might be scenarios where the (i)GPU has no codec for a particular format or you need to fallback to the CPU because the GPU cannot transcode subtitles…
If you look into it… keep the PassMark scores in mind
Little bit of an update. I corrected the fact I should be receiving gigabit internet with Comcast. Verified that today, on a hardwire connection I’m pulling over 850mbps…or at least at that time. My only bottle neck at this point would be the Roku Ultra and it’s 10/100 connection.
Knowing my Roku was limited by speed, I still tinkered with Plex to try and play movies (UHD 4K). Some of which played perfectly fine in the past, while others had the buffering issues. Oddly enough anything I had attempted to play…would either vapor lock at the loading screen (~33%) or load/play after extended time and instantly begin to buffer again.
At the time I was going back and forth between my theater and office. I ended up closing everything else out and taking a break, but noticed my plex drive was maxed out on usage at 100% with nothing utilizing it. I performed a quick test in WD Lifeguard and receive a pass rating. However the quick test doesn’t test for bad sectors, read write errors, and etc. I did take a movie (Dunkirk UHD 4K 5.1 DTS-HD) that was unplayable on my 2tb WD Black ‘plex’ drive and move it over to my Samsung SSD OS drive. To test my theory in that my WD drive is going bad, I created a test folder in Plex linking to the newly transferred Dunkirk.
Upon loading Plex in my theater, the movie played flawlessly to the point I got bored and closed it. Looking at the Plex Pass dashboard, I could confirm the movie was direct playing both video and audio from my theaters Roku Ultra. On a Vizio tv in my workout room, the movie again played flawlessly and read as direct steaming (w/hw trans) on video. CPU usage was never past a few percent. To further test things out, I had a friend remote play the movie while I had it playing in my theater. No issues what so ever, again.
So I guess my next step is replacing the current WD Black drive that is currently in service as my plex movie drive. I’ll be upgrading to a Seagate Ironwolf 6tb, 7200rpm, 256mb cache. Following I’m likely going the gonna grab either an Apple TV or Shield. I hear great things about the UI and format/codec comparability of the Apple TV but also read a Shield can truly pass through 7.1. Given that is my setup, I’m not sure what route to go.
