Current setup is a Mac mini circa 2012 model with 2 drobos connected. Lately I’ve been having serious buffering issues (I use my Xbox one x for streaming) especially with 4K video but even some 1080p. First off is this a hardware issue? And if so I’ll sadly be switching back to a pc from my Mac. Please recommend some hardware specs if this what I have to do so I buy/build the correct machine. If it’s not a hardware issue tell me what I can do to resolve the situation thank you very much for your help it is greatly appreciated.
Tons of possible causes come to mind and the answer might not be as straight forward as you want or expect it to be.
Network and Connectivity
- do you use a wired or wireless network between your Mac Mini and router, router and Xbox?
- how are the Drobo connected (network vs. direct attached storage)?
- what Xbox model are you using?
4K videos can be massive files – so can be high-bitrate 1080p files. Poor network design or interferences can easily impact the available bandwidth and cause trouble.
Media Characteristics
Mind sharing some more details of the media you’re trying to play that’s causing issues?
- what container and codecs are we talking about (container: mkv, avi, mp4/m4v…, codes for video, audio and subtitles)?
- what’s the average / maximum bitrate of those files?
Client and Server settings
- do you apply any restrictions to the playback quality on either server or client side?
- when playing the video… open Plex Web and check the Now Playing section in the activities / dashboard area, expand the box of the applicable playback and share that information (e.g. is the video playing locally, are streams being transcoded vs. direct played…
Generally speaking, video streaming (and transcoding) can be quite demanding on hardware. Hardware from 2012 is unlikely to be able to transcode 4K material and could already have trouble with heavy 1080p material… this is independent of this being a Windows or macOS system.
With that in mind you have 2 key options:
- make sure your clients can direct play all content without transcoding
- get some more modern hardware
That being said… any recent Intel NUC has significantly better capabilities when it comes to hardware transcoding than that old model.
So many questions lol. I’ll do my best to answer them all. First both the Mac mini and Xbox are wired not wireless. Second the drobos are both attached one thru FireWire the other thunderbolt. Third it’s an Xbox one X.
Most containers are mkv but not all. I’m thinking I will have to upgrade my hardware and I’m sad to be going back to windows but Mac is just to expensive.
As for bitrate I’m not sure sorry.
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