Buffering w/ 10mbps Direct Play video. WHY?!

Plex Media Server Desktops & Laptops
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Server Version#: 1.18.8.2527

I’ve been having an issue over the past few weeks where videos constantly buffer on my Apple TV, giving the dreaded “Your connection to the server is not fast enough to stream this video.” error on pretty much all videos. Here is some detail:

  • I am Direct Playing using the new enhanced player (w/ Plex Pass).
  • The video is a 1080p video, using 10-11mbps of local bandwidth (screenshot from Tautulli).
  • The server is a wired 1Gbps connection (screenshot) and the Apple TV is connected wired as well. Network is a Google Wifi network.
  • The issue happens even if I transcode to 1080p. I have a dedicated video card handling transcoding and hardware transcoding enabled so it’s not on the GPU side.
  • The video does work fine when transcoding with 720p.
  • Tried disabling Large Send Offload. Still happens.
  • I have verbose logging enabled, but I’m not sure what to look for in these logs that might identify the issue.

I tried disabling the enhanced player and moving to Wifi, still is happening randomly.

This also seems to happen randomly so it’s really hard to pin down exactly what’s causing it. On Saturday night, the issue occurred so I transcoded with 720p and we were able to watch. I later tried watching again with Direct Play and it worked fine. On Sunday, we watched a 1080p movie with Direct Play last night on our Roku Stick and it worked just fine…

This has been racking my brain for weeks now, so I’m turning to the Plex forum as a last resort. Anyone have any tips?

1 Like
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+1 I was seeing this last night too. Direct Play of a 10mbps file on local playback to AppleTV

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+1
Me too - here’s a complete and detailed overview what I found out

Seems that the Windows Server PMS is not able to talk correctly with a lot of devices.
Only my Windows 10 clients working probably.
All Apple devices (iMac, iPad, iPhone, ATV4k) not!!

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I get this quite a bit when playing from the Xbox One-S app. I hear the fans in the PMS kick into high speed, then the movie start buffering. It will not continue playing until I stop it (back button), then start and resume. It will play for about 10 mins and this process repeats. It isn’t all movies, but it’s a lot of them. Is there a specific log that I should look into to see what’s going on? Plex doesn’t report any high CPU utilization when it happens, but the Windows task manager sure does. CPU is pegged at 100% when this happens. This is the only stream. The PC is Win10 1909, 16 GB RAM, I5-4590S. The issue occurs whether or not I use GPU transcoding.

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I have the same problem with gigabit cable (Cat 6) connected between the router and PMS. When I replace the gigabit cable with just a fast ethernet cable, all playback issues gone. But then my file server is limited to 10MBps, so sad.

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I’m having he same issue… I reinstalled my PC from Win10 to Server 2019. All my Apple devices are now buffering during direct play (or during encoding) after 5 to 8 minutes.

I have cleared firewall, audio video components in Win2019, updated driver for the NIC, fixed it on 100Mbit Full Duplex (normally auto to 1Gbit).

On the client side, played around with wifi/lan, disable direct play, enhanced video player…

Also looking for tips, I dont want to move back to Win10 as a test…

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I am having the same issue. AppleTV 4K connecting to Plex over WiFi (ac). Plex server is connected to WiFi AP by gigabit link over Cat 6A. Did a speed test on the AppleTV, which provides consistent results of 300mb down and 100mb up. However, AppleTV buffers with direct play video and bandwidth from Plex Dashboard reporting about 16 mb of local traffic.

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Same issue here, only thing that changed was going from Server 2016 to Server 2019 and adding a P2000 for transcoding.

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Verbose logging is useless - unless specifically requested - but you wouldn’t know that 'cause it’s not published anywhere… you do now.

Disable VERBOSE - Enable DEBUG.

Play some more items and find the issue - wait a minute or two then upload some new DEBUG Logs… the full zip file acquired when pressing ‘Download Logs’ here:
Server/Settings/Troubleshooting

You can’t read logs and I can’t either, but I know who can - providing we can get them the right ones to read.

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I’m having the same issue. I’m running 3 Plex servers, a Mac mini, a dell T310 running server 2019, and a cloud hosted Ubuntu server. Mac and Dell on same gigabit switch. Direct play on the Mac mini, and on the cloud server works fine, no issues. But when I play back from the Windows PMS, it plays fine for a while, but then stops, halts for 10-15 seconds, then starts playing 10 second clips, and repeating. this really feels like a caching issue somewhere but I can’t see the fault anywhere. I’ve done all the usual, disable all the NIC offloads, updated drivers, monitored hardware usage, server barely even knows its being used. it HAS to be the windows PMS but I can’t find what. I’ve left large files transferring to and from this server while the hangs occur and they continue fine.

Strangely I found a way of assisting it, and that’s starting another stream to another device, and that seems to clear both streams of issues for a while, but then they return.

Anyone got any clues? I’m an infrastructure specialist and I’ve tried all my tricks in the book to get this working and I simply can’t find it.

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So the Mac mini and the cloud hosted Ubuntu server don’t have the issue, just the Windows Server 2019 box?

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I reimaged my Server 2019 server over this past weekend. I was going to install Server 2016 until I remembered how slow updates were. Anyway, Server 2019 with the January cumulative update is perfectly fine. I haven’t had this problem since then. I’m not sure if it was February’s or March’s update that started this - I’ve seen forum posts saying it’s one of those two that started it.

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Went back to Server 2016 and no longer having the issue. I kept searching for a resolution and came across this thread. I plan on rebuilding the server to 2019 this weekend and will give this solution a try if the issue starts occurring again. Figured I’d share and hopefully it helps someone.

1 Like
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Rebuilt my server and went to 2019, issue was still there. But after changing the number from 20 to 300, it resolved it for me as well. :slightly_smiling_face:

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Does anyone know if these TCP settings can be adjusted on a MacOS server as well? I’m digging but not finding much off the top :frowning:

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I have been using Plex almost since its inception.
I became a PlexPass member, unfortunately after the price increase.
I regret my purchase and dislike the direction that Plex has gone and will continue to go.

Having said that, I’ve been dealing with this same issue for what feels like years. Always with direct play. To the point that I don’t even want to bother trying to watch my own content because I know I’m going to have to spend as much time fixing the stream as watching. Every time I watch content from the PMS (dedicated server) no matter what device I’m on it will play most of the movie/show and then buffer and switch to transcode or not even play at all. This will happen in the middle or the end, never the beginning. In fact, this rant is due in part to attempting to watch a movie tonight, which by the way had less than 15 minutes to complete before the issues began. I have searched the forums and reddit and where ever else I could find and the answers by and large are always the same. Especially the ones from the staff. It’s insulting to me and should be to anyone else who has paid or pays for Plex. I’ve put a lot of time, effort and money into my setup and it pains me when I can’t enjoy playback in my own house, with my own devices.

Please note, it’s not my devices as I’ve experienced this on several Rokus, AppleTVs, iOS devices, Windows PCs and laptops both on WiFi and hard-line, over the last several years. I have had the same server running PMS since before these issues began. The issue is never that the file won’t play at all, because it will. It just won’t go all the way without either failing completely or transcoding. Oh yeah, no matter how many times I update, the issue persists.

I’m tired of this. I troubleshoot and fix hardware/software issues everyday at work and don’t want to have to come home and do the same thing on my own hardware/software. I will save the rest of my rant for somewhere appropriate.

I don’t want workarounds - I want Plex to work as it should. Nobody should have to deal with lowering the quality of their stream “just so it plays” that’s ridiculous. Yet that’s all I constantly see as answers. I give up on my searches after being very frustrated with what I find, no matter the age of the posts. I’ll spend time rummaging through similar posts from people with similar issues. This is the one most relevant to my issues that I’ve experienced though.

I would love for someone to post a “solution” that I have yet to try that will actually make a difference. Time to keep this thread open until there’s an actual fix. Even if that fix means to abandon my Windows Server and move to another OS such as Windows 10 or UnRaid or the like. I’m at the point where I’ll entertain the idea of building an entire new server with new hardware.

Edit: If this reply comes off as crass or even uncouth, that’s because that’s how Plex makes me feel when I try to enjoy my content.

Edit 2: Update. Now I can’t direct play on 2 different clients. Can on PMP on my PC no issue.

Edit 3: I’m going to try the solution that @KnightSi99 posted above, it looks promising.

2 Likes
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@becausebugeye I feel your pain and my PMS is running Linux and in a Data Center and I’m getting this issue, on a file that direct play 1080P is 8Mbps at max. Watching a show, one episode will be perfect and the next one is buffering like mad till I drop it down to 4 Mbps or even 2. I have played with more audio/subtitle settings than I’ve ever cared to know about :slight_smile:

It’s to the point where I’m just getting 720P stuff but I still run into this with Direct Play and am now looking to research what generic video format will work the best on all Plex apps without having to four letter word with setting all the time!

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Same issue here. Brand new install on a new Mac mini M1, all hardwired gig network. Apple TV 4k player. Thankfully all mine does is buffer for a few seconds every 5 to 10 minutes. Super frustrating. Been with plex for years. Happily paid years ago, when everything worked… Subscribed to see if anyone finds a solution.

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I’m experiencing this issue also. Not using AppleTV but same issue. It’s only with DirectPlay. I’m using 100Mbit connections, all hardwired. My client will for whatever reason start buffering on a DirectPlay movie where the average bitrate is around 8Mbps.

If I transcode this same movie or even DirectStream, it plays fine.

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You also have to take into account all other devices on you network…
All the network overhead…