Plex watch together only plays for a few minutes before endlessly buffering, meanwhile I can remotely access the media drive and play/stream it from my computer with no problem. Watch Together is kind of pointless if we can’t get it to work, and it’s a far more convenient method than the alternative.
Does your computer have enough CPU and ISP enough bandwidth to support multiple viewers of that encode?
Yes, as mentioned I can access the drive remotely and stream a screen share. In terms of Plex, it’s a 720p file ~1Mbps with simple stereo. There’s no encoding happening.
Watch Together serves x number of streams based on the number of people watching, so watching it by yourself as a comparison is not apples-to-apples. That is why my question if your hardware and network can support that came up and still applies
To reiterate for the 3rd time, YES. I can remotely access it and stream it outside of plex.
To reiterate myself a third time since you seem to be answering a different question than the one I am attempting to ask:
Can you provide the hardware specs of your server and some information about the available bandwidth on your ISP and home networks.
Logs of the server when this is happening would be helpful in diagnosing as well
I don’t understand how saying yes, the network is capable of streaming the content and that I can remotely access the drive without issues could possibly mean that the server PC is incapable of doing exactly that. As previously mentioned, it’s a simple 720p file, the upload limit of the network isn’t an issue, and it doesn’t need to transcode. Only 1 stream is off network.
The server pc is running an AMD FX-8350, which is more than capable of a few full HD transcodes, and the upload speed on the network is 10x the bitrate of this particular video at 11Mbps.
Which logs? I just tried it again at a buddy’s house, it only plays for about 10 minutes before buffering. Seems like a not great idea considering they include my email.
Trying it again after changing literally nothing, I could watch a full movie at a friends house. I also watched a full 50 minute episode of a show using watch together with no issue. We then tried to watch a movie and it kept buffering every minutes until I refreshed the player and re-joined the session.
Plex says it’s a direct stream to my PC and forcing a downsampled transcode, which the server is more than capable of doing. At the same time, I have a direct stream of the video in VLC player over the network and it has zero issues.
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