I’ve been reporting this for a few years now and it’s only been getting worse. I thought by buying the product I’d get better support so I did a lifetime purchase a few years ago yet this issue is still present and I see other people are reporting it too. This has been an issue for at least 3 years and NO ONE IS LISTENING! What is the point of purchasing this product when you can’t even fix a simple bug vs adding in new functionality.
Movies added to a playlist will stop (most of the time) after the first movie is played.
I’ve also noticed now that if you start watching a movie then select another to play next it will also, most of the time, fail.
Queues are also having an issue with this.
Now, if you start watching in a playlist and forward to the end of the movie right away 99% of the time it will play the next movie in the list (or play next).
Sometimes it will play a second movie that is in queue, but this seems to happen rarely now.
I used to think that it may have been something to do with chromecast, but this is not the case as it’s broken just watching a playlist right from the server as well.
Attached are logs from watching one movie then queuing a 2nd movie. It plays all the way through the first movie (not fast forwarding) and the 2nd never starts.
You’ve got all sorts of errors in your log. Some of them appear to be network related too.
Mar 10, 2019 07:35:29.743 [3132] INFO - SQLITE3:0x782d70f2, 17, statement aborts at 57: [select * from metadata_items limit 1] database schema has changed
That’s the database. This stores your playlist info, so problems with the DB can affect playlists.
Mar 10, 2019 20:23:14.629 [4728] ERROR - Caught exception trying to stream file: C:\Users\xxx\AppData\Local\Plex Media Server\Cache\PhotoTranscoder\a1\a1dc54e6243b76fdce2afde20d2e60187def359b.jpg: write: protocol is shutdown
You might have permission issues somewhere along that tree.
Mar 11, 2019 02:19:43.807 [4644] ERROR - Transcoder: Failed to delete session directory (boost::filesystem::status: Access is denied: “C:\Users\xxxx\AppData\Local\Plex Media Server\Cache\Transcode\Sessions\plex-transcode-9evxdwk1pabhqpcj64iblzw0-3a282741-5e9e-49e2-822b-e07c5f2e7426\chunk-01670”)
Something is interfering with Plex removing it’s own files.
Mar 10, 2019 16:35:45.019 [3088] WARN - NAT: PMP, got an error: NATPMP_ERR_RECVFROM.
That’s PMS trying to talk to your network.
Mar 11, 2019 22:08:49.193 [4852] ERROR - [Transcoder] [mpeg4 @ 00acfe40] header damaged
Mar 11, 2019 22:08:49.209 [2164] ERROR - [Transcoder] Error while decoding stream #0:0: Operation not permitted
That’s a bad file.
I’m not sure what is causing all of these errors, but it might suggest something more serious with your server as a whole and more than just PMS.
Also, this file does not exist (and no hidden file named this) : (replacing the name for the user). “C:\Users\xxxx\AppData\Local\Plex Media Server\Cache\Transcode\Sessions\plex-transcode-9evxdwk1pabhqpcj64iblzw0-3a282741-5e9e-49e2-822b-e07c5f2e7426\chunk-01670”)
I’ve had a chance to review my logs here on my network (I’m a network engineer) and everything is humming along with no packet loss anywhere including the plex media server. So I’m curious about the “Mar 10, 2019 16:35:45.019 [3088] WARN - NAT: PMP, got an error: NATPMP_ERR_RECVFROM.” on what exactly what it is reporting.
When I migrated to a new box I copied over the video files ONLY. Then installed plex and let it re-index the movies. I had to then recreate the play lists from scratch because they did not come over. While there are errors, I’m doubting they are the root cause of this issue, but I’m willing to work on resolving them.
These are temporary files while a video is being transcoded. Something occurred at the time that PMS could not clean up this file that was no longer needed. It could have been cleared out later. Check if you have any other programs that has access to that location. Maybe an anti-virus or backup program. If so, add an exemption to not monitor the folder starting at “Plex Media Server”.
That’s PMS trying to talk to your router to obtain the public IP, and failing.
That first thread is very old and unclear that the issue was. I can’t say if it’s the same thing.
That second thread was when we implemented the post-play feature and those users not knowing how that feature worked.
Playlists in general should be working, I am not aware of any wide spread issue. With so many different things shown in your log, it’s hard to identify what the problem is. If we can clear up some of these other errors, we can then focus on the playlist.
If you start Plex from scratch nothing would be carried over from the old install. The playlist info is saved in the Plex database, which is created new if you start over. You have to copy the database over if you want the playlists to carry over too.
Ok, I don’t let plex talk to the outside world ( At least I don’t have a static mapping back into plex anyway so there’s no way it would be able to determine a NAT address other than the dynamic one all devices would receive on the way out). So that PMP error would be expected then; there’s no communications issues on this network that I can see.
I ran the cleanup / repair on the DB. No errors were reported. But I ran the repair anyway and the issue is still there after trying to play an existing playlist.
This is running on top of Windows 7, 8gb ram, quad core processor. The user that is running the process is an administrator and I verified that it has full access to all folders. (I’m able to browse, create, and delete files) Nothing else has ever been run on it; it’s a fresh install of Win7 and again, only used for Plex.
I was assuming that anti virus may have been causing an issue 2 devices ago so as of then, I have not had AV running on plex to interfere with media center (Again, this is not accessible from the outside).
The issue I was seeing is that the client kept timing out when talking back to your server. So it would cache some of the video, lose the connection, reconnect, load more, lose connection, repeat. Then at some point it can’t reconnect. If this happens at the end of a video playing, then it can’t find the next item to play, so a playlist or play queue would just stop.
I can’t see in your log why the connection gets lost, they just do, that’s why I thought it might be a network issue.
Not sure how you did this, but you might have made it too restrictive which might be causing unexpected side-effects.
Nothing to do, I just don’t have a static coming back in from the internet.
I’ve looked at my graphs from my switch and workstation running plex; there’s no communication errors shown nor are there any packets lost. Those would show up in my logs and even on the graphs.
What is plex using for it’s communication? Native windows .net calls?
I have no idea what that means. I’m not a network expert so maybe I don’t understand the phrasing you are using.
Plex uses web sockets. I don’t know the details behind it, but something is closing the socket. The client is able to restore and create a new socket most of the time, but my guess is that by the end of the video, somethings has happened preventing a new socket from being created.
I’m checking your log again to see if there is anything different I’m missing.
Can you restart your PMS, do nothing for 3 minutes, then get me the logs again? Your previous log doesn’t show the start of PMS with the debug option enabled.
That is the premise I’ve been working down the past 3 years. It used to only be at night when I’d have the issue. In the AM or during the day it would work like 80% of the time. I eliminated the full network and made a TV to plex network with only those devices on it and it still had a problem.
If it’s using websockets, those are full of issues… I’ve done a fair amount of programming with them to know their pitfalls in windows. Knowing this will give me a bit more to work off of. I’ll try a couple of things I know of as well.
I can do a log capture tomorrow on that and post it here.
