[BUG] Plex for Windows unable to skip to unbuffered parts using Direct Play

Plex Players Desktop Players
1

Server Version#: 1.31.0.6654
Player Version#: 1.63.3.3523-1eff9563

For a while the Plex Player for Windows (10) hasn’t been able to skip to unbuffered content when using Direct Play. This is pretty frustrating because this also means that it can’t resume playback or skip intro’s if the end of the intro hasn’t been buffered yet. However when using Direct Stream everything is working fine.

I checked multiple codecs, but this issue happens for all of them. This is not an issue when playing the same content via Plex on my android phone or Nvidia Shield.

2

This is going to require logs to diagnose further but I can say that Plex for Windows can definitively seek in files in direct play. The only times it can’t is when the file doesn’t contain an index/cues and thus makes seeking impossible without linearly reading the file.

3

Here is the log you requested. I tried resuming an episode (it started playing at the beginning), then skipping forward and backward to unbuffered and buffered parts. This issue is present both on my desktop as on my notebook.
plex-windows-media-player.log (219.3 KB)

4

This is not the right kind of log files (TBH I don’t know where you got these). You should follow this support article: https://support.plex.tv/articles/windows-mac-app-logs/

5

Ah sorry about that, here is the correct one with the same scenario:
Plex.log (231.2 KB)

6

Do you have a proxy in front of the Plex Media Server? I see these logs:

DEBUG - [MPVEngine/mpv] ffmpeg: Mime-type: 'video/x-matroska'
DEBUG - [MPVEngine/mpv] demux: Trying demuxers for level=normal.
WARN - [MPVEngine/mpv] mkv: Stream is not seekable or unknown size, not reading mkv metadata at end of file.
DEBUG - [MPVEngine/mpv] mkv: All headers are parsed!
DEBUG - [MPVEngine/mpv] demux: Detected file format: Matroska
DEBUG - [MPVEngine/mpv] demux: Stream is not seekable.

The part that really stands out is Stream is not seekable or unknown size. This means that the HTTP server was missing headers that indicate the file size (or doesn’t support range requests). Without this, you cannot seek in the file, ever.

In contrast, you should be seeing something like:

DEBUG - [MPVEngine/mpv] ffmpeg: Mime-type: 'video/x-matroska'
DEBUG - [MPVEngine/mpv] demux: Trying demuxers for level=normal.
DEBUG - [MPVEngine/mpv] mkv: New edition 0
DEBUG - [MPVEngine/mpv] mkv: Default edition flag: 0
DEBUG - [MPVEngine/mpv] mkv: Seeking to 1434541491 to read header element 0x1c53bb6b.
DEBUG - [MPVEngine/mpv] ffmpeg: stream level seek from 16384 to 1434541491
DEBUG - [MPVEngine/mpv] mkv: Parsing cues...
DEBUG - [MPVEngine/mpv] mkv: Seeking to 1434650346 to read header element 0x1254c367.
DEBUG - [MPVEngine/mpv] ffmpeg: stream level seek from 1434651993 to 6369
DEBUG - [MPVEngine/mpv] mkv: All headers are parsed!
DEBUG - [MPVEngine/mpv] demux: Detected file format: Matroska
7

Yes I disabled caching in the proxy for Plex and it fixed the issue. Thanks for the help!

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