ISSUE:
Seek is now very slow/sluggish in video playback.
Playback pauses for up to 1 second every time seek is used.
Affects multiple container and video formats
BUILD AFFECTED:
6.10.0.2813
EFFECT / DESCRIPTION:
Repeatedly seeking/skipping forward (repeatedly pressing RIGHT at a slow cadence) will not update the video frame until approximately 1 second after button presses stop. It’s impossible to easily tell how far forward one has skipped or whether every button click had an effect.
REGRESSION:
6.9.0.2683
Last general stable release from Google Play seeks almost instantaneously and playback is updated every time the button is pressed, even when repeating presses very quickly (5x faster than above testing).
OTHER DETAILS:
Library served from dedicated Windows server running up to date Plex Pass version of PMS.
Video files affected vary in container/encoding format, resolution & bitrate. MKV, MPEG2-TS, H.264, MPEG2, 1080p, 720p…
100% of videos cause Plex to crash on NVIDIA Shield. All base Android SW components up to date and also running the latest server version.
Tested with MPEG2 (TS container) recordings from my SageTV PVR back end, MKV H.264 encodes with AAC audio, MKV H.265 with DTS or AC3, etc. Can’t get anything to play at all for video.
No longer crashing on every playback with latest betas.
However, seeking is still slow on many videos, but the ‘display info’ option doesn’t show any relevant details for me to be able to easily test and document this.
Display info now only shows “ExoPlayer 2,” whether it’s “Direct Play” and the video resolution. It shows no info on container, video or audio encoding.
MPEG2 performance is still sub-par. And on some random videos (for which I have to go check details elsewhere still) I’ve received warnings that the network connection isn’t sufficient and playback stops - GigE LAN and an SD video resolution, so whatever issue Plex is having has nothing to do with LAN speed.
Which video formats do you see that seeking is slow, is this just in MPEG2 videos? With the MPEG2 performance, would you be able to produce a sample video that shows this issue?
Sorry about all videos causing a playback crash, our build system had created a bad build and this was accidentally shipped out, we sent out a working copy as soon as we noticed!
I can try making a short recording, which will probably be the easiest option for MPEG2 sample.
With regards to the client complaining about communication with the server, it was with other container and encoding, but as yet I don’t know which - as mentioned, it isn’t displayed in Plex so I have to go dig through the file server to look at the file. But I’m going to have to encounter it again, because I’ve forgotten which file(s) it happened on last time.
Performance with respect to skipping/seeking is still what I consider abysmal on all file types. On top of everything, the client now regularly loses connection to the server, either complaining that it can’t find it at all or stopping playback mid-stream to say the connection isn’t fast enough. Sometimes playback just stops and you get dumped to the title’s info screen with no warnings/messages.
Sorry… ExoPlayer sucks. Has always sucked and will always suck. These issues don’t exist on Plex Media Player (testing in MacOS)
As a point of reference, I’m used to instant response from apps/platforms such as MPV, MPlayer and SageTV, where I can’t possibly press buttons fast enough to make the players lag at all when skipping/seeking on any file type, whether it’s 7, 10, 30 seconds, 1 minute, 2.5 minutes or 10 minutes forward or backwards.
