I’m having trouble getting Plex to play smoothly over a specific connection. I bring my personal laptop (Asus Zenbook on Win10) to work and like to have it sitting off to the side playing movies. But my company throttles our guest WiFi network to about 10mb/s per device. In real life, the speed varies from 6-10mb/s. Most of my content runs in that range, but I get really stuttery playback for the stuff that’s closer to 10mb/s. It’ll play for 2-3 seconds and then rebuffer for maybe 1/2 a second. This wouldn’t be an issue if I could just configure Plex to read ahead 20-30 seconds. I’d also be perfectly happy waiting a few extra seconds before playback starts in order to get smooth playback.
I know I can force it to 720p @ 4mb/s but that just looks terrible and it’s already really, really close to being playable now. If there was a cap I could set to 1080p @ 6mb/s, I’d go with that. But the gap from 4 to 8 megabits is the difference between playable but ugly to prettier but unwatchable.
I’ve gone up and down the server and player settings (both using Plex Media Player and the web client) but don’t see a way to configure more buffer. Are there any other solutions that wouldn’t involve me re-encoding all my content?
I’ve never used the feature, but I think if you go into PMS settings under Show Advanced then Transcoder > Transcoder Default Throttle Buffer, you can increase the value from 60 seconds.
But I’ve never used it so I’m only assuming that is the function. Hope this helps, though.
Cranking up the Network Cache seems to help some. It’ll play 3-5 minutes before re-buffering a couple times, then go for another 3-5 minutes. Sadly, PMP doesn’t like touchscreens so using it on a convertible laptop in tent or easel mode makes this a less viable option.
The automatic quality setting in the web view works better as far as smoothness goes. But when it cuts down the bandwidth, the lower image quality is very apparent.
I guess I’ll have to pick which option I dislike the least. I still wish there was a way for me to specify a global buffer size.
I’m not able to figure out how to get to this TV mode in the browser. I want to increase the local buffer in the web client. It looks like it defaults to about 30 second and I want to increase it to 5 minutes or higher. I don’t mind waiting for the file to load and then playing it but plex only seems to load 30 seconds and then it stops so I end up with buffering issues.
If you’re in Plex Web, in an actual browser (e.g. Chrome, Edge, Firefox), you can’t get to the TV mode. You’d need to be running PMP, Plex Media Player, which was formerly Plex Home Theater. PMP can launch with the regular browser view, which then gives you all the same browser features & settings. But PMP also has a TV view, which gives you different settings. Among them is the network cache adjustment.
Think you’ll like PMP better than Plex Web. It direct plays many more codecs, so less transcoding for your server. Also available for Mac if you’ve any Mac clients.
Note that there are two places for Settings in PMP.
Desktop Mode looks a lot like Plex Web. Go to Settings -> Plex Media Player instead of Settings -> Web Client. If using as remote client, check the Quality settings for appropriate bandwidth settings.
TV mode has the aforementioned buffer settings. Also, if your PC is connected to a soundbar, receiver, etc, check the audio settings. You can change the Device Type from Basic to HDMI or Optical, then passthrough audio codecs supported by your audio system.
Awesome thanks all. I found the TV setup options like @Busaman_VA showed in this screenshots and the Plex Media Settings options that @FordGuy61 suggested.
A question here, I see very different settings between the TV mode and Desktop Mode. I don’t see any of the options available in TV Mode in desktop mode like Network buffer size, Remote Quality, Hardware Decoding etc. Do these settings only apply to TV mode or both?
I won’t why Plex doens’t provide the same option in Desktop Mode under advanced settings. These are so critical for smooth playback.
As far as I can tell, the settings are separate even though they’re in the same app. My guess is that in TV mode, there are likely coding advantages they can use in client-side settings and that the web view probably uses a browser engine.
In case anyone is curious, I went with a different solution to my original question. I bought an Asus Zenscreen and drag a Plex Web window into it. That way, I get the full bandwidth of my corp WiFi connection (and it’s a bigger screen than my personal laptop).
AFAIK, yes, but as mentioned in that thread, it only applies when direct playing. For the OP, his bandwidth is limited so it will transcode, in which case, that buffer will not help.
