I realize the DVR transcoder is still ‘experimental’ but I thought I’d pass on an issue that I recently discovered. I have two HD HomeRun Connect DVRs which gives me a total of four Tuners. With transcoding enabled, I can’t seems to transcode more than two streams at a time. It doesn’t seem to matter if I’m watching one channel on each HD HomeRun, or two channels on one HD HomeRun. As soon as I start the third stream, I get different error messages stating Plex is unable to play the content.
After setting the Transcoding for both HD HomeRun Connect to “Off”, I’m able to stream from all four tuners at once. I did some experimenting, and found that as long as the third and fourth streams are played from a DVR where the encoder is set to “Off”, it plays normally without any issues.
What are you running the server on?
The server is running PMS Version 1.7.2.3878 on Ubuntu Linux (Linux 4.4.0-34-generic #53-Ubuntu SMP Wed Jul 27 16:06:39 UTC 2016 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux). The processor is an 8-way Intel® Core™ i7 CPU 920 @ 2.67GHz.
Others here have gotten 4 transcodes working, and I have seen it as well, so not sure why your setup is not allowing it. Stop the Server. Start it. Hit record on 4 things. And post Plex Media Server.log and we’ll take a look.
Below are the errors in my Plex Media Server.log file from when I clicked “Play” on a third recording.
I have two HD HomeRun CONNECT’s with IP Addresses of 192.168.2.69 and 192.168.2.134. The first two streams are playing from 192.168.2.134 (verified by: http://192.168.2.134/tuners.html). However, within the “DVR (Beta)” settings on Plex, it’s showing: “2 tuners—2 recording now” from 192.168.2.69 (the other tuner). When I visit http://192.168.2.69/tuners.html to verify, neither tuners is in use.
Basically, when I’m streaming something, Plex DVR is showing the stream is on the other HD HomeRun. I believe this is important because according to my logs below, the third stream is trying to be played from the HD HomeRun that is already in use.
Hopefully, this helps track down the problem.
Jun 09, 2017 06:10:15.972 [0x7f24f1bff700] ERROR - Unable to find title for item of type 5
Jun 09, 2017 06:10:15.972 [0x7f24f1bff700] ERROR - Unable to find title for item of type 5
Jun 09, 2017 06:10:21.130 [0x7f24eebff700] ERROR - [Transcoder] http://192.168.2.134:5004/auto/v13.1: Server returned 5XX Server Error reply
Jun 09, 2017 06:10:21.131 [0x7f251f7fe700] ERROR - JobManager: child process returned: 1 (Operation not permitted)
Jun 09, 2017 06:10:21.221 [0x7f2511bff700] ERROR - ClientProfileExtra: missing protocol parameter
Jun 09, 2017 06:10:21.221 [0x7f2511bff700] WARN - ClientProfileExtra: ignoring directive: add-transcode-target(type=videoProfile&context=static&container=mp4&videoCodec=h264&audioCodec=aac,ac3&subtitleCodec=mov_text)
Jun 09, 2017 06:10:21.221 [0x7f2511bff700] WARN - TranscodeUniversalRequest: at least one profile extra directive could not be read
Jun 09, 2017 06:10:21.221 [0x7f2511bff700] ERROR - ClientProfileExtra: video transcode target already exists for streaming hls
Jun 09, 2017 06:10:21.223 [0x7f2511bff700] ERROR - MDE: video has neither a video stream nor an audio stream
Jun 09, 2017 06:10:21.223 [0x7f2511bff700] ERROR - MDE: no compatible media decisions are available
Jun 09, 2017 06:10:21.223 [0x7f2511bff700] ERROR - Streaming Resource: Cannot make a decision because either the file is unplayable or the client provided bad data
