Server Version#: 1.16.5.1554
Player Version#: chromecast casting from latest ios app
Is there an issue with latest update that causes Chromecast to ignore my server rules and direct play instead of transcoding? I also seem to see a lot more direct plays instead of transcodes all of a sudden on the other users. when played on mobile device it still transcodes.
For context, I set the maximum bitrate to 4 and that meant most things were trans coded but never ran into issues, with DirectPlay resuming paused shows can play up on Chromecast and I wanted to avoid that. I have mostly 1080 movies etc but was keeping it set to 4mps due to peoples various bandwidths. I have a gigabit connection but others have less then ideal connections some times.
Gday
So server sits in my office so all streaming is remote play, so by setting it to 4mbs everyone should pretty much transcode, which was the case until the latest upgrade.
In regards to playback. Now that I am direct playing to Chromecast, I notice that if you pause the stream and then reload it a while later it fails to load and just times out.
There is something very wrong with casting to Chromecast. In the Android internal Plex app settings I have set HOME STREAMING to 8 Mbps because direct play goes nuts on these devices and causes pausing. Either the Plex app or the Chromecast or a mix of both is not respecting that I have told the Plex app to play home streaming at 8 Mbps and not direct play. What is going on here?? I just spent a hour rolling Plex media server back and forth from old builds to new ones to Plex pass beta. Nothing changes. I rolled Chromecast out of the beta too back to public release. I also rolled back into the Android beta. Nothing seems to fix it. It’s happening on my wife’s iPhone as well regardless of setting home streaming to 8 Mbps.
This file I played for the test gets about 30 seconds in, and pauses itself. At this point even if I kill the playback, Plex server admin page still shows it playing. It also will not give me the ability to kill it. The red “kill” button doesn’t show when I hover over the spot it should be in. The stream eventually either goes away or a reboot of the computer fixes it. Oddly exiting plex from the taskbar and starting it actually showed it still playing at least once that I saw.
Also I use the Tautulli android app, and oddly enough when I try to view advance info for these particular streams it crashes the android app. Any other stream going to one of my other clients does not do this and allows me to view advance details. Obviously that app has nothing to do with you, but it is interesting that something about this stream is causing that crash.
According to your PMS logs, PMS is correctly transcoding that file. I don’t think our dashboard works right with Cast media, I’ll have to check, but it looks correct to me. Did you check the bandwidth chart to see what is going out?
I took this screenshot right as it paused at about 30 seconds. It is now frozen on pause. If I tell the app to disconnect from chromecast it obeys, but the server still shows content playing. Once again if I hover over my username on this stat page, I do not get the option to terminate the stream. I either have to wait an unknown amount of time or reboot my computer now to get rid of it.
That could be related to the same issue with the dashboard not showing the right information. The CC feature is not sending info properly to PMS, which could also prevent that “stop” feature from working. I will need to look into this, but your initial issue of transcoding appears to be fine.
Why is the playback freezing then? I can get the same file to play just fine and transcodes and shows transcoding to 8 Mbps or plays fine over direct play when I play it on the same phone I am using to cast to chromecast. My roku also plays the file fine direct played or transcoded to 8 Mbps.
Regardless if stats are, or are not showing correctly, something is not working right when sending to chromecasts.
I know it’s not h265, just wanted to see if you were using that setting.
According to the log, it was including the PGS subs. If you didn’t select these, then either the automatic selection is being applied or there is a problem.
Same issue here, dashboard and tautulli are showing direct play but the server is actually transcoding. (checked via task manager, htop linux) on chromecast gen1 and 2
I believe that there is transcoding as I can lower the maximum bitrate and quality is affected (all mine are remote) but due to it thinking it’s direct play it causes issues when resuming from pause are an issue and remote stoping streams .
Something is broken then. Subs were not turned on so if the log is showing them turned on then Plex is massively broken on the back end for chromecast.
EDIT: Also yes I do utilize that “kill streams that are paused too long” setting because I have idiots that like to pause a long time. I know this option has caused buggy stuff before where it thinks I’ve been paused an hour when I’ve only been paused for a couple minutes, but it has always just been a minor occasional thing, and never did it show the wrong casting info.
In fact up until now I have always seen accurate info in both Plex and Tautulli for the chromecast streams.
It seems like a lot of people are being affected by this, but because it is such a confusing issue not everyone is describing it the same way. There are multiple threads I have read where it sounds exactly like they are being affected by this issue.
