Server Version#: 1.22.0.4163
Player Version#: LG TV and Web/desktop 4.53.0
About 3/4 of all my 4k videos have terrible buffering problems: start playing, and after 10-15 seconds they start buffering, and more often than not the buffering takes another 10 seconds before the movie plays again, only to stop for buffering again. Rinse and repeat.
I’ve followed every advice I’ve found on these forums - hardware acceleration is on, PGS subtitles are turned off, audio streaming is basic, nothing helps.
If I set the movies to convert to 1080p, they play as smooth as butter, but when trying to play them at their native 4k resolution they just die of stuttering.
But if play those movies through DLNA, since my LG TV supports that, they play just fine, even with PGS subtitles.
I’d appreciate some help
Logs are attached Logs.zip (9.5 MB)
Please grab the log files using the Web app.
(Settings - Server - Troubleshooting)
The most recent Plex Media Server.log is missing from the above archive (probably because you tried to manually zip the log folder while PMS was still running).
The only playback in the previous log files was a 1080p copy of Harry Potter (which showed that you had disabled Direct Play.)
Is this better?
The Harry Potter in 1080p was a test I was running to check differences between that version and the 4k version of the same movie, yes.
I don’t remember disabling Direct Play, though - where is it?
Don’t even try to play a HEVC-encoded video with a web browser. It will always transcode, because web browsers don’t support this codec (unless it is Safari on MacOS).
And HEVC in 4K won’t transcode smoothly, unless you have the top-model of fast CPU’s.
I couldn’t find any playbacks on the LG TV in this log.
I’ve re-tried with the LG tv, new logs attached: Plex Media Server Logs_2021-03-15_12-26-38.zip (6.1 MB)
I tried with 2 Harry Potter movies, both started buffering, one at 0:41 and one at 0:46
And HEVC in 4K won’t transcode smoothly, unless you have the top-model of fast CPU’s.
My Windows 10 server has an AMD Ryzen 7 5800X, with an RTX 3080 as GPU, I would have thought that would be sufficient!
This movie hasn’t been analyzed for bandwidth yet. The requiredBandwidths you cited above are for Guns Akimbo. (one of the “Related” movies)
It also looks like the SRT subtitle has been activated. Which is bad, because it will cause transcoding of the video, if the selected audio stream is also incompatible with the player (and you have selected the DTS audio stream, which your LG cannot decode).
Look out for the selected="1" on the various streams:
Ok, this kinda confuses me:
does that mean that I can’t use SRT subtitles with 4k movies? I thought that PGS subtitles were the ones that required burning in, and SRT subs are actually “lighter” on the CPU.
Seriously, 99.9% of the posts about buffering and stutter on 4k on this forum say that PGS subtitles are bad - now if SRT subtitles are bad too… what can I use?
And then, what’s the reason that allows me to watch the same movies, in 4k and with SRT subtitles, through DLNA?
Also, I have the same issue with several other movies, like Batman VS Superman BatmanSuperman.zip (20.5 KB) (XML attached) and Ghostbusters Ghostbusters.zip (16.2 KB) (XML attached) - is it the same problem in all of them?
The problem is the combination of subtitles and incompatible audio.
If you have both at once, the video will be transcoded too, because otherwise video and audio synchronicity may drift apart over time.
Batman: requiredBandwidths="401393,350802,291539,238331,196695,165052,87689,87689"
The poor little 100 mbit/s Ethernet port on the TV is overwhelmed by this bandwidth.
Ghostbusters: not sure. The bandwidth might be sufficient. "66310,58268,54721,52885,51754,50683,46428,45338"
As a test, disable the subtitles for once and repeat the playback test.
