Plex for Android: 8.9.0.21490 (645654e8) Plex Media Server: 1.20.4.3517 Plex for Windows: 1.22.0.1421-be6a7c42 Plex for Nvidia Shield: 8.9.0.21490 (645654e8) VLC: 3.0.11
All attempts to play the movies are with Direct Play only
If it makes any difference, Plex Media Server is running on a Synology DS920+ which is also hosting the video files.
I have a some 1080p x265 mkv files that are stuttering/dropping frames so bad that I’d call it unwatchable. Happens constantly throughout the movies to the point where these movies feel like claymation movies. Noticed it first while remote viewing, so I chalked it up to bandwidth issues, but then it happened to the same movies while on my local network as well. Plex for Android and watching the video file directly with VLC on my laptop causes the same stuttering. Playing the same file on the Plex for Nvidia Shield app and Plex for Windows app allows it to play with no noticeable issue.
If I set any of the players with the stuttering issues to transcode to the highest quality 720p, they will playback without issue.
Below are logs from playing the same file on multiple devices with some stuttering and some not stuttering. I’m not really sure what’s important within these logs, so I did not trim anything from them, just copied from when I started the network loggin to when 10 seconds of the movie had elapsed.
Why would VLC on a laptop stutter, but Plex on the same laptop not, both with direct playing it? And on Android, playing it inside the Plex app it stutters, but setting Plex to use an external app and playing it via MX Player allows it to play buttery smooth. Even the Samsung Gallery app is able to play it smoothly. I would definitely expect the Plex app on Android to be able to handle any codec better than the stock gallery app which was never designed to play full movies streamed over the network.
I already change the Plex driver after each update, however that only affects transcoded streams, not direct play.
Seems like my issue is directly related to Example of stuttering HEVC playback on Apple TV 4K - #107 by _incorrect and that my x265 mp4/mkv files do not have a ctts atom. Not 100% sure what that is, however preforming the suggested temporary fix in that thread of running the original mp4 file through MKVToolNix to remux it to mkv does indeed fix it. Original mp4 stutters, the mkv’s I was batch remuxing with ffmpeg stutter, but a mp4 remuxed to mkv using MKVToolNix v51 (they say must be > v45) works no problem.
Judging from that post, some versions of Plex Player have an “enhanced player” which can get around the lack of a ctts atom, however it seems that the Plex Player for normal Android (not the Android TV version) does not have the enhanced player, so its unable to play these files properly. Hopefully a Plex engineer can speed up getting the enhanced player on all versions of Plex Player.
