Server Version#: DSM 7.1 - 42661 Update 4
Player Version#: 1.28.2.6151-7000
I am trying to play a video file that will not let me play. It freezes and has ridiculous amounts of pixelation if it does decide to let me play it. I checked the DSM and it says my CPU usage is at 98%. According to the resource monitor, its basically all Plex.
I am running a DS918+, so I wouldn’t think there would be any issues trying to play a 1080p video file (I think it’s H265, but I’m not sure), especially when I checked the specs before I bought it and it said it could transcode 2 4K H265 files at the same time.
I would truly appreciate some help with this, as I want to get back to watching!
Your NAS should be doing ok when it comes to transcoding a 1080p video (even if it’s h265 encoded). That’s true as long as you can actually use the hw-accelerated transcoding of the NAS’ iGPU. If your stream requires certain subtitles to be burned into the video (e.g. because the target player cannot deal with image-based subtitles of your file), that cannot be offloaded to the iGPU… and the CPU on its own doesn’t seem to be powerful enough to transcode higher-bitrate 1080p videos.
Thank you, this makes sense. I should have clarified that there are no burned in subtitles in the video. I assume that if there were any, that means I would see them and could not turn them off? Meaning, no matter if I chose a subtitle track or not, the subtitles would show up?
Other than this, could there be any other reason as to why my NAS is still running at such high CPU usage?
My point wasn’t about subtitles already burned into your video but your server doing that job on-the-fly (though not fast enough to give you a good quality).
You can still turn them off – in which case the server should stop burning them into the video stream moving forward.
As for what exactly’s going on… what information is showing in the “now playing” tile for that playback on the Plex server dashboard? I suppose there should be at least some reference of what is being streamed and if/how the video/audio/subtitle tracks are being transcoded.
Is it possible that the rip/initial conversion of the video was done improperly or poorly, causing this issue?
I just tried playing the same exact file, transferred from my NAS via LAN to my computer, and the same issue (at least with extreme pixelation and freezing) occurred.
That doesn’t look like the kind of file that should be transcoding locally
It can absolutely be a problem with just that file, especially if you don’t have this problem with similar types of media
Does it play in another player like VLC ok?
I could see the audio maybe transcoding. I’m not sure if chrome plays 5.1 without enabling it manually or that happens by default now
I would recommend Plex for Windows as a replacement for Chrome. As a player it seems to be a little more forgiving when it comes to certain files and I notice it uses significantly less CPU even for direct play files.
If you ever have a question about what type of file you have, I find the easiest way is to use VLC.
Play the file, click tools, then codec information
I tried playing the files on VLC on my Mac, same issues.
I don’t have a Windows PC at the moment, but I will keep that in mind! I also don’t ever play files on Plex via Chrome, its always through my TV or phone.
