Plex Media Server still sees a bandwidth limitation requested by the Shield: Dec 21, 2023 20:20:17.675 [140681091128120] DEBUG - [Req#80/Transcode] Clipped max bitrate to 82944Kbps based on client-requested limit
However, according to Deep Analysis, the necessary bandwidth is ~25 Mbps: requiredBandwidths="25555,24898,23948,23314,23003,22791,21927,21577"
The file may be poorly muxed. When this happens, the files requires much more bandwidth than normal to stream. Remuxing the file copies the tracks in to a new MKV container. It will place them in the file correctly and the bandwidth requirements should decrease.
The file has 40+ subtitle tracks. I recommend you remove the unneeded tracks. I’m not aware of any Shield limitation on total track count, but removing them means the client does not have to toss out the unneeded tracks.
When Direct Playing, Plex sends the file unmodified to the client, including all audio and subtitle tracks. The client then has to discard the unnecessary data. This can cause problems for some clients (Samsung has a 30 track limit). I’m not aware of a limit on a Shield, but I’ve never played a movie with 45 total tracks.
Even if remuxing works with this title, the problem is I can’t play any high bitrate titles. Do I need to send the log+xml files for another failing title. It is not worth the effort to get Glass Onion alone working. It is just a random title I picked to exemplify the issue. There is a more general problem somewhere I am trying to find. I.e., I need to find out why it used to work and what has changed.
Shall I upload the log+xml data for another title (without so many subtitles)?
Is there a way to tell the Plex App in the Shield “do not request bandwidth limit”.
I’ll look into re-encoding the Glass Onion to get rid of the unneeded subtltitles…
P.S., with some experimenting, I found Plex will play anything up to about 7Mbits. 95%+ of my titles are more that this. It seems strictly a function of the bitrate on the source. Nothing below 7Mbits has failed.
Would you have any idea how the Plex App on the Shield gets it’s bandwidth limitation info?
…which is apparently being sent to the Plex server.
OMG, I am so emberrased… I have found the problem. At some point, and I have no idea when, Google Fiber throttled my connection, and when I now checked, upload was running at just 7Mbits. Since I have not, until now, paid any attention to my upload bandwidth, it never occurred to me to check it. Nothing else I do is affected by limited upload, so it went unnoticed. On a whim it occurred to me to check it since I was desperate to find the problem, and I was grasping at straws. I unplugged my Google Fiber jack and plugged it back in and voila, my upload speed recoverd to 700Mbits, which is what it should be.
I so regret not thinking of this possibility earlier, but Google Fiber has beed highly reliable until now, at least I never noticed any degradation. I doubt it is/was intentional on Google’s part, more likely a glitch, but I am going to start monitoring it, going forward, in case it happens again.
Glass Onion now plays remotely without a hitch, as do all the high bitrate titles.
My humble apologies for the false alarm and for the time and effort you have put into this (which I sincerely appreciate). Thank you!!!
