# Direct play not working

**URL:** <https://forums.plex.tv/t/direct-play-not-working/717154>\
**Category:** Plex Media Server\
**Tags:** server-docker\
**Created:** [May 21, 2021, 11:27pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/direct-play-not-working/717154 "2021-05-21T23:27:13Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 8\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![TheSpawnMan](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/plex/user_avatar/forums.plex.tv/thespawnman/32/240106_2.png) [@TheSpawnMan](https://forums.plex.tv/u/TheSpawnMan)\
**Post date:** [May 21, 2021, 11:27pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/direct-play-not-working/717154/1 "2021-05-21T23:27:13Z")

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Server Version#: 1.22.3.4523-d0ce30438  
Player Version#:4.57.2  
direct play seems to be broken on android/web client/samsung tv app. i have everything being played converted to x264 .mp4 ac3 2 channel and when it direct plays from my plex remotely it just looks like it loads forever and the server as a whole seems to struggle. but when i play the same exact video and have it convert to a lower quality the video plays immediately . bandwidth isnt an issue for my up or stream. any suggestions on whats happening

checking the console page, when i play remote files i get a lot of errors one being  
“Failed to stream media, client probably disconnected after 198919 bytes: 32 - Broken pipe”  
and it just repeats that every like second

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**Author:** ![anon18523487](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/49beb7/32.png) [@anon18523487](https://forums.plex.tv/u/anon18523487)\
**Post date:** [May 22, 2021, 11:29pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/direct-play-not-working/717154/2 "2021-05-22T23:29:17Z")

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Please reproduce and provide the [server log](https://support.plex.tv/articles/200250417-plex-media-server-log-files/) and [android log](https://support.plex.tv/articles/201573117-android-android-tv-fire-tv-logs/).

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**Author:** ![TheSpawnMan](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/plex/user_avatar/forums.plex.tv/thespawnman/32/240106_2.png) [@TheSpawnMan](https://forums.plex.tv/u/TheSpawnMan)\
**Post date:** [May 23, 2021, 12:59am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/direct-play-not-working/717154/3 "2021-05-23T00:59:25Z")

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[Plex Media Server Logs\_2021-05-22\_17-55-27.zip](https://forums.plex.tv/uploads/short-url/byXRESMj7Dxyumtxb5NstWvjPDO.zip) (4.2 MB)  
[plex-log-TheSpawnMan.zip](https://forums.plex.tv/uploads/short-url/oXw7TWm2uCHufCIopHzoAb5ld6c.zip) (155.4 KB)

For reference I’m trying to direct play bride wars and I reproduced the error right before I downloaded the logs

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![anon18523487](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/49beb7/32.png) [@anon18523487](https://forums.plex.tv/u/anon18523487)\
**Post date:** [May 23, 2021, 3:36am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/direct-play-not-working/717154/4 "2021-05-23T03:36:33Z")

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You have the setting enabled in your Android client to “Automatically adjust quality”. That forces a transcode. Turn off that feature.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![TheSpawnMan](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/plex/user_avatar/forums.plex.tv/thespawnman/32/240106_2.png) [@TheSpawnMan](https://forums.plex.tv/u/TheSpawnMan)\
**Post date:** [May 24, 2021, 5:26am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/direct-play-not-working/717154/5 "2021-05-24T05:26:54Z")

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I checked the setting and it was actually off, but I toggled it on then back off again and the issue persist that direct play doesn’t play anything it just loads indefinitely

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![anon18523487](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/49beb7/32.png) [@anon18523487](https://forums.plex.tv/u/anon18523487)\
**Post date:** [May 24, 2021, 6:02am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/direct-play-not-working/717154/6 "2021-05-24T06:02:35Z")

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Oh sorry. I must have been looking at the playback for something else. I double checked your logs and it is direct playing.

> 05-22 17:54:18.476 i: [TranscodeSession] Direct Play

Your logs do show that app is jumping back and forth requesting different parts of the original file to direct play due to the audio and video streams being out of sync within the file. This can cause the error you mentioned when this out of sync problem results in the file taking too long to return the correct information.

Here’s and example of what the log looks like showing the behavior.

> 05-22 17:54:18.501 i: [FFmpeg] [INFO] [Cache] Seek complete to 178250448 bytes.  
> 05-22 17:54:18.501 i: [FFmpeg] [INFO] [Cache] Seek has returned with a response of 178250448.  
> 05-22 17:54:18.536 i: [FFmpeg] [INFO] [Cache] Source seek requested to 194067773 bytes with 0 whence.  
> 05-22 17:54:18.536 i: [FFmpeg] [INFO] [Cache] Seek found to 194067773 bytes.  
> 05-22 17:54:18.631 i: [FFmpeg] [INFO] [Cache] Seek complete to 194067773 bytes.  
> 05-22 17:54:18.632 i: [FFmpeg] [INFO] [Cache] Seek has returned with a response of 194067773.  
> 05-22 17:54:18.651 i: [FFmpeg] [INFO] [Cache] Source seek requested to 178334256 bytes with 0 whence.  
> 05-22 17:54:18.662 i: [FFmpeg] [INFO] [Cache] Seek found to 178334256 bytes.

When you force a transcode, PMS reads the file locally so it’s able to jump around the file much faster so it doesn’t have this issue.

Bottom line, your file is encoded incorrectly.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![TheSpawnMan](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/plex/user_avatar/forums.plex.tv/thespawnman/32/240106_2.png) [@TheSpawnMan](https://forums.plex.tv/u/TheSpawnMan)\
**Post date:** [May 24, 2021, 6:29pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/direct-play-not-working/717154/7 "2021-05-24T18:29:10Z")

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Nailed it my dude, thanks for the help I’m going to reencode all the files.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![system](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/plex/original/3X/2/a/2acb9765406f63293d357b4ec509ec39aa28f2ad.png) [@system](https://forums.plex.tv/u/system)\
**Post date:** [August 22, 2021, 6:29pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/direct-play-not-working/717154/8 "2021-08-22T18:29:35Z")

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