I’ve not had a plex server running for about 6 months due to moving across the country into a new house, but the apps have all updated a bit in that time and I’m having trouble I did not have before. I have had Plex Pass for years, so I may have extra features I’ve done something wrong with.
I’m only testing within my home on my network using my Pixel 2, browser player / server on my Microsoft Surface Book 2 (temp until I get my server setup), and an Android TV device. As far as I can tell, the issue has to due with Direct Play. All devices are co-located within the same room at this time, on a 5G mesh network or wired into the router.
On both my Android devices, if I watch the streaming details on a video going to either my phone or my Android TV, they always start in the Direct Play mode. For some titles, I get green garbage visuals but clear audio, and for other titles I’m getting stutters and artifacts like crazy. If I change the quality to something low, and then change it back to Automatic, the image will switch to hardware encoding and look fantastic.
Have I set something wrong up on the server? My previous server was running for a number of years flawlessly but I have no idea what I may or may not have had set.
I found mentions of the ability to disable Direct Play, but I’ve been unsuccessful in finding those options on either of my Android devices.
Is the problem because of the Microsoft Surface Book 2 as the server? It’s not using my Nvidia card when streaming, so it’s either the CPU or the embedded Intel GPU.
To be honest, DirectPlay should be the way you WANT media to play… Not Hardware Transcoding… This is some curious behavior honestly… Direct Play literally means that the Software on the playback device has reported 100% compatibility with the Media on the server, so the server is simply sending the file, untouched, to the device. This is the ideal situation. I have no idea why you would be getting green garbage and and strange stuttering and artifacting.
I worked extremely hard to get my entire library to direct play on all of my devices because that’s the best way to run, and now, even with sharing the server with my friends and family, I am maintaining a 95% or better DirectPlay. What I would be curious of, is if the files, played with Windows Media Player directly on the server PC, exhibit any similar behavior. If so, that would mean the files themselves have a corrupt sector in them, and the transcoding is actually correcting this error, but that’s a bit of a stretch honestly. I have seen that type of behavior before, but it is extremely rare (ie, I had a file that was glitching out, and I transcoded it by mistake in a large transcode queue, but the output file did not have the glitch present)
What determines the need? File extensions, metadata?
Since this video collection has been growing for years, I have never really paid attention to the codecs or anything since it’s always worked. I think I started my server with Plex in 2009 or so.
Compatibility and/or bandwidth limitations determine the need to transcode or not.
If the used codec is not compatible with the receiving client, Plex Server makes the decision to transcode the media. If it is compatible, sends it without transcoding.
This is also true for bandwidth limitations, if you have your server set to only allow a 2mbit stream per user, then it will transcode anything over that 2mbit down to 2mbit. Conversely if someone wants to save data on their mobile plan and they’re connected to your server, they can change the quality to a lower quality, which will force your server to transcode the content for them.
Transcoding inherently adds artifacts, which is why the preferred method is DirectPlay. It will give the source picture quality to whatever is directplaying the content.
In your situation though, you stated that the DirectPlay was causing the issue, and that the transcoding corrected the issue (if I misunderstood feel free to correct me). This lead me to believe that perhaps the files themselves have some sort of corruption and that the transcoding is actually correcting that corruption.
To check the source file, all you should have to do is open up Windows Media Player (make sure it’s Windows Media Player and not something like VLC or Media Player Classic or something like that) and play one of the known error files. If it says “Failed to render” or it renders it with the same anomalies, it would mean that your files have become corrupted. The good news is, you could run them all through a transcode process to correct it, or you could just re-rip them from your source media. The bad news is, that either of those processes takes a lot of time…
Thanks for the advice, but so far I’ve not had issues running any of the problematic videos via network share using the default Windows 10 media player.
The videos are hosted on a Windows Home Server (old system) which can no longer run Plex due to being removed from compatibility years ago. The Win10 laptop is just running Plex and pointed at the network locations for file access.
Any other thoughts? Things I can check? I have a PS4 that I can play the original DVD’s with, but I no longer a computer with a drive to re-rip stuff… I may have to buy an external DVD drive hah.
Damn, then it’s definitely not the original files. I have no clue what would cause the issues you’re experiencing in a direct play scenario. If the issues were because of transcoding, we could maybe check out a few things. But direct play, I have no idea man, sorry.
So the player has a “New Player” feature, which I’ve turned on. The videos that were green, or were flooded with artifacts seem to behave different.
For the videos that were green picture with audio, the screen is white with no audio and the server seems to not recognize the activity while the video is trying to direct stream, but they play fine when set to automatic and end up encoded. I will note a long “buffering” period. I find it interesting that when I select movies, I see no title in the activity box, but the system activity spikes for about 1 minute and then drops off to nothing.
For the videos that were artifacted / stuttering, they seem to play fine now without my intervention.
Well that’s good news… Albeit a bit strange, but good news none-the-less
What I would maybe try is taking one of those videos, running it through handbrake at say 8Mbit or something, and try playing that file instead… See if there’s a difference… Every time I have had a video with “Green Picture” it has been a broken encode…
So I’ve been running some videos through handbrake on the Fast 1080p30 setting and the results have been positive. Not only are things running very well for the updated videos, but I swear some of the videos are coming out even better than they viewed originally.
I just wish I could understand why, since I took my system offline to move in April, it would appear that things do not run smooth as they did before.
Anyways, this sure beats having to buy an external blue ray drive to rip new files with Nero! Thanks
it’s possible that they were transcoding all along and that’s why some look better after you doing your own encode. Your encode is a higher quality but keeps it within the specs of the TV… Glad it worked out for you though.
Edit: I would probably do your own profile in Handbrake though, I am not a fan of any of their default ones. I would set to NVENC x264 or x265 (provided you have an NVIDIA Card) or just x264 otherwise… Use 8Mbit if you’re going 264, and use 4Mbit if you’re doing 265, and just do a direct MUX of the audio, unless you want to make it compatible too, then you can do like AC3 5.1 at 640kbit.
This will keep your filesizes consistent rather than all over the place, and they will still look pretty damn good.
I get similar behavior to what you describe consistently with specific OTA channels (all problem channels are 1080i…all my 720p channels have no issues) in my area recorded via Plex Live TV & DVR using a WinTV Dual HD tuner. PMS version and host platform (windows/linux etc.) don’t seem to matter…it’s all of them. It is likely related to how the file is encoded…possibly related to multiple audio streams and/or subtitles…which Android doesn’t handle well. My LG TV also does not play back the same files well…but VLC will play them perfectly every-time and transcoding them during playback via Plex they play perfectly on any device.
