Server Version#: 1.29.2.6364
Player Version#: 8.12
I purchased the lifetime plex subscription solely for the purpose of being able to download content to watch offline. Downloading on laptop and Android is perfectly fine, but on IOS (I’ve tried both iphone and ipad) it does not work. It looks like it’s downloading, and after a very long time when the task is finished, it throws an error. Could you please help me with this issue?
I’ve tried everything mentioned in the discussions, but there was only so much I could do. I changed my routers DNS, I’ve set-up pi-hole, but it didn’t work as expected. I’ve spent hours trying to find the setting for DNS rebind in my Asus router’s settings only to find that there is no such option.
Please recreate and provide the ios logs. If this just happened recently, please provide your current logs and let me know about what time you tried to do the download.
I’ll provide 2 logs, one from yesterday, one from today. Yesterday I tried to download things at around 7-8 pm, today I’ve been trying since 6 pm.
Are these ones suitable?
@anon18523487
I just checked the server side. On the dashboard it says it’s transcoding media, which is not happening when downloading from pc. The phone is set to download everything in original quality though.
Are you trying to Download from PMS running on a Pi? You have an old version of PMS on there, so I would suggest first updating that.
Next you are running iOS 16.0.2. Isn’t that a developer release. Plex does not officially support alpha or beta releases so there is no guarantee anything will work.
Third, I need the entire log package, not just the single log file. There are other things I need to check from there.
@anon18523487
No, the PMS is on a Synology NAS. I set up a Pi earlier, but I don’t use it since I have the NAS.
I do not access the developer iOS releases, so I’m quite certain it has officially come out (I just checked and there is an update to 16.1.1 so I’ll install it, but the version you mentioned was official).
I attach the whole .zip package then. PlexDebugInfo-Iv4nyi-8.12-4324 (2022-11-29 19.43.40 +0100).zip (1.9 MB)
Ok, ignoring those. I see the download from the NAS. Looking at the latest attempt, I see you started about 6:48 pm. It slowly gets to about 40% around 7:34 pm, then there is a command to cancel the download at 7:35 pm. It restarts the Download a few minutes later. Looks like the app lost connection to your server or did you manually cancel the download and restart it?
Ok, so it was working, just really slow. The file is being transcoded, so maybe your server couldn’t handle the load or was busy with something else. Transcoding for a download can be pushed back to a background task which can be slower. Do you have your server logs from that time period?
@anon18523487
Yes, I have them, here you are. Plex Media Server Logs_2022-11-30_10-33-01.zip (4.0 MB)
But I wonder why it’s taking so long only for iOS. As I’ve mentioned, Android and Windows takes seconds, or a few minutes max to complete if it’s a large file.
Looks like you enabled subtitles and these are being burned into your video. Your Syno is not strong enough to burn in subtitles so it’s going slow. I then see a playback for a video using Plex for Windows. This is requiring PMS to transcode so your transcode for the Download gets moved to the background where it can go even slower. The playback is paused and left that way. This is tricking PMS to think the transcoder is still busy so it doesn’t bring the Download job back to the front and it just stays there going really slow.
Can you try again but don’t select the subtitles? This should avoid transcoding and make the Download much quicker.
@anon18523487
I’m not sure how to turn off subtitles, because even if I select to turn them off when choosing the episode, it’s being downloaded anyway.
But I have some good news as well.
I went to the download section and looked at the compatibility setting. For some reason I misunderstood high compatibility to Original. It’s an honest mistake. If I set it to original, the server isn’t transcoding it and the download is very fast, but you were still quite right about the subtitles, because if I download the media with compatibility set to original, the subtitles don’t work. Only those subtitles work, which are originally burned into the media, which makes most of my content unwatchable offline, because most of my subtitles are .srt files, and unfortunately, I don’t speak for instance japanese (when I’d like to watch anime). But this still makes the situation a lot better, since I can at least download some of my content.
By any chance, do you think the company will get around the problem by making the app download the .srt files with the movies without them being needed to be burned into the content? It would make a lot of sense, because subtitle files are very small in size, yet they still make a huge difference experience wise.
And sorry for not realizing earlier the cause of the problem.
With your help I have come to the conclusion, that setting subtitles and audio to a different language makes the download very slow. Setting the original audio without subs is the way to go, because then there is no need to transcode anything. It would be nice being able to download anything with any settings, and also, I would emphasize the current limitations of this function when it comes to buying plex pass. I should’ve been more responsible and try out plex pass first, rather than buying it right away, but I put too much trust in the company.
Could you give me a possible workaround for the sub and audio problem? Should I convert the episodes to my liking with a different software, then upload it to plex?
I’m not sure the audio is impacting Downloads. Transcoding audio is not a big deal, not is transcoding video since your Syno can do that via hardware. It’s the subtitles that is the issue. This will cause a slow transcode no matter what. Moving this task to the background is also going to slow things down. That is intended so it won’t interfere with viewing. With the slow processor in your Syno, any background task is going to be super slow. You can try to avoid this by making sure nothing is being viewed when you Download content.
That is correct. If you don’t choose a subtitle, it will get downloaded as-is instead of being burned in. This allows you to turn them off/on when viewing.
For some reason I misunderstood high compatibility to Original
Yes, these are not the same things. High Compatibility is for older devices so that the downloaded content will have a better chance of playing with errors. For example, older devices on old versions of iOS cannot play the srt subtitles so you won’t see any subtitles. High Compatibility will burn in the subtitles so they can be seen on that device. If you don’t have an older device, don’t use this setting.
Could you give me a possible workaround for the sub and audio problem?
Don’t use the High Compatibility setting. The file should Download without needing to transcode is most cases. Make sure the subtitle burn-in setting is on Auto.
