"Enable Refresh Rate Switching" causes stuttering playback in Plex HTPC

Plex Players Desktop Players
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Server Version#: 1.26.2.5797-5bd057d2b
Player Version#: 1.17.0.3002-f753d4a0
Windows 10 Build: 19044.1706

Turning on “Enable Refresh Rate Switching” causes video to stutter and frequently drop frames. It works properly in PMP. Any help would be appreciated.

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Logs are going to be necessary to provide any help here.

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Plex HTPC.log (265.5 KB)
I’ve attached a log file. I opened Plex HTPC, started playback of a file, observed lots of stuttering in the first 45 seconds, then closed the file.

Disabling Refresh Rate Switching fixes the issue.

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Some aside comments: I see that you are using an RTX 2070. I’ve personally used refresh rate matching on an RTX 2060 without issue. Also I noticed that you are using 1440p output but your display at least appears to advertise that it is 4k. Is 1440p the native resolution of the display? If not, you may want to switch to the native resolution in general. Also the RTX 2070 is more than capable of handling much higher video quality profiles than you currently have set (Settings → Video → Video Playback Quality)

Those comments aside, I don’t see anything obvious in the logs which could be leading to stuttering video. It is possible that the stutter is actually present when you are using the 60Hz output but just masked by the fact that the display refresh rate is over twice the content frame rate and thus making it less visible.

Some thing that you may want to try out:

  • Have you changed things in the Nvidia settings? Possibly something like GSync or similar?
  • With my RTX 2060, I had to change power management mode to prefer performance or it would randomly drop audio frames (HTPC Tips and Tricks - #5 by gbooker02). Maybe this is worth a shot in your case.
  • Try playing in the standalone MPV (mpv.io | Installation). It will not change refresh rates for you so you will need to do this manually in testing.
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The issue has been resolved! I should have been more scientific and deliberate during the process, because I don’t know what action produced results. Some combination of updating GPU drivers/forcing vsync/telling the GPU to prefer performance/setting the display to native resolution/updating PlexHTPC…and a few other tweaks fixed the issue. Playback is smooth again.

Thank you for your help!

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Nice to see the shotgun approach worked. I was mostly suggesting things as guesswork and odd things that I noticed. If I had to guess, it would be either the forcing vsync or updating the drivers. Either way, glad you got it resolved.

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