Fast forward and rewind crashes app

I have solved this by downgrading the app version to 8.15

This problem seems like a regression. Hope this helps someone.

Ok, here is a ditto / me too.

…But I seem to have found a solution that works for me.

My problem feels like the same as everyone is experiencing here.

Problem only seems to happen on my CC w/ GTV.
Don’t have issues on browsers or phones.

I only see the crash when FF/skip and especially RW/skip-back are used during recorded HD TV playback. Seems random but happens less when I deliberately slow down FF clicks. Almost always crashes doing a RW click.

I don’t seem to have the crash while playing back and skipping around in recorded SD TV content.

I don’t ever see the problem playing any downloaded movies or TV content.

I’ve always suspected that it might be a bandwidth problem so I tried the ethernet injecting power supply and that did nothing to help the problem.

I’ve been waiting, and waiting, and waiting for a client update to fix the problem and it’s always the same.

OK, that’s it for the stuff to help qualify if we are having the same problem.

Here is what I did that has seemingly eliminated the problem for me.

In the ā€œVIDEO QUALITYā€ settings I changed the ā€œHome Streamingā€ to ā€œ8 Mbps, 1080p HDā€.
(I have always had ā€œAdjust automaticallyā€ set to ā€œOFFā€)

I worked it hard for 30 minutes on tons of different HD recordings using FF/RW buttons as well as getting into the video progress bar and scrubbing around. Never had it crash.

YMMV, but it feels solved for me.

Using Plex client version 9.2.1.32664 and server 1.25.9.5721 on Debian (bullseye).

I was having the problem on this combination and then was not after changing the streaming rate.

I do get some buffering circles but really not too bad at all, considering the transcoding is happening on my fairly modest server hardware (i5 4590T).

It will be great to see if this helps anybody else.

Just a quick update.

I have 2 CCwGT units.
Unit 1 connected to a 720p TV in the bedroom.
Unit 2 connected to a 1080p TV in the family room.

Unit 1
I set this unit to stream at 720p resolution and the fix works for all recorded TV content.
This is reasonable since the TV is 720p.

Unit 2
With the streaming limit set to 1080p it always works for TV content recorded a 1080 (p/i)
720p recorded content is not fixed because Plex won’t (can’t?) transcode 720 to 1080p.
SD TV content is not trans-coded but does not or very rarely exipits the problem.

This leads me to believe that CC chokes while skipping (sometimes just playing) 1080 and 720 recorded content which are very high bit rate .TS files.

I will experiment with limiting Unit 2 to streaming 720p limited bandwidth resolution but I’m not happy about losing 1080 source resolution of 1080 recorded TV content. Since the setting is global I’m not jazzed about my local movies being down trans-coded either. Since local content does not exhibit the problem I COULD switch the setting back and forth but this seems like a major PITA.

Anyway, just wanted to supply the extra information in case anyone tried my fix and was still seeing the problem sporadically.

I think you hit the nail on the head. With your explanation I realized that when I watch 1080p and 720p content, like newer or current TV recordings, it has trouble FF/RW, it just crashes. I have been recording older 480i shows, and you can FF/RW all day long and it will crash, but rarely. I will have to look into this further.

I’m so glad I found this thread!
It really sucks that I paid for fancy plex, but have to waste my CPU cycles transcoding something that should play directly. This has been open for a long time, what types of debugs do we need to provide to help fix this?
CCwGTV, 9.5.0.33736 client against 1.27.2.5929 ubuntu server

Thankfully, my area doesn’t really have many 1080p channels; so I’m resetting everything to 720p, and it looks like it’s working. I’m looking forward to trying it for real (I really only FF/RW when watching a recording as it recorded and don’t have one scheduled for a bit). The transcode fix appears to be working on a fully recorded show.

Glad you found it and thanks for posting to keep the thread/discussion open.

I took the very recent CCwGTV system update and thought that I would see how things were working without transcoding. So, I turned the setting back to Maximum/Original and did some testing.

I’ve got to say that I think things are definitely better but not completely resolved. I played some HD DVR recordings and brutalized them with FF/RW. For the most part things seemed stable (kind of laggy) but not perfect. I was able to crash Plex a few times but it does seem better.

For now I’m going back to the transcoding solution because I’m finding it to be pretty OK quality wise.

Pro Tip :wink:
If your watching a show or media file that you would rather not have transcoded just access the playback settings menu and change it back to original. It’s pretty easy to pull that menu up while playing media.

  • Up arrow
  • Right arrow to get to the triple dots and select.
  • A menu pops up with playback settings on it

I need to test more but setting convert automatically to no and setting quality to 1080P 12 meg seems to fix it. It forces a transcode to H264 even on 720P. If it doesnt transcode and is direct streaming, I get the crash with FF

Glad I found this thread hopefully downgrading the quality helps until Plex fixes this problem. Of course realizing that this thread is approaching its one year anniversary I’m not exactly filled with confidence that Plex can or will fix it.

I can say that the change to 1080P 12M has fixed the issue 100%. 12M H264 I doubt is any noticeable reduction in quality.

I’ll try that out. Some more testing, the transcoding workaround seems to work only for recorded shows.
I’m having trouble getting those settings while watching a ā€˜recording in progress’. So I’m entering this through the guide, since it doesn’t show up in the recordings mid-recording, clicking my show on the schedule, then selecting ā€œstart from beginningā€. I can’t seem to find the transcoding in this condition, which creates the ā€˜crash’ scenario just like an original quality full recording. This is very sad, since I often use this to ā€˜catch up’ to real-time when I start late.

We use this fix for watch from start and it is a 100% fix. You dont set this option in the options from the content. Its in the general settings (gear icon bottom left of the screen

Thank you everyone for keeping this thread open. I tried the fix that everyone seems to say it is the fix, but it is only partial. Works fine on my 480i recordings, mostly. Anything above that it will still, on occasion kick me out. But, I have another suggestion. With the announcement of the new patch of CCWGTV that is supposed to improve memory management and provide more memory for the apps and improve storage space management. I’m hoping that this will help, if not fix the Plex problems. But, we will see and there isn’t a timeline for the release of the patch.

I gave up on the Google TV app. We bought a new TV and it has WebOS on it. The Plex app is much more refined on it. And no fast forward issues.

I’m about ready to throw in the towel regarding Plex on CCwGTV as well.
I’m fairly satisfied with the transcoding fix for fully recorded TV.

My big problem now is watching shows that have already started recording.
Quite unstable via CCwGTV.
Quite stable using Plex via a browser but I’m having issues with the progress bar getting mixed up and not being able to skip etc. Happens if i ā€œwatch liveā€ or ā€œstart from beginningā€.

I’m going to update my server to the latest to see if that helps.

I really want to like Plex (and do for local video and music content) but the DVR promise of Plex Pass is really turning into a headache.

I can deal with workarounds etc… but the wife is not happy with me/Plex. :wink:

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With my CCWGTV, the start from beginning always worked fine. Also the DVR function has been flawless, too. We us both all the time. I’m running my server in a Docker on UnRaid. But, I did find that when the Plex app was being a pain, I would Uninstall and reinstall the app on my CCWGT and it would fix it.

I will try your suggestion of uninstalling and reinstalling the Plex app. I’ll report results back here.

I did update my Plex server ( 1.28.2.6151) (Plex Web?? 4.87.2) and I still get the progress bar and skip/rewind confusion while playing currently recording material via browser. Skip/rewind also confuses the Plex app on CCwGTV but the crashing while watching is much worse of an issue.

Watching fully recorded TV via the Plex app works very stably with the transcoding setting.

I’m almost over the Plex thing…and I’ve been really invested in doing this. SO frustrating.
Going to kick the tires of Emby for my home TV/DVR function.

This is odd. With the transcoding setting it is a 100% fix for us. My wife watched 4 programs in the evening on weekdays all watch from start and never a single issue. What are your transcoding settings? When watching, what does it show in the Plex Dashboard view?

I was, also going to switch to Emby, but my wife didn’t want to waist the money we invested in Plex. And it isn’t as polished as Plex. I also looked at Jellyfin, looks nice, too. But since I switched to WebOS, I am happy with Plex.

I’m going to start a separate thread for the progress bar problems while watching shows that are currently recording.

sjmplex:
I suspect that watching shows that are currently recording bypasses the transcode setting. I think this because the buffering delays are much longer than when watching fully recorded HD TV. Kind of hard to tell because the normal way that I check (UP Arrow|Menu|Playback Options) is not there when watching this way. Up Arrow simply dumps me back into the TV Guide (with show playing in small box in the upper right) with out access to those functions. I suppose that I could dig into the server status while watching shows that are currently recording to see if it is being transcoded.

When I watch from start and monitor in the Web Dashboard it shows 720P->Transcode H264 HW. For audio it shows copy AC3

When I watch fully recorded it also shows transcode → H264 HW but audio is Transcode Opus.

It always transcodes when it is set to the 12MB 1080P setting. If I turn that setting back to original quality. I will get the crash when using FF