When I first setup my ATV with PlexConnect, I was able to fast forward/fast rewind using the 1x / 2x / 3x arrows and see what was happening. I.e. like fast forwarding a VCR.
Now, when I FF or REW the screen goes black. I'm not sure if I've made a change to the configuration or it's just that I'm playing different file types.
Should this work?
Different filetypes... aTV native ones do FF/REW with video, transcoded ones might go blank (depending on the buffering state?).
I don't think I have any native files, but maybe some of them are?
I do have it set to "yes" on "force transcode". Maybe if I change this back it may work on some. I'll give it a try.
Any other suggestions on how to FF/REW and see whats happening?
What Baa says is not a suggestion but the facts.
Anything that is transcoded will not show the picture as you move through it (the latest PMS has support for building preview files but it has a very heavy overhead for creating them and we have not looked at PlexConnect supporting it yet).
What you/Baa says makes sense.
If I understand correctly, if I have a file I've encoded in a format that the ATV will natively play, I will have this feature (and it will also play smoother with less work on the part of the server)?
Again, to ensure I understand, "Force transcode" will make the Plex Server transcode it into the format specified, even if the native format would be supported by the ATV?
This seems to be what is happening as once I made the changes above, some videos FF correctly (and have a huge buffer), some don't.
Yep that is pretty much it.
Plex media server also does something in between called direct streaming. In certain circumstances, e.g. a mkv file that is natively playable by iOS apart from the actual container, the PMS will remux the file on the fly to a natively playable container (with much less overhead compared to transcoding).
