Plex has the great feature to continue watching my shows where I left off. The only annoyance is if the transcoding is straining your server, it can take 5-15 seconds to continue playing the video.
The issue is that Plex Media Server immediately deletes any transcoded temporary files as soon as a stream is interrupted (e.g. locking the screen on an android client).
A possible solution would be to keep track of these temporary “cache” files and only delete them after a given time or size limit is reached. Right now (1.4.3.3433) the cache files are stored in a stream specific folder. The server would have to group the cache files based on the media’s unique id and the requested format, quality, audio stream and subtitle. Before starting a new transcode, the server would check the cache directory and use the cached chunks if every settings match.
I know this means significant changes to the server’s transcoding system but please consider implementing this. Even if it can continue only on the same client, that already makes the user experience much better in some cases. And if this cache can be shared between multiple users and clients it could reduce the number of needed transcodes significantly.
