I bought and downloaded the Fourth of July from Louis C.K.'s website. It played for about halfway through the movie, then just stops. Sometimes, it will play for about 10 seconds, sometimes nothing, just a loading spinner. I’ve tried both from my Roku player and my Samsung phone. I can watch other movies, including Louis C.K. specials, without issue. Any advice?
Plex Media Server Logs_2025-05-26_21-08-38.zip (1.2 MB)
Well, let’s make sure the file itself is okay. What format is the file in (MP4, MKV, AVI, etc)? Can you play that in any other player (Windows Media Player, VLC)? Does it play to completion in that player?
If your file plays okay in another player, then it’s probably not the file. Tell Plex to “Analyze” the video file. It’s possible Plex thinks it is only half as long as it really is, and “Analyze” should force it to look at the file again and determine the actual length. This might fix the issue.
It is an MP4 and yes it can play in VLC passed the point that it freezes when watching via Plex.
I tried the “Analyze” and it seemed to fix the issue. I don’t have time to fully watch it at the moment, but it did play a good minute passed where it was freezing. Thank you!
Great!
I think the “half-way” bit was a big clue. I think if Plex fails to analyze a file, it sets a default “length” of 1 hour, which is about half-way through for most movies nowadays.
In the future if any file acts weird, try an analysis on it. I’ve had a few files here and there that Plex failed to do this on when added.
In addition to above: never download directly into a folder that was added to a Plex library and you have automatic or periodic library updates activated.
Yeah, I don’t do that. I have a staging folder on a different hard drive that I download to and rename for Plex. Then, I shut down the server and copy over after I get so many setup.
Shutting down the server won’t be necessary either. Just disable periodic or automatic library updates. Once the copy is finished, trigger a library scan in Plex.
So, this fixed it somewhat. I was able to watch a good bit further. I’m now at 1:13:00 of 1:31:00-ish. It does basically the same thing as before. It will play 1 second of the movie, then infinitely show loading spinner. I attempted to Analyze it again multiple times, it doesn’t seem to fix the issue. I’m right by the router with full signal. The Plex server shows the bit-rate in the 60s, CPU and RAM are at 25%-ish.
