My Plex server (Version 1.12.3.4973) is installed on a QNAP TS-453A. I have several client apps (AppleTV 4K, iPhone, iPad, Windows PC), all on my local network.
When using any client apps to watch recorded movies or shows, the playback is pausing very often. I have tried many different settings of quality and others but pauses are always there. It’s worst when I’m watching Liver TV program. I have Hardware acceleration turned on. My QNAP CPU is running at around 50% average with a 1080p60 movie.
When I intentionally pause the playback with the client app for several seconds (Filling in the client buffer), and then un-pause, the movie will playback for longer, but will restart to pause frequently after a few minutes. Even if there seems to be buffered video in the client apps buffer.
Anyone has a clue what my problem can be ?
If you’ll recreate the DEBUG logs (no verbose) for one playback session, and include the XML (Hover over it -> ellipsis -> Get Info -> View XML), it will be pretty easy to see what PMS has decided to do for the playback session. From there, we can resolve it.
Just a few questions and additional info…
I’m very rookie with Linux. Where should I locate the XML ? This is supposed to be on my QNAP NAS where is my PMS and libraries right ?
Note that my storage on the NAS is 2 * 4TB hard drives in RAID 0. My Plex libraries are in DataVol1 Multimedia folder (I have separate sub-folders for Movies, Music and Images libraires).
In the PMS Transcoder settings, what should I set as “Transcoder temporary directory” ?
Sorry, The XML is actually pulled from PMS.
- Hover over the item
- See the ellipsis exposed
- Click it
- Click
Get Info
- Now click
View XML
The transcoder’s default temp directory is in PMS’s “home” directory ( /share/CACHEDEV1_DATA/.qpkg/PlexMediaServer/Library/tmp) and it’s perfectly fine to leave it right there unless you wish to move it to a storage pool / volume which is a SSD.
I also need advise you of an incompatibility which exists with PMS and “MultiMedia”. Specifically, the “CodexPack” changes pathnames inside MultiMedia. (The MultiMedia share is not a real share. It is created by an application program). This causes PMS to be confused.
You are much better off, as we all recommend:
- Share for movies
- Share for television
- Share for each other media type
- PMS accesses the real shares directly.
- Multimedia and other apps may then do what they wish independent of your Plex server
I have the same issue streaming recorded tv shows using the dvr function.
Videos pause after a few minutes and a message something like “server is unable to stream video…” appears.
CPU sometimes goes as high as 86% and as low as 11% during the stream.
Shows are set to “play original content” which I thought meant there was no conversion going on. In addition, conversion tab is blank.
Confused by this behavior.
Unfortunately, I did not have time to troubleshoot my original problem in the past few weeks.
But 2 days ago, I had a firmware update notification for my QNAP TS-453A (Which runs my PMS). And I also saw there was a newer version of the PMS itself available. I have updated both:
QNAP Firmware: 4.3.4.0593
PMS: 1.13.0.5023
Following these updates, I was no longer seeing these frequent pauses when playing back (On any of my players) either recorded movies or live channels (TV Tuner) from my PMS. My average CPU usage also went down from around 50% to around 30% when playing back 1080p60 video.
One thing I noted though: I have see video playback pauses one time and saw that my CPU usage was quite high suddenly. Looking at the running processes I found that “Plex Script Host” process was taking a large amount of CPU power (30% for this process only). I made a quick search on the Plex forum for this process and found the following thread: https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/296858/plex-script-host-is-hogging-my-cpu-which-makes-transcoding-lag-and-buffer
So I guess I will continue to witness these video playback pauses each time the “Plex Script Host” process will be taking a big amount of CPU. I don’t know if this was the cause of my original problem or if my recent updates of 2 days ago (QNAP Firmware and PMS version) fixed something.
I resolved my issue via optimization.
The .ts files simply do not play well when streaming in my local network.
Converting to mp4 was a pain but the difference was immediate and dramatic.
