My friend is having issues playing from my server. He’s getting this message:
I have remote quality set to 8Mbps. I have direct play and direct stream disabled in the settings.
He’s on Chrome on a Mac. Any idea why it’s trying to let him direct play this video? If there isn’t enough bandwidth for direct play it should be falling back to transcoding, should it not?
I’m puzzled
You are looking at the wrong settings, that will only affect your web client and the player therein, check this
https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/200289506
and this
https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/227715247-Server-Settings-Bandwidth-and-Transcoding-Limits
Ok thanks, I thought that might be the case. But even looking at the other settings available under Server>Remote Access and Server>Transcoder… I still can’t figure out why my friend’s Plex client wouldn’t fall back to using transcoding if there isn’t enough bandwidth for direct play.
The only relevant setting seems to be “Limit remote stream bitrate” that I have set to Original, which is described simply as a “maximum” value, not a “use this value at all times”… I don’t want to force a limit if I have ample bandwidth. I’m fine with someone streaming a file directly if the bandwidth is available, I have a 50Mbps line
I’ve been running my Plex server for 5 years and I’ve never encountered this issue before… just has me a little puzzled. The same friend watches almost every day and has never had this problem before either
Also get your client to use plex on safari and not chrome.
Chrome, from my experience forces the server to transcode much more often. (both on macs and windows)
Having this issue with another of my guests today. Constant buffering, yet there’s ample bandwidth. He switched quality and said it was at 2Mbps, but on my server it showed his video was Direct Stream and audio was trandcoding
Nothing is wrong with my connection, a speed test run from my server shows I’m getting almost 60Mbps, resource usage is low. Friend also has 50Mbps internet
Seems something’s screwy with Plex lately
EDIT: Updated to the latest plex pass server version 1.8.1.4139 … he said it’s even worse now. I even have the server hard-limited to 12Mbps now.
And my web client still says his video is direct stream
And I just got ANOTHER report from a user … same problem. I really need some help guys, I don’t know what to do… everyone is buffering
Just got this message
Hey can you check Deadpool please? It’s buffering every 30 to 60 seconds. It’s not my internet, cuz I watched Logan right before it
Ok, I’m barking up the wrong tree. I’ve identified a bottleneck that is likely causing this on my rather complex server configuration. Slow NFS reads on on my virtual machines. Marking solved
