Hello all! First off, I just want to say that I love Plex, but recently it’s been frustrating me. I’ve been using the service for close to two months now and have just recently (last 2-3 weeks) been experiencing issues with playback. I continually get the “This server is not powerful enough to transcode…” when I had never seen it prior.
I’m running a Mid-2010 Mac Mini, 8GB of RAM, a 256MB SSD, the original 256MB HDD, and with a 4TB external hard drive with all the media.
I have enabled the “Direct Play” and “Direct Stream” on all my devices, and mainly use my XBox One, Mac Mini, and iPad to watch videos. Across the board I experience the weak server message.
As I said in the title, I would assume this question is asked all the time, or at least frequently, but I haven’t seen a post that has offered me any sort of solution.
I have attached the downloaded logs (which I’m not even sure has the right data that people want to look at).
at the bottom you have simultaneous transcode limit set to 5 is what i meant, but doesn’t look like anything else is playing/syncing/etc
your transcode is not being processed in real time, The speed is below 1 speed=0.4
What is the transcoder quality set to on top?
do you might updating to current plex pass release 1.4.1 and try again ( you can quit the server and move 1.3.4 in application folder someplace else and download 1.4.1 from site rather than doing it though auto update. so you have the 1.3.4 one to roll back to if needed )
I’m also running my entire Plex server environment and delivery to various clients across our in-house LAN on:
Model Name: Mac mini (mid 2011 model)
Processor Name: Intel Core i7
Processor Speed: 2 GHz
Number of Processors: 1
Total Number of Cores: 4
L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB
L3 Cache: 6 MB
Memory: 8 GB
I’ve never seen this message "“This server is not powerful enough to transcode.” …
However, I do get Internet pauses sometimes when it goes outside our LAN to the Internet in order to get Movie Trailers.
I was having some MASSIVE issues with my mac mini recently that hosts my PMS. I had kept OS El Capitan on it because things were running smoothly and why ruin a good thing (i use the mini ONLY as a PMS, so i don’t care about upgrades to the OS, functionality, etc.).
However - i was on my last straws of what to do to fix the slowdown on the server, bit the bullet, and upgraded to Sierra (should be a free upgrade). For me, this did the trick and things are running smooth like butter again.
Check and see what version of OS you are on, it may be the same issue for you
@BigWheel said:
at the bottom you have simultaneous transcode limit set to 5 is what i meant, but doesn’t look like anything else is playing/syncing/etc
your transcode is not being processed in real time, The speed is below 1 speed=0.4
What is the transcoder quality set to on top?
do you might updating to current plex pass release 1.4.1 and try again ( you can quit the server and move 1.3.4 in application folder someplace else and download 1.4.1 from site rather than doing it though auto update. so you have the 1.3.4 one to roll back to if needed )
Transcoder is in “Automatic”. Tried using 1.4.1, but it won’t work. I’m not the only one though, so at least I didn’t break it.
@dgruia said:
I was having some MASSIVE issues with my mac mini recently that hosts my PMS. I had kept OS El Capitan on it because things were running smoothly and why ruin a good thing (i use the mini ONLY as a PMS, so i don’t care about upgrades to the OS, functionality, etc.).
However - i was on my last straws of what to do to fix the slowdown on the server, bit the bullet, and upgraded to Sierra (should be a free upgrade). For me, this did the trick and things are running smooth like butter again.
Check and see what version of OS you are on, it may be the same issue for you
I just updated to the most current version available to me, 10.10.5. Can I even download anything past that?
@dgruia said:
I was having some MASSIVE issues with my mac mini recently that hosts my PMS. I had kept OS El Capitan on it because things were running smoothly and why ruin a good thing (i use the mini ONLY as a PMS, so i don’t care about upgrades to the OS, functionality, etc.).
However - i was on my last straws of what to do to fix the slowdown on the server, bit the bullet, and upgraded to Sierra (should be a free upgrade). For me, this did the trick and things are running smooth like butter again.
Check and see what version of OS you are on, it may be the same issue for you
I’ve now updated both my Mac OS and Plex to the most updated versions and am STILL getting the “not powerful enough to transcode” message when trying to play on my Mini. Apparently now it’s trying to convert video that doesn’t need to be converted…
New information: I can play media from a separate directory on my Macbook with zero issues with regards to transcoding power to all of my devices. What gives? I’m seriously at a loss…
@cspinich said:
New information: I can play media from a separate directory on my Macbook with zero issues with regards to transcoding power to all of my devices. What gives? I’m seriously at a loss…
As stated by spikemixture above, this may be due to a codec issue, or something else to do with the media itself. I find Plex wants to transcode any XVID codec media, while Kodi/SPMC will just play it without issue.
Can you play it locally in VLC? If so, Tools > Codec Information (Command+J) in VLC should show you what video codec the media is using.
@cspinich said:
New information: I can play media from a separate directory on my Macbook with zero issues with regards to transcoding power to all of my devices. What gives? I’m seriously at a loss…
As stated by spikemixture above, this may be due to a codec issue, or something else to do with the media itself. I find Plex wants to transcode any XVID codec media, while Kodi/SPMC will just play it without issue.
Can you play it locally in VLC? If so, Tools > Codec Information (Command+J) in VLC should show you what video codec the media is using.
Everything I have can be played locally on VLC with no issues.
@spikemixture said:
Again
Surely the format, bitrate, codec, subtitles etc has some bearing.
Why has it not been mentioned/asked?
I have different codecs for different files, and yet they all meet the same fate. I can literally take the file from my Mini, put it on my Macbook, and play it with Plex with zero issues. The Macbook is another mid-2010 model with less RAM and the same storage setup sans external hard drive
As a test, can you successfully use the Mini as a client? That is, can you play a file locally hosted on the Mini? Can you play a Macbook-hosted file on the Mini?
@cspinich said:
I have different codecs for different files, and yet they all meet the same fate. I can literally take the file from my Mini, put it on my Macbook, and play it with Plex with zero issues. The Macbook is another mid-2010 model with less RAM and the same storage setup sans external hard drive
Can you grab the server log from playing the a file your macbook playing on the Plex client player, then using the exact same file play it from your Mini server with the same Plex client player.
in your log from 1.3.4 during the transcode the speed is below 1.0 speed=0.6 which is why the error comes up
@cspinich said:
New information: I can play media from a separate directory on my Macbook with zero issues with regards to transcoding power to all of my devices. What gives? I’m seriously at a loss…
I had a similar issue only with an SMB connection to a Windows server holding my media. I actually gave up and went to Plex for windows but always wanted to return to my MAC. I fixed my network issue and it now is flawless. Could your external hard drive be failing? Try a different USB port (assuming it is a USB drive).
