Is Plex on Synology unreliable? Should I switch back to Windows?

Plex Media Server NAS & Devices
1

I’m really close to giving up on running Plex on my Synology NAS and going back to running it on a dedicated Windows box. :frowning_face: From a CPU perspective, the 1019+ can transcode 1080p MKV files just fine, but I have so many problems it’s become an embarrassment rather than a source of pride when offer Plex server access to friends and family. People are stopping using my Plex server because it’s so unreliable. It disturbs me greatly that I can’t offer what I used to.

I feel like an idiot because I invested $1100+ on the 1019+ and the expansion unit, thinking that I could finally shut down my dedicated Windows server and run Plex on the Synology. This hasn’t gone as planned at all.

Is the Synology version of Plex just less stable/robust than the Windows version? I ran Plex on Windows for years and years without any major issues, and so far I can’t go for a week without a major Plex issue on my Synology. :grimacing:

I know there are talented developers doing their best to make a great experience for people, but I also know there are far fewer people running the Synology version of Plex than the Windows version, so it likely doesn’t have the same amount of testing.

Or does Plex on Synology struggle with MKV files more than on Windows, and if I transcoded everything to h.264 MP4s, would this make my Plex life easier?

2

I am running Plex on a DS918+ with standard ram with absolutely no problems at all (this is I believe the base same spec as your machine). I bought the server at Christmas so been running it for nearly 5 months. It works on all devices I use - TV, iPhone and tablet. I run H264 and H265 files in mkv, mpeg and other file types.

the one thing I did when setting up was to follow the guidance in the Synology Synology FAQ's ... Read This First!

Make absolutely sure that the Plex install file comes from the Plex website, not the Synology package centre https://www.plex.tv/media-server-downloads/#plex-media-server.

Make sure you Add Plex as a trusted publisher for package installations

Also make sure that Transcoding is enabled in the Plex options. Be aware that to enable Transcoding, you’ll need a Plex pass. Without this performance will suffer notably.

3

Also worth mentioning that my dad is 130 miles away and has my Plex libraries available to him on his LG OLED TV - it all works with no problems at all. I’m also sitting in the office running it right now on my iPhone, watching Game of Thrones with no problems.

It’s all in the setup, devil is in the detail.

4

@jasondunn

Can you please recreate and capture whatever problem(s) you’re having (get the log files) and attach them?

One at a time, we’ll work through them. We might get lucky and discover the first problem resolved fixes them all.

This said,

Settings - Server - General - Show Advanced.
Make certain DEBUG logging is enabled and VERBOSE logging is disabled.

Please recreate the most pressing issue.
Stop Playback
Settings - Server - Troublehooting - Download Logs
Attach the ZIP file

5

@pauldoree Thanks for your comments. Makes me feel better knowing someone has this working right. :grin: I’ve done all the things you’ve listed, am a Plex pass subscriber (lifetime) and have hardware transcoding turned on.

@ChuckPa I appreciate you chiming in. Wouldn’t you know it, since posting this it’s been 100% stable. Figures, right? The more I look at things, the more I believe it was a Synology NAS issue and not a Plex issue. I was seeing horrendously slow network file transfers (KB/s instead of MB/s) but after a reboot of the NAS everything came back and Plex has been working great all week. So I am befuddled as to what to do next, because I’m not sure Synology can do anything if I can’t get the server into that weird state again.

6

OK @ChuckPa, major Plex (or maybe NAS) issues tonight. I’m going to go in reverse order - after rebooting my NAS when Plex became non-responsive (which I’ll post about later), I waited a few minutes, then fired up Plex again. It took quite a while for the stream to start, and when it did the audio was completely out of sync - it sputtered, stuttered, and was several seconds out of sync with the actors lip movements. I backed out of the playback and re-started it - after a few audio glitches it was fine…and so far playback has been OK. Anything in the log files indicate why the slowness in stream starting and audio glitches might have occurred? The file in question is an MKV of Unbreakable.

Plex Media Server Logs_2019-05-25_21-25-36.zip (3.4 MB)

7

Thanks for the logs and telling me what to look for.

  1. I do see it transcoding (at least the audio).
  2. It did search for subtitles too and looks like it found them. Do you have them enabled ?
May 25, 2019 21:22:56.966 [0x7f5ab0b43700] DEBUG - Auth: authenticated user 1 as jasondunn
May 25, 2019 21:22:56.975 [0x7f5ab0b43700] DEBUG - It took 0.000000 ms to retrieve 107 items.
May 25, 2019 21:22:56.977 [0x7f5ab0b43700] DEBUG - We're going to try to auto-select an audio stream for account 1.
May 25, 2019 21:22:56.977 [0x7f5ab0b43700] DEBUG - Selecting best audio stream for part ID 17550 (autoselect: 1 language: en)
May 25, 2019 21:22:56.977 [0x7f5ab0b43700] DEBUG - We're going to try to auto-select a subtitle.
May 25, 2019 21:22:56.977 [0x7f5ab0b43700] DEBUG - Audio Stream: 69547, Subtitle Stream: -1
May 25, 2019 21:22:56.981 [0x7f5ab0b43700] DEBUG - MDE: Selected protocol hls; container: mpegts
May 25, 2019 21:22:56.982 [0x7f5ab0b43700] DEBUG - MDE: analyzing media item 17539
May 25, 2019 21:22:56.982 [0x7f5ab0b43700] DEBUG - MDE: Unbreakable (2000): Direct Play is disabled
May 25, 2019 21:22:56.982 [0x7f5ab0b43700] DEBUG - MDE: Unbreakable (2000): media must be transcoded in order to use the hls protocol
May 25, 2019 21:22:56.982 [0x7f5ab0b43700] DEBUG - MDE: Unbreakable (2000): no direct play video profile exists for http/mkv/h264/pcm
May 25, 2019 21:22:56.982 [0x7f5ab0b43700] DEBUG - MDE: Unbreakable (2000): no direct play video profile exists for http/mkv/h264/ac3
May 25, 2019 21:22:56.982 [0x7f5ab0b43700] DEBUG - Unbreakable - audio.channels limitation applies: 6 > 2
May 25, 2019 21:22:56.983 [0x7f5ab0b43700] DEBUG - Unbreakable - audio.channels limitation applies: 6 > 2
May 25, 2019 21:22:56.983 [0x7f5ab0b43700] DEBUG - MDE: Cannot direct stream audio stream due to profile or setting limitations
May 25, 2019 21:22:56.983 [0x7f5ab0b43700] DEBUG - MDE: Unbreakable (2000): selected media 0 / 17539
May 25, 2019 21:22:56.984 [0x7f5ab0b43700] DEBUG - Streaming Resource: Added session 0x7f5a542ebc10:e915c1511e16bcd1aedfa46351c98caf
May 25, 2019 21:22:56.984 [0x7f5ab0b43700] DEBUG - Streaming Resource: Reached Decision id=7582 codes=(General=1001,Direct play not available; Conversion OK. Direct Play=3000,App cannot direct play this item. Direct play is disabled. Transcode=1001,Direct play not available; Conversion OK.) media=(id=17539 part=(id=17550 decision=transcode container=mpegts protocol=hls streams=(Video=(id=69546 decision=copy width=1920 height=1080) Audio=(id=69547 decision=transcode bitrate=640 encoder=ac3 channels=6 rate=48000))))

if you would hover over that movie, expose the ellipsis, click it and “Get Info” then “View XML”.
When you see that, copy (with your cursor) everything down to where the audio, video, and subtitles ends (right where actors and genre start)

Next, in the reply window,

```
paste text here
```

and Reply.

The text you paste (XML) will be kept in nice format and easy to read (like I do with error logs)

8

Thanks for the quick response! I did not have subtitles turned on. I have it set to Direct Play on my 4K Apple TV. I wonder why it’s transcoding the audio?

Hopefully I got the info you asked for:

<MediaContainer size="1" allowSync="1" identifier="com.plexapp.plugins.library" librarySectionID="12" librarySectionTitle="Movies" librarySectionUUID="6e479ce7-bdd0-4d64-ac38-c6f2c4cee698"mediaTagPrefix="/system/bundle/media/flags/" mediaTagVersion="1557919790">

<Video ratingKey="7582" key="/library/metadata/7582" guid="com.plexapp.agents.imdb://tt0217869?lang=en" librarySectionTitle="Movies" librarySectionID="12" librarySectionKey="/library/sections/12"studio="Limited Edition Productions Inc." type="movie" title="Unbreakable" contentRating="PG-13" summary="An ordinary man makes an extraordinary discovery when a train accident leaves his fellow passengers dead — and him unscathed. The answer to this mystery could lie with the mysterious Elijah Price, a man who suffers from a disease that renders his bones as fragile as glass." rating="6.9" audienceRating="7.7"viewOffset="3773000" lastViewedAt="1558848417" year="2000" tagline="Some things are only revealed by accident" thumb="/library/metadata/7582/thumb/1558841557" art="/library/metadata/7582/art/1558841557"duration="6407433" originallyAvailableAt="2000-11-13" addedAt="1503371494" updatedAt="1558841557" audienceRatingImage="rottentomatoes://image.rating.upright" chapterSource="media"primaryExtraKey="/library/metadata/10690" ratingImage="rottentomatoes://image.rating.ripe">

<Media id="17539" duration="6407433" bitrate="29327" width="1920" height="1080" aspectRatio="1.78" audioChannels="6" audioCodec="pcm" videoCodec="h264" videoResolution="1080" container="mkv"videoFrameRate="24p" audioProfile="pcm_s16le" videoProfile="high">

<Part accessible="1" exists="1" id="17550" key="/library/parts/17550/1503371494/file.mkv" duration="6407433" file="/volume1/Movies/Movies/Unbreakable.mkv" size="23492757264" audioProfile="pcm_s16le"container="mkv" deepAnalysisVersion="3" requiredBandwidths="36269,35449,33704,32389,32050,31893,30958,30215" videoProfile="high">

<Stream id="69546" streamType="1" codec="h264" index="0" bitrate="23934" language="English" languageCode="eng" bitDepth="8" chromaLocation="left" chromaSubsampling="4:2:0" colorPrimaries="bt709"colorRange="tv" colorSpace="bt709" colorTrc="bt709" frameRate="23.976" hasScalingMatrix="0" height="1080" level="41" profile="high" refFrames="3"requiredBandwidths="30789,29972,28120,26913,26573,26416,25481,24791" scanType="progressive" width="1920" displayTitle="1080p (H.264)"/>
<Stream id="69547" streamType="2" selected="1" default="1" codec="pcm" index="1" channels="6" bitrate="4608" language="English" languageCode="eng" audioChannelLayout="5.1(side)" profile="pcm_s16le"requiredBandwidths="4605,4605,4605,4605,4605,4605,4605,4605" samplingRate="48000" title="Surround 5.1" displayTitle="English (PCM 5.1)"/>

<Stream id="69548" streamType="2" codec="ac3" index="2" channels="6" bitrate="640" language="English" languageCode="eng" audioChannelLayout="5.1(side)" requiredBandwidths="640,640,640,640,640,640,640,640"samplingRate="48000" title="Surround 5.1" displayTitle="English (AC3 5.1)"/>

<Stream id="69549" streamType="3" codec="pgs" index="3" bitrate="17" language="English" languageCode="eng" requiredBandwidths="22,22,22,22,22,22,22,22" displayTitle="English (PGS)"/>
<Stream id="69550" streamType="3" codec="pgs" index="4" bitrate="16" language="Français" languageCode="fre" requiredBandwidths="21,21,21,21,21,21,21,21" displayTitle="Français (PGS)"/>
<Stream id="69551" streamType="3" codec="pgs" index="5" bitrate="16" language="Español" languageCode="spa" requiredBandwidths="24,24,24,24,24,24,24,24" displayTitle="Español (PGS)"/>
<Stream id="69552" streamType="3" codec="pgs" index="6" bitrate="15" language="Português" languageCode="por" requiredBandwidths="22,22,22,22,22,22,22,22" displayTitle="Português (PGS)"/>
<Stream id="69553" streamType="3" codec="pgs" index="7" bitrate="12" language="中文" languageCode="chi" requiredBandwidths="16,16,16,16,16,16,16,16" displayTitle="中文 (PGS)"/>
<Stream id="69554" streamType="3" codec="pgs" index="8" bitrate="20" language="ไทย" languageCode="tha" requiredBandwidths="30,30,30,30,30,30,30,30" displayTitle="ไทย (PGS)"/>
<Stream id="69555" streamType="3" codec="pgs" index="9" bitrate="16" language="Bahasa Indonesia" languageCode="ind" requiredBandwidths="23,23,23,23,23,23,23,23" displayTitle="Bahasa Indonesia (PGS)"/>
<Stream id="69556" streamType="3" codec="pgs" index="10" bitrate="18" language="മലയാളം" languageCode="mal" requiredBandwidths="24,24,24,24,24,24,24,24" displayTitle="മലയാളം (PGS)"/>
<Stream id="69557" streamType="3" codec="pgs" index="11" bitrate="13" language="한국어" languageCode="kor" requiredBandwidths="21,21,21,21,21,21,21,21" displayTitle="한국어 (PGS)"/>
<Stream id="69558" streamType="3" codec="pgs" index="12" bitrate="0" language="Français" languageCode="fre" requiredBandwidths="19,19,19,19,19,19,19,19" displayTitle="Français (PGS)"/>
<Stream id="69559" streamType="3" codec="pgs" index="13" bitrate="0" language="Español" languageCode="spa" requiredBandwidths="1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1" displayTitle="Español (PGS)"/>
<Stream id="69560" streamType="3" codec="pgs" index="14" bitrate="0" language="Português" languageCode="por" requiredBandwidths="1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1" displayTitle="Português (PGS)"/>
<Stream id="69561" streamType="3" codec="pgs" index="15" bitrate="0" language="ไทย" languageCode="tha" requiredBandwidths="1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1" displayTitle="ไทย (PGS)"/>
</Part>
</Media>

Moderator Edit : I added the triple-backtick on the lines before and after what you pasted.

9

Now we can see what’s happening more clearly. This should make some sense on your end.

The player is either set for 2 channel (stereo) or is only capable of it.
The only audio, AC3, was transcoded from 5.1 -> 2.0

As for those PGS subtitles, I would strongly recommend you remux them right out of there unless you really want to carry around all those languages?

10

The player in question is a Roku Ultra, so I’d be surprised if it was only capable of two channel playback. I’ve never seen that type of glitch before, but it was an old movie so perhaps this was just a one-off. As for the subtitles, when I rip to MKV using MakeMKV, I rarely spent the time clicking through and de-selecting all the subtitles…sometimes there are a lot of them. What kinds of issues does leaving them as part of the MKV container create? I didn’t have subtitles turned on for this movie.

The “real” log files that I wanted to upload are below - these are from when my Synology is flaking out hard and movies wouldn’t play back in Plex until I rebooted. I’m not sure if there’s anything in here that will help pinpoint what’s really happening as I think it may be a Synology issues moreso than a Plex issue - perhaps there are some clues though?

Plex Media Server Logs_2019-05-25_20-49-28.zip (4.0 MB)

11

This is another problem I now find:

Hardware transocding is not enabled. final decoder: vaapi, final encoder: vaapi will be listed when it is.

May 25, 2019 20:32:37.458 [0x7fe14bd11700] DEBUG - [Universal] Using local file path instead of URL: /volume1/Movies/Movies/Unbreakable.mkv
May 25, 2019 20:32:37.459 [0x7fe14bd11700] DEBUG - TPU: hardware transcoding: final decoder: , final encoder: 
May 25, 2019 20:32:37.459 [0x7fe14bd11700] DEBUG - Job running: EAE_ROOT='/volume1/Plex/tmp_transcoding/pms-9bd0e44c-4797-461a-a556-707f5bbf9fee/EasyAudioEncoder' FFMPEG_EXTERNAL_LIBS='

Please go to Settings - Server - Transcoder - Show Advanced.
Now “Use Hardware Acceleration when available” should be checked.

Screenshot%20from%202019-05-30%2001-18-28
Screenshot from 2019-05-30 01-18-28.png1053×167 118 KB

When you are playing, you can look in the Now Playing, see the movie playing and also see the (hw) indication.

12

Well that’s really odd. I turned on hardware transcoding the first day I set up the Synology and have never turned it off. I looked and the checkbox is on for hardware transcoding. So why would it be checked but the software thinks it isn’t? I’ve watched MKVs and the CPU usage doesn’t go above 10%, so it’s definitely using the QuickSync to transcode.

13

@ChuckPa Watching Aquaman tonight after rebooting the Synology I was seeing audio glitches (drops/distortions), some buffering, and one instance of “The server isn’t powerful enough to play back this video” (or whatever the exact wording is. Here are the logs from that timeframe:

Plex Media Server Logs_2019-06-01_21-54-07.zip (3.6 MB)

I also saw at least one “playback has stopped due to multiple errors” type message. That was just a few minutes ago and should be in these logs (I’m not sure if these will also contain the earlier errors, so I’m uploading both):

Plex Media Server Logs_2019-06-01_22-15-09.zip (3.8 MB)

I never saw issues like this when I was running Plex on Windows - the issues were different, and more rare. Does Plex on Synology use different decoder libraries on Synology vs. Windows? Am I giving myself extra problems by sticking with MKV files vs. transcoding to MP4?

14

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