Hi all! I’ve seen several topics regarding this, but they were either far too old or didn’t cover my situation correctly.
I haven’t had much trouble with my server personally since I’m only using a wired connection when I watch, but when my parents or sister try to use the server at the same time there’s significant lag and stuttering. My parents are watching on a Chromecast, and my sister and brother-in-law are watching on their PS4. If they watch individually, everything still works fine. However, the second they try to stream while the other is, all hell breaks loose. It stutters, pauses, and buffers to an unwatchable state.
I’ve checked all of my settings to the best of my knowledge - my transcoder is set to “make my CPU hurt”, secure connections are disabled in my network, and my Internet connection is more than up to the task (67.2mbps down, 61.3mbps up). I would appreciate any suggestions on what I’m missing!
What kind of CPU and how much memory do you have? Also instead of using the make my CPU hurt, maybe try the prefer higher speed encoding.
Is your media stored on a local drive? Are the others watching on the same network as you, or at different locations?
I am going to say if they are at the same location/network as you, check to see if the ps4 and the chromecast is close to the router and has good signal, as i am guessing they are both using wifi. Stuttering/buffering issues can be many things though honestly, from network issues to CPU bottleneck issues
I’m on an AMD FX-8150, it has 10GB of RAM. It’s about 3 years old or so, but it’s never been sluggish in terms of Plex (that I can tell).
My media is on my second hard drive, which is local. One of the watchers is local (about 10 feet away from the router) and the other is across town.
ok, so your AMD FX-8150 has a passmark of 7620.
1 video @ 1080p/10Mbps = 2000 PassMark
so you could have 3 1080p videos @ 10Mbps w/transcoding, so that shouldn’t be a issue there.
what does your internet speed show when doing a test at speedtest.net? both upload and download.
Another thing to check is the bitrate of the videos if they are large files, it could saturate your download/upload when they are pulling separate media files. You said they play fine when playing alone, so it could be more of a network issue. maybe try having them both play at 720p or below and troubleshoot to see if they still stutter.
Yeah it definitely doesn’t seem like the CPU is an issue so far.
My Internet: 
How would I set it to force the bitrate to 720p? I could see that solving the issue, everything I have is normally high-quality.
@greycobalt said:
Yeah it definitely doesn’t seem like the CPU is an issue so far.
My Internet:
How would I set it to force the bitrate to 720p? I could see that solving the issue, everything I have is normally high-quality.
You would have to go into the settings in each plex client and adjust the video resolution. Should be 3 settings Local, Remote and Online Quality.
