I am running a Plex server on a PC with Mint (up to date). I have a HDHomerun Dual on a switch with the server.
This has been running fine feeding various PCs, iPhones, and Apple TV 4K around the house.
After the recent update to 1.11.1.4730, Live TV is ‘jerky’ meaning that there are brief pauses (<1 second) in the video and eventually will show the spinner with a ‘weak signal’ message.
At the same time on the same network, I can open VLC or the HDHR app and watch the same program with no errors
The signal strength, signal quality, and symbol quality on the HDHR are all 90%+
The server is a i7, 16Gb RAM, not breaking a sweat during any Plex operations.
I do see a number of these entries in the server logs corresponding with when I tried to watch live TV.
`Jan 28, 2018 09:32:08.948 [0x7fe65fffd700] INFO - SQLITE3:0x10, 17, statement aborts at 57: [select * from metadata_items limit 1] database schema has changed
Jan 28, 2018 09:32:09.860 [0x7fe65fffd700] ERROR - EPG: JSON parse error. Data from request is { “message”: “Request forbidden by administrative rules”, “__type”: “CloudSearchException”}
Jan 28, 2018 09:32:09.860 [0x7fe65fffd700] WARN - EPG[onconnect]: Failed to load EPG.
Jan 28, 2018 09:32:40.800 [0x7fe66a3ff700] ERROR - Unable to find title for item of type 5
Jan 28, 2018 09:32:40.800 [0x7fe66a3ff700] ERROR - Unable to find title for item of type 5
Jan 28, 2018 09:32:41.548 [0x7fe65bbfe700] ERROR - [Transcoder] [mpeg2video @ 0x1fbbde0] Invalid frame dimensions 0x0.
Jan 28, 2018 09:32:41.576 [0x7fe659ffe700] ERROR - [Transcoder] [mpeg2video @ 0x1fbbde0] Invalid frame dimensions 0x0.
Jan 28, 2018 09:32:41.586 [0x7fe65c3ff700] ERROR - [Transcoder] [mpeg2video @ 0x1fbbde0] Invalid frame dimensions 0x0.
Jan 28, 2018 18:49:42.052 [0x7fe64f7ff700] WARN - Got a request to stop a transcode session without a session GUID (or with an invalid one).`
Ideas?
Just my two cents from my own setup…Is the device streaming the live tv on wifi? The weak signal doesn’t refer usually to tv signal strength…it refers to data signal for the streaming
For example in my crazy setup i had to connect the pc running the plex server handling tv and hdhomerun to the network over wireless - so every so often (because i’m streaming over n) i get the weak signal streaming 1080i mpeg2 streams
@mcrommert said:
Just my two cents from my own setup…Is the device streaming the live tv on wifi? The weak signal doesn’t refer usually to tv signal strength…it refers to data signal for the streaming
For example in my crazy setup i had to connect the pc running the plex server handling tv and hdhomerun to the network over wireless - so every so often (because i’m streaming over n) i get the weak signal streaming 1080i mpeg2 streams
No, the server is on 1Gb wired LAN.
The clients except for 2 PCs are wireless.
Yeah my first thought would be the issue lies with your wireless…some clients i have found that the plex server doesn’t reencode for…so it is sending out mpeg2 transport streams that can get close in 1080i to 20 mbit You might just be having issues on the wireless end
EDIT: Remeber HDHomerun’s own guidance is that the connect or any of the tuners that don’t reencode to h264 would need AC wireless. This isn’t always true but is good guidance.
Also i don’t have info about the errors you are seeing (especially the headers one)…a ninja or a team member will be better able to tell you if that means anything
@mcrommert said:
Yeah my first thought would be the issue lies with your wireless…some clients i have found that the plex server doesn’t reencode for…so it is sending out mpeg2 transport streams that can get close in 1080i to 20 mbit You might just be having issues on the wireless end
EDIT: Remeber HDHomerun’s own guidance is that the connect or any of the tuners that don’t reencode to h264 would need AC wireless. This isn’t always true but is good guidance.
When I look at the status>now playing for the Apple TV, it shows it is transcoding both the video and audio.
Anyway, not the network. Else, it would not work with other clients. And, I do have an AC router (Synology 2600) and of course, the Apple TV 4K is also AC. But, when I play back via a PC that is also wired, I get the same short pauses until it goes to weak signal.
Then I would look to signal issues with your hdhomerun. Having experienced something similar the problem often becomes that when you transcode bad MPEG2 you get those strange pauses when the transcoder doesn’t know what to do. I have recorded episodes off of PBS that have the same behavior. Is this happening on all channels?
@mcrommert said:
Then I would look to signal issues with your hdhomerun. Having experienced something similar the problem often becomes that when you transcode bad MPEG2 you get those strange pauses when the transcoder doesn’t know what to do. I have recorded episodes off of PBS that have the same behavior. Is this happening on all channels?
I shall look at the HDHR. However, if that is the issue, why does it have great playback on other apps?
When it works, Live TV is great. When it does not, it is kind of a black box.
I had signal that looked fine playing back on the HDHomeRun app, but would make recordings end early and have lots of buffereing when it was being transcoded for live tv. Sometimes I’ve found that borderline signals can make plex act very strangely…Have you opened up HdHomerun_config_gui to take a look at the signal? I run on windows so I don’t know if the utility is still there on Linux. Also there is an android app called hdhomerun signal meter. The SNR quality might be borderline.
@mcrommert said:
I had signal that looked fine playing back on the HDHomeRun app, but would make recordings end early and have lots of buffereing when it was being transcoded for live tv. Sometimes I’ve found that borderline signals can make plex act very strangely…Have you opened up HdHomerun_config_gui to take a look at the signal? I run on windows so I don’t know if the utility is still there on Linux. Also there is an android app called hdhomerun signal meter. The SNR quality might be borderline.
Yes, I have 90% on all signal quality readings as I said in the first post.
I’m going to go with there is a Plex problem, no indicators for other possibilities as far as I can see. I have opened a thread with SiliconDust, but really see no issue with the device, except when used with Plex. VLC and the HDHR app work fine.
Have you taken a look at your server logs recently? A slew of errors in there. This is a machine built just for this purpose, nothing else runs on it, in fact there isn’t even a monitor.
Here’s a snip of my log from attempting to watch live TV this morning. Mind you, nothing was being recorded at the time, no record was asked for. This is waking up the Apple TV and selecting a channel from Plex app.
Jan 30, 2018 06:55:45.226 [0x7f214c3ff700] ERROR - [Transcoder] http://127.0.0.1:32400/livetv/sessions/c1a63f06-6410-45e1-b502-c1c275d49592/D337E723-7625-48C8-B68A-AA58ADE3FE3A/index.m3u8?offset=-1.000000&X-Plex-Token=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx: Invalid data found when processing input
Jan 30, 2018 06:55:45.227 [0x7f21643ff700] ERROR - JobManager: child process returned: 1 (Operation not permitted)
Jan 30, 2018 06:56:05.909 [0x7f2156fff700] INFO - AutoUpdate: no updates available
Jan 30, 2018 06:56:08.605 [0x7f213cffa700] ERROR - DVR:Recorder: Error 3 (The recording was aborted) starting the record, shutting things down.
Jan 30, 2018 06:56:08.606 [0x7f21653dd700] ERROR - DVR:Subscription: Rolling media grab failed to start.
Jan 30, 2018 06:56:08.606 [0x7f213cffa700] ERROR - DVR:Grabber: Starting media grab failed.
Jan 30, 2018 06:56:15.023 [0x7f21567fe700] ERROR - Unable to find title for item of type 5
Jan 30, 2018 06:56:15.023 [0x7f21567fe700] ERROR - Unable to find title for item of type 5
Jan 30, 2018 06:56:15.471 [0x7f214c3ff700] ERROR - [Transcoder] [mpeg2video @ 0x2b2bde0] Invalid frame dimensions 0x0.
Jan 30, 2018 06:56:15.491 [0x7f2156fff700] ERROR - [Transcoder] [mpeg2video @ 0x2b2bde0] Invalid frame dimensions 0x0.
Jan 30, 2018 06:56:15.500 [0x7f21537ff700] ERROR - [Transcoder] [mpeg2video @ 0x2b2bde0] Invalid frame dimensions 0x0.
Jan 30, 2018 06:56:15.510 [0x7f214c3ff700] ERROR - [Transcoder] [mpeg2video @ 0x2b2bde0] Invalid frame dimensions 0x0.
Jan 30, 2018 06:56:15.548 [0x7f2156fff700] ERROR - [Transcoder] [mpeg2video @ 0x2b2bde0] Invalid frame dimensions 0x0.
Jan 30, 2018 06:56:15.558 [0x7f21537ff700] ERROR - [Transcoder] [mpeg2video @ 0x2b2bde0] Invalid frame dimensions 0x0.
Yeah you are right your issue is something for a ninja or a team member
