Mac client freezes between tracks

Plex Players Desktop Players
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1

Server Version#: 1.27.2.5929
Player Version#: 1.48.2.3124-647ff031

I got a new m1 macbook pro and am encountering problems with both plexamp and the full-fledged plex client. When I skip tracks, Plex freezes for about 1 minute. Music will sometimes play in the background, while task manager shows the app as “not responding” and the UI is completely frozen. It freezes up when a track finishes and the app attempts to advance tracks.

I cannot repro this behavior on my iphone or apple tv. It happens when accessing the library over a LAN as well as over the internet.

This is the most interesting thing in the logs:

Jul 11, 2022 15:23:16.243 [0x30d199000] DEBUG - [MPVEngine/mpv] lavf: EOF reached.
Jul 11, 2022 15:23:22.058 [0x204811600] INFO - [Web] [QWebChannel(player.set)] audioDevice,audioChannelLayout,audioPassthroughCodecs,transcodeToAC3Enabled,playbackRate,refreshRateSwitchingDelayMilliseconds,refreshRateSwitchingEnabled,volume,subtitleDisplay,videoProfile,deinterlacingEnabled,exclusiveAudioEnabled,hardwareDecodingEnabled,normalizeDownmixedVolumeEnabled: {"errorCode":0,"result":{"audioChannelLayout":{"errorCode":0,"result":null},"audioDevice":{"errorCode":0,"result":null},"audioPassthroughCodecs":{"errorCode":0,"result":null},"deinterlacingEnabled":{"errorCode":0,"result":null},"exclusiveAudioEnabled":{"errorCode":0,"result":null},"hardwareDecodingEnabled":{"errorCode":0,"result":null},"normalizeDownmixedVolumeEnabled":{"errorCode":0,"result":null},"playbackRate":{"errorCode":0,"result":null},"refreshRateSwitchingDelayMilliseconds":{"errorCode":0,"result":null},"refreshRateSwitchingEnabled":{"errorCode":0,"result":null},"subtitleDisplay":{"errorCode":0,"result":null},"transcodeToAC3Enabled":{"errorCode":0,"result":null},"videoProfile":{"errorCode":0,"result":null},"volume":{"errorCode":0,"result":null}}}
Jul 11, 2022 15:23:22.059 [0x204811600] INFO - [Web] [QWebChannel(player.queue)] response: {"errorCode":0,"result":null}
Jul 11, 2022 15:23:22.059 [0x204811600] INFO - [Web] [QWebChannel(player.play)] sending: []
Jul 11, 2022 15:23:22.060 [0x30d199000] INFO - [MPVEngine] Resuming playback.
Jul 11, 2022 15:23:22.061 [0x204811600] INFO - [Web] [Connections] Testing all 1 connection(s) for [Loopback]
Jul 11, 2022 15:23:22.061 [0x204811600] INFO - [Web] [Servers] Waiting for initial servers = [Loopback]
Jul 11, 2022 15:23:22.061 [0x204811600] INFO - [Web] [Commands] Executing testServerConnection
Jul 11, 2022 15:23:22.061 [0x204811600] INFO - [Web] [Connections] Retrying connection tests for [Loopback] in 30 seconds
Jul 11, 2022 15:23:22.061 [0x204811600] INFO - [Web] [Connections] Testing connection for [Loopback] at http://127.0.0.1:32400/media/providers
Jul 11, 2022 15:23:22.068 [0x204811600] INFO - [Web] [Connections] Testing legacy connection for [Loopback] at http://127.0.0.1:32400
Jul 11, 2022 15:23:22.068 [0x204811600] ERROR - [Web] [Connections] [Loopback] is unavailable at http://127.0.0.1:32400/media/providers (Status 0)
Jul 11, 2022 15:23:22.068 [0x204811600] ERROR - [Web] [Connections] [Loopback] is unavailable at http://127.0.0.1:32400/media/providers (Status 0)
Jul 11, 2022 15:23:22.069 [0x204811600] ERROR - [Web] [Connections] All connections to [Loopback] failed
Jul 11, 2022 15:23:22.069 [0x204811600] INFO - [Web] [Servers] Found all servers = archive_media, plex.tv
Jul 11, 2022 15:23:22.069 [0x204811600] ERROR - [Web] {
  "message": "timeout of 30000ms exceeded",
  "name": "Error",
  "stack": "Error: timeout of 30000ms exceeded\n    at e.exports (file:///Applications/Plex.app/Contents/Resources/web-client/js/577-577-8ef88be9189dbe10f753-plex-4.85.1.25008-18eb981.js:2:506022)\n    at XMLHttpRequest.h.ontimeout (file:///Applications/Plex.app/Contents/Resources/web-client/js/577-577-8ef88be9189dbe10f753-plex-4.85.1.25008-18eb981.js:2:501871)",
  "status": 0
}
Jul 11, 2022 15:23:22.069 [0x204811600] ERROR - [Web] {
  "message": "timeout of 30000ms exceeded",
  "name": "Error",
  "stack": "Error: timeout of 30000ms exceeded\n    at e.exports (file:///Applications/Plex.app/Contents/Resources/web-client/js/577-577-8ef88be9189dbe10f753-plex-4.85.1.25008-18eb981.js:2:506022)\n    at XMLHttpRequest.h.ontimeout (file:///Applications/Plex.app/Contents/Resources/web-client/js/577-577-8ef88be9189dbe10f753-plex-4.85.1.25008-18eb981.js:2:501871)",
  "status": 0
}
2

It looks like its trying to fall back to http but can’t, or maybe there’s a firewall in the way.
The sever and player are the same Mac for this experiment?

I’m curious what happens if you loosen up the client,
Settings > Plex For Mac : General > Show Advanced > Allow Fallback To Insecure Connections > On same network as server

I can’t replicate this, but I’m not sure I have enough details yet.

3

Server is always a synology device.

I already had that setting as you described. I tried the other two settings (‘always’ and ‘never’) but the client still freezes.

Do you mean a firewall on the server? That’s true. Although I can’t check the settings now, it should permit plex access and doesn’t interfere w. the ios client.

4

Would you please edit your original post and add the server-synology tag when you get a chance? There are a few experts here on that hardware, but it’s beyond my experience. They are subscribed to that tag, which is why I ask. They would most likely want to see your server log after you’ve restarted PMS and demonstrated the issue on a fresh boot. I sanitize my logs if I post them here.

The firewall was a guess :slight_smile:

5

FWIW I disabled the synology firewall and it had no affect.

6

I have a strange feeling it might be trying to convert to AC3.
Looks like transcodeToAC3Enabled is set.

Let’s add a tag for PlexAmp

Please provide

  • mediainfo on a track
  • redacted logs from client and server.

I suppose networking could cause an app to pinwheel.
Is it happening wired and wireless?

7

possible to get the full mac app logs? You can message them to me if you don’t want to post here Windows/Mac app logs | Plex Support

8

@nibbles. Yes. wired/wireless, local/remote/vpn. Nothing makes a difference.

Nearly all of my music is FLAC. It seems to hang longer in larger files like high res files (see attatched)

Sorry, do you have a tool you use to redact logs?

example-mediainfo.txt (2.3 KB)

Also, I just had my girlfriend try on her M1 and she could repro.

9

Here are some logs for posterity:

Plex.log (994.2 KB)

There might be a couple records of a missing track in here. Please ignore.

10

Your logs aren’t terribly useful without also knowing the wall-clock time of when this occurred. Otherwise it is searching for something specific in a sea of noise since you have numerous playbacks. I looked at a few of the playbacks and I didn’t see anything off but I suspect I wasn’t looking at the correct ones.

11

Thanks gbooker02. The app stalls on every track. It seems to be worse the larger the file. I’m linking to a screen capture. Unfortunately it does not capture the MacOS mouse spinner, but I think you might be able to see that the app is stalling as the track-position indicator does not progress.

You can also see in the task manager view I captured where the app shows as “not responding”–unfortunately this is a bit delayed.

https://bl-temp.s3.amazonaws.com/plex-stalling.mp4

12

This seems to be related to this. Are there known issues running the Plex client on new macs?

13

Anecdotally, no issues on my new mini, which doesn’t help you but its something.

Searching your log for SACD) in a text editor I can see you queue each new track.
Seems to match the video so we can see what it’s doing.

Still trying to reproduce it with my hires FLAC files. They don’t transcode to opus according to my dashboard, although I don’t have 24/88.2. My 24/96 and higher play well.

Can we get some Mac console video when it hangs? Maybe there’s a slew of error messages the system is logging outside of Plex.log.

Lanuchpad > Other > Console.app > Start Streaming > Errors and Faults

14

Good to hear things are working well on mini.

Here are system logs captured during a couple plex hangs. Note that the client hangs on all music. It’s just particularly bad on large/hi-res files. I captured these logs playing 16bit FLACS so I didn’t have to wait song between skips. I did some redaction on these and there’s some other stuff peppered in there, but it’s mostly logs from Plex.

system_logs.txt (1.3 MB)

15

Don’t know about that log. Let’s refocus on what GBooker specifically requested.

  • Set a time when there will be no other access to Plex.
  • have a desktop open with clock minutes and seconds visible.
  • Put server into debug log mode. Put player into debug mode too.
  • restart PMS and the Mac.
  • after at least 5min, choose an even time on the clock like 9:10pm to start playback.
  • At 9:10:00 start playing a track
  • At 9:11:00 skip a tack
  • at 9:12:00 skip a track
  • at 9:13 stop playback.
  • at 9:14+ download logs.

If you could video that with a console log
if you upload Plex Media Server.log
aaand the player log
/Users/chesirecat1/Library/Logs/Plex/Plex.log
you’d be a better user than me.
That should be enough to help GB get started.

Personally i was impressed at your video link. Can a regular human put up a video like that with a direct link on AWS? Admittedly I don’t get out much, but that was slick.

16

So the length of the time the app is frozen is absolutely proportional to the size of the file. It’s also worse when I am not on my home network.

When skipping to the next track, sometimes that next track will actually play–but the UI remains frozen. I think what’s happening is the client get stuck trying to buffer the entire track as, when the client app unfreezes itself, the buffer bar is 100% full. So the app remains frozen for the amount of time required to cache the entire track.

@nibbles Anyone can create an s3 bucket and enable public access. A client like Transmit. makes it easy to quickly upload files to it.

17

It seems like it is buffering the entire file before starting playback. Does this only occur with FLAC? What if you were to remux one of these FLAC files into an MKV?

18

Yes it does seem like that. Happens with ALAC files as well. It even does it w. mp3s, but those files are so small they buffer to 100% almost immediately.

19

Hello, I encountered the same problem, the relevant information is as follows:

  • Server Version: 1.28.0.5999 (QNAP X86)
  • Player Version: 1.49.1.3146-73559c78 (Plex for Mac , MacBook Air (M1, 2020) )
  • Problem Description: Mac player becomes unresponsive for a long time when it starts playing music
  • the time the problem occurred: Beijing time, July 31, 22:05
  • log: log.zip (765.8 KB)

@BigWheel @gbooker02 , Please help with this issue. Thanks

20

I have been using the plex web app wrapped in a Fluid app, where the problem does not occur. (Spatial audio support too!)

But after updating the Mac Plex client to 1.49.1.3146, the issue seems alleviated, but not altogether gone. The “hang time” no longer seems equivalent to the amount of time required to buffer the entire file, but just some initial portion of it. This is very anecdotal, but on my local network this means a ~2-3 second delay for a 24bit track and ~1 second for a 16bit FLAC.