Generally it should work. There was a change or two that’s not upstreamed to FFmpeg/MPV but other than that it should be fine. The ones that come to mind are the bypassing of DNS lookup (so naive DNS rebinding protection doesn’t interfere) and my fix for TrueHD passthrough in certain media.
An update was just released that, according to the release notes, should address the stuttering issues.
I just updated Plex to v.1.110.0.351-4e48eb83 and now every movie I try to play stutters and the app is getting unresponsive. My machine is old (2.6 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7, with OS 11.7.10) but I never had a problem before with Plex. I can watch my movies on plex.tv no problem. I can also play movies using Plex if I shrink the player to about quarter size. What is going on? Additionally, since the update alot of my music files are now wrongly filed, the library is totally messed up, wrong artist, wrong albums, this is on both my mac computers and iOS I don’t know if that is related?
I saw this for Plex HTPC but not for the regular Plex app for Mac
I did try the latest Plex app for Mac a few days ago and the stuttering seemed to be even worse than before, essentially choppy all the time with no smooth frames.
But also no indication that the Plex app for Mac had been fixed, so maybe that’s expected?
Hey any chance you’ve got a copy of v.109 for MAC?
I peeked inside the libmpv.2.dylib from the new Plex app with otool to see what was in there and what shared library it used.
The library does have OpenGL support:
/System/Library/Frameworks/OpenGL.framework/Versions/A/OpenGL (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 1.0.0)
But if I compare with the one compiled through homebrew, there is a LOT missing.
There are a few things that are a bit behind in terms of version numbers (e.g. libavcodec.59.dylib instead of libavcodec.61.dylib or libavutil.57.dylib instead of libavutil.59.dylib
It doesn’t mean much in itself, since it might be a lot of features that are not even remotely touched in the Plex app, but I see things like Metal and QuartzCore in there that could (maybe) also be beneficial for smooth video playback. I wonder if I should do the symlinking trick again……
This is not the same thing as videotoolbox-gl support. That is the key feature that was missing and what I fixed. This requires OpenGL, Video Toolbox, and the special glue code that allows no-copy of the hardware decoded picture into OpenGL. It was that 3rd piece that was missing and that’s what I fixed.
There are quite a few things missing from the way Plex builds the library mostly because they are not used. For example, Metal is not used and will still not be used if you put in a library built with it (not mentioning the way that OpenGL and Metal interact that is). I had plans to investigate using Metal via MoltenVK but higher-ups had other plans.
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Thanks a million for your insight and for clarifying gbooker02!
Is there anything I can do to get Plex to work on MacOS? Or do I have to wait for an update? its totally unusable for me since v.1.110. I can’t find how to report a problem to Plex either.
Settings > Player > Show Advanced > Video Playback Quality: Setting it to Low Quality made me able to play most videos without stuttering (not 4K files though).
Is gbooker02 or anyone at Plex aware of this issue? I’m on an Intel 2019 MacBook Pro, and suspect maybe on newer machines they’re not seeing the issue.
I am very much aware but as you can see that next to my username it no longer says Plex Employee. Nor does it for anyone else who has worked on the native and playback sides of these desktop apps.
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Same for me, and the video streaming (which shouldn’t’ require any transcoding) is still pretty bad (choppy video, lag between audio and video sometimes, fans running full blast on top of it all).
It certainly wasn’t the case a few builds ago so whatever was fixed in the latest release didn’t quite correct it all.
Hopefully, the powers that be will notice and do something about it (and I very much appreciate your helps and guidance on the matter gbooker02 — I am aware that since you don’t work there anymore, there is little you can personally do).
There are also issues with the GUI on Windows, and on macOS with my M1 chip, there’s constant stuttering… it’s unbelievable how this project is falling apart.
I’m already testing Jellyfin and Emby to see if either of them can meet my needs without the problems I’m having with Plex. (I don’t mind losing the money I spent on the Plex Pass lifetime subscription.)
Hello! For anyone observing this issue can you please reproduce the issue then capture your Plex for Desktop logs along with your PMS logs, please?
Of course! And I made sure to run a quick test and play from the Mac right before collecting the logs to make it easier to find,
Player Logs.zip (89.7 KB)
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I’m confused. Your Player logs are showing PMS logs and not what I would expect from the player logs. Can you double check the path you used to get the player logs?
Also, @cortig can you review your Plex Media Scanner Analysis logs can confirm that the title included is actually playable outside of Plex. It seems to be flooding your logs with errors.
Sorry, I used the path that’s further down the page and relates to downloads.
Here are the proper ones for the player.
Plex.zip (438.1 KB)
I also checked the file in question:
Format : MPEG-4
Format profile : Base Media / Version 2
Codec ID : mp42 (isom/iso2/avc1/mp41)
File size : 389 MiB
Duration : 41 min 58 s
Overall bit rate mode : Variable
Overall bit rate : 1 296 kb/s
VideoID : 1
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : Main@L4.1
Format settings : CABAC / 2 Ref Frames
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, Reference frames : 2 frames
Format settings, GOP : M=4, N=50
Codec ID : avc1
Codec ID/Info : Advanced Video Coding
Duration : 41 min 58 s
Bit rate : 1 157 kb/s
Width : 1 280 pixels
Height : 720 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 25.000 FPS
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.050
Stream size : 348 MiB (89%)
Title : Video Track
Writing library : x264 core 164
Encoding settings : cabac=1 / ref=2 / deblock=1:0:0 / analyse=0x1:0x111 / me=hex / subme=8 / psy=0 / mixed_ref=1 / me_range=16 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=2 / 8x8dct=0 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / fast_pskip=1 / chroma_qp_offset=0 / threads=22 / lookahead_threads=3 / sliced_threads=0 / nr=0 / decimate=1 / interlaced=0 / bluray_compat=0 / constrained_intra=0 / bframes=3 / b_pyramid=0 / b_adapt=0 / b_bias=0 / direct=3 / weightb=1 / open_gop=0 / weightp=2 / keyint=50 / keyint_min=26 / scenecut=0 / intra_refresh=0 / rc_lookahead=50 / rc=crf / mbtree=1 / crf=21.0 / qcomp=0.60 / qpmin=0 / qpmax=69 / qpstep=4 / vbv_maxrate=2500 / vbv_bufsize=1250 / crf_max=0.0 / nal_hrd=none / filler=0 / ip_ratio=1.40 / aq=2:1.00
Language : English
Color range : Limited
Codec configuration box : avcC
AudioID : 2
Format : AAC LC
Format/Info : Advanced Audio Codec Low Complexity
Codec ID : mp4a-40-2
Duration : 41 min 58 s
Source duration : 41 min 58 s
Bit rate mode : Variable
Nominal bit rate : 125 kb/s
Maximum bit rate : 129 kb/s / 128 kb/s
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Channel layout : L R
Sampling rate : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate : 46.875 FPS (1024 SPF)
Compression mode : Lossy
Source stream size : 37.6 MiB (10%)
Title : Audio Track
Language : English
Default : Yes
Alternate group : 1
tagc : public.main-program-content
TextID : 3
Format : Timed Text
Muxing mode : sbtl
Codec ID : tx3g
Duration : 41 min 48 s
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 113 b/s
Stream size : 34.7 KiB (0%)
Title : Subtitle TrackLanguage : English
Default : Yes
Forced : No
Alternate group : 2
It’s not even a very large and complex file…
And if it makes you feel any better, it’s not slow and stuttering with just this file: I see it with all movies!
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Also, @cortig can you review your
Plex Media Scanner Analysislogs can confirm that the title included is actually playable outside of Plex. It seems to be flooding your logs with errors.
The one file I found referenced in there is unrelated (I haven’t tried playing it at all lately). It looks like it’s corrupted indeed and I simply deleted it, which should clear out new errors in the PMScanner analysis logs.
great thanks, the errors were making it difficult to see that issue we want to focus on.
Out of curiosity, I checked on the same Mac using Infuse (with Plex connection) instead of the Mac Plex media player.
The same videos played nice and smooth: No stuttering, 9% CPU use only and the fans never kicked in…
There is really something quite off with the current Plex Mac player.
