Media playback glitches (Only on iPhone)

Plex Players Mobile Devices
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The movie will play as normal for several minutes at a time. Then the video and audio jump back about 3 seconds and repeats the most recent part it played. Then it freezes for a few more seconds and then resumes from a point further ahead than when it froze. The whole time this is happening the playhead moves forward at a constant speed. Additionally the only way to get that part to playback smoothly again is to quit the app and start watching again. It’s a little difficult to explain over text so I attached a short .mp4 screen recording for reference (below).

This is an issue that happens across every movie and TV show I have but only on my iPhone. The problem has plagued me for around 8 months or so. There is smooth playback on my Mac and iPad. Deleting and re-installing on my phone as well as switching between the beta and current version makes no difference. This playback issue happens so often (every 2-3 minutes) I’ve almost entirely given up watching on my phone.

Would love any insight into this issue.

Example: PlaybackIssue-2.zip (16.0 MB)

Thanks!

Server Version#: 1.20.3.3437
Player Version#: 7.8.1

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@trumpy81 This only happens on my iPhone though and the behavior is consistent across 15 TV shows and a few movies. My iPad, Apple TV and MacBook Pro all behave properly and never experience this issue. Even someone else’s iPhone works great and without issues when I gave them access to test it.

I have done all the basic rebooting of NAS/Router/iPhone and this issue has persisted for 8 months.

My media files are all encoded as MP4, h.264 that I personally converted and set-up.

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Hello, I have attached logs and a text file. Waited a bit after it had the playback issue and then downloaded the logs.

Thanks for the help.

Plex Media Server Logs_2020-10-18_16-33-11.zip (4.4 MB)
EpisodePlayback-XML.txt (4.0 KB)

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Thanks for checking that out and sorry for the delayed response! I broke down all the sections to make it easier and attached logs again if that’s helpful.

Plex is having a hard time communicating with plex.tv, the connection is timing out.

I had rebooted my router around that first timestamp so I think that was the issue.

Probably as a result of the network issue, your network does not appear to have much bandwidth and that is most likely what is causing your playback issues.

I don’t think I mentioned this but I’m having issues on my local home network. My Synology is hardwired and I’m using an AmpliFi mesh system that gives me good coverage and speed throughout the house. Not sure what’s causing my bandwidth issues especially with local playback.

Having a second video transcoding and streaming is probably not helping.

I was the only one connected to my NAS and was only streaming one show so I’m not sure the reason it would start transcoding more than one. Unless it’s because I had logged-in on my desktop to download the logs and it started transcoding my most recently watch episode on the computer without me starting playback.

Try rebooting the modem/router and everything connected to it, including any wireless devices.

I rebooted everything this morning (Modem, Router, APs, NAS, iPhone). The issue still persists. Happened twice both about 2 minutes apart and then downloaded logs 2 minutes after the second issue. Total episode playback time was 5:51.

If your router has any settings pertaining to DNS Rebinding Protection, then make sure you allow the *plex.direct private domain to pass through.

I dug around online and it looks like AmpliFi does not offer that as an option.

Logs + XML:
Plex Media Server Logs_2020-10-24_12-20-23.zip (3.4 MB)
EpisodePlayback-XML-10-24-20.txt (3.9 KB)

Thanks again!

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Yeah, and I don’t normally have issues on my other devices it’s just my iPhone.

I checked my iPhone settings and I don’t have low data mode enabled. I’ll have to look into what’s causing the bandwidth limit.

Disabling Enable Relay might have fixed my problem. I was able to play through the rest of the episode without issues. I’ll try it over the course of the next few days and then mark as solved if that’s the case. Looking through a new set of logs I also didn’t see it list a bandwidth limit.

Thanks for helping me with this! I’ll update in a few days.

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I usually just leave it on Auto. I’ll keep checking my networking and see if I can get it back to being rock solid but it seams to be working better now so I’ll mark it as solved. Thanks for all your help!

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