Movie Freezes when its going from Transcoding to Streaming (direct play)

Plex Media Server NAS & Devices
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1

Server Version#: Version 1.14.1.5488
Player Version#: Version 3.91.0

So, the problem seems to occur whenever the movie goes from Transcoding to direct play. It starts to just enter an endless buffer or something, and stops playing.

Dunno what happend because it recently started to behave like that, all I know it started after I updated to the last version of Plex Media Server.

I have played the movies locally and remotely, even played on the app on the phone, same issue on all of the devices.

Anyone got a hint?

Direct Play stream buffering
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maintenance item:

system locale not set:

Mar 14, 2019 23:03:58.383 [0x80acc9000] INFO - Plex Media Server v1.14.1.5488-cc260c476 - FreeBSD PC amd64 - build: freebsd-x86_64 freebsd - GMT 01:00
Mar 14, 2019 23:03:58.383 [0x80acc9000] ERROR - Failed to determine system locale: locale::facet::_S_create_c_locale name not valid. Defaulting to en-US.
Mar 14, 2019 23:03:58.383 [0x80acc9000] INFO - FreeBSD version: 11.2-STABLE (FreeBSD 11.2-STABLE #0 r325575+3b66a34f3aa(HEAD): Wed Feb 27 14:31:54 EST 2019     root@nemesis.tn.ixsystems.com:/freenas-releng/freenas/_BE/objs/freenas-releng/freenas/_BE/os/sys/FreeNAS.amd64), language: en-US

Notice, The transcoder is running.

The transcoder does not run in DirectPlay.

Mar 14, 2019 23:06:38.666 [0x80b4c2b00] DEBUG - Session wy9hspa6hofulefxtck8p7hi (4) is throttling
Mar 14, 2019 23:06:38.667 [0x80b4c2b00] DEBUG - [Transcoder] Throttle - Going into sloth mode.
Mar 14, 2019 23:06:39.211 [0x80b4c2b00] DEBUG - Request: [188.121.65.10:40141 (WAN)] GET /video/:/transcode/universal/dash/wy9hspa6hofulefxtck8p7hi/0/553.m4s (23 live) TLS GZIP Signed-in
Mar 14, 2019 23:06:39.211 [0x80b4c2b00] DEBUG - Asked for segment 553 from session.
Mar 14, 2019 23:06:39.211 [0x80b4c2b00] DEBUG - Returning segment 553 from session: "/tmp/transcodez/Transcode/Sessions/plex-transcode-wy9hspa6hofulefxtck8p7hi-3323757c-c27d-410e-b796-dad0ce843d92/chunk-stream0-00554.m4s"
Mar 14, 2019 23:06:39.212 [0x80b4c2b00] DEBUG - Content-Length of /tmp/transcodez/Transcode/Sessions/plex-transcode-wy9hspa6hofulefxtck8p7hi-3323757c-c27d-410e-b796-dad0ce843d92/init-stream0.m4s,/tmp/transcodez/Transcode/Sessions/plex-transcode-wy9hspa6hofulefxtck8p7hi-3323757c-c27d-410e-b796-dad0ce843d92/chunk-stream0-00554.m4s is 978075.
Mar 14, 2019 23:06:39.313 [0x80b4c2b00] DEBUG - Session wy9hspa6hofulefxtck8p7hi (4) is unthrottling
Mar 14, 2019 23:06:39.313 [0x80c641400] DEBUG - [Transcoder] Throttle - Getting back to work.
Mar 14, 2019 23:06:39.474 [0x80c641400] DEBUG - Transcoder segment range: 479 - 613```

The log file would be a series of "Request:" and "Completed:" only.
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I got it to work now, it seems, Locale is set, and
Assigned 3 more cores to the VM and it looks like it did the trick, thing is that I have been on the same amount the whole time and suddenly it started to buffer (when direct playing)…

I still got some errors , something about WFADevice…?
I will upload the zip, if there is something in it for you.

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The other “error” is because device discovery (used i.e. for DVR) is finding that IP but its probably not a DVR device or anything related to PMS, sound like an AcessPoint/Router.

You can safely ignore those, we do seem to probe for this devices a bit to excessively (especially when we know it failed), I’ve raise a internal issue to track this.

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Also depending on the processor you have, FreeBSD does support Hardware Transcoding which might help you here.

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Oh I see, thanks for the response.
Hardware Transcoding do I have enabled, still not sure if my processor can do it because of lack of GPU (E3-1231 V3),
Im still not sure why it goes over to Direct Stream (locally as Remote) and stops playing and only buffring when it does.

About the earlier response, it seems to be solved with assigning more cores, but after I updated to 1.15 it kept doing the same thing.

I downgraded to 1.14 again and now I could play the whole Movie. Still, the issue it seems, is that Direct play (locally or Remotely) just start to buffer and cant play, I cant recall that I had that problem earlier so I feel its hard to pinpoint the issue :frowning:

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Yeah the CPU would need to support to have integrated graphics and support Intel Quick Sync, which, according to ark.intel.com, doesn’t seem to be the case.

As for the Issue with DirectPlay that sounds odd, the previous logs only show Transcoding, can you post newer ones and a screenshot of the dashboard stating its actually using DirectPlay?

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Yeah Im gonna see if I can recreate the issue, im not home for the weekend so I have to check when I get home, i will be in touch :slight_smile:

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this time i tried with 2 streams, the movie keeps freezing a little while into the movie.

Still curious why the movie start to freeze as soon as it shows Direct Play.

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Ah ASS, its probably burning subs, and this cost much more in the CPU, but just to be 100% you can try to disable subs for a while and confirm the issue is not longer present!

However you seemed to have bumped into a bug in the Dashboard, I don’t see DirecPlay in the log.

I’ll see if I can reproduce this

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oh thats interesting , wonder what the bug can be about. The one thing i noted is whenever the dashboard shows Direct play, i got like 60 seconds (the buffer) then it starts buffering or how i should say. The movie stops and an endless buffer starts,

here is the logs from playing the movie without the subs,

Think im gonna restart PMS and get fresh logs, play the movie again without subs to get fresh data, want me to put on Verbose?

edit another thing that came in mind, can the Free space be and Issue?, still waiting on my HDDS but, current storage is on 87% the warning says, can that cause this issue?

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Yeah I suspect that when it buffers for a while it shows DirectPlay. It can either be a dashboard bug or PMS, cause this info is read from a PMS endpoint.

As for the subs and burning, no the issue would be space, that would show in the logs, the issue is that burning subs costs much more on the CPU, mind if I ask what hardware is this running on?

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The system I run this on is a WIndows 2012 R2 Server with a VM with Freenas which i got a Jail with plex.

CPU: E3-1231 V3
32gb Ram

Assigned to the VM was 1 core earlier, set it to 4 cores, but doesnt seem to do any difference. 16gb Ram is assigned aswell.

I played the movie without the subs and the same problem was there…

I have had any issues at all earlier, doing 2-3 playbacks at the same time, its just recently started and I got no clue at all why

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You weren’t doing transcodes before maybe, and you though it was the same now do the dashboard bug? Best thing we can do its test with just direct play and see what we get.

I.E. that 720 H264 without AAC audio stream and without the subs should be smooth, and even transcoding a H264 is ok for that CPU, provided the subs don’t need to be burned but also transcoded which would be the case for simple text based subs.

Btw in same cases (I’ve seen this myself with some anime I have you might be luck with changing Burn Subtitles: Automatic to Image Only.

If the client is able to understand/display the subtilte it will show, if not it will still be selected but nothing will show on screen, so you might want to give that a shot.

I understand its not ideally but its complicated to make assumptions about some formats, so he safe way is to burn them.

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to be honest I dont know, I have been watching the same Animes over and over without problem so I dont know why it started but im absolutely gonna give it a try to see…

I have ordered a new CPU, E3-1245V6 , hopefully transcoding will work like a charm

I have changed to Image only, im also trying the “Atumatically adjust Quality settings” to see if it does any difference

edit
Seems to be working with Beta settings for quality, Subtitles to Image only, havent stopped yet, so i uploading the logs if you want to compare

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