Server Version#: Windows 10
Player Version#: Version 4.140.1
I allow a friend to access remotely via a managed account.
I have Plex Pass.
When they watch a movie that is longer than 2 hours it stops and they receive a connection error message. This is on a smart TV app.
I logon as them on an iPad and am able to play the movies past that 2 hour mark, and also on my smart TV.
Any thoughts on why this might be happening?
Thanks!
Continuing the discussion from Movies >2 hours stop playing for managed account:
Additional information for this problem.
I am a lifetime Plex pass user, and I tried this on my phone, over an Internet connection, and I received the stop at two hours on a movie that was longer than two hours.
If I’m paying for Plex pass surely, this should not happen!
Please advise ASAP
Thanks!![quote=“usbrit1, post:1, topic:893624, full:true”]
Server Version#: Windows 10
Player Version#: Version 4.140.1
I allow a friend to access remotely via a managed account.
I have Plex Pass.
When they watch a movie that is longer than 2 hours it stops and they receive a connection error message. This is on a smart TV app.
I logon as them on an iPad and am able to play the movies past that 2 hour mark, and also on my smart TV.
Any thoughts on why this might be happening?
Thanks!
[/quote]
I have searched the support forums and found this article that provides some insight but not a proper solution
https://support.plex.tv/articles/201105343-advanced-hidden-server-settings/
I know how to edit registry but it does not provide an example of what the new entry should be…
Should the entry be for TranscoderDefaultDuration with a DWORD value of Hex 240, or Decimal 240?
Confusing! And I presume the Plex server should be restarted after making the change…
When creating the registry entry, be sure to choose the correct type:
String ValueDWORD (32-bit) ValueIf you wish to make this change, then create a new DWORD called TranscoderDefaultDuration, and the value of 240. Almost certainly it is expecting a Decimal value of 240, as a Hex number is rarely numerals only (hex is 16 digits, so the numbers are 123456789ABCDEF)
I am skeptical that this will fix your issue, but if it works then that’s great. More likely, we need to find out why you server is unable to determine the length of a video when it transcodes it for the client. Saving and posting the server logs right after the client stops with that error ought to give us clues to find out why this happens.
Another thing I’d suggest getting logs for is right when your client STARTS to watch a movie. If the server is transcoding the video, then the logs will explain why that is happening, which also may give us clues. But for now, let’s just try to capture the logs when it fails at the end of the video.
One last thing, is for you to try to Analyze the video. If Plex is unable to determine the duration of the video, it failed to Analyze the video, and that can cause odd things to happen to players.
Strange that this happens only to the managed user…
Will try the simple things first, and then will attempt to get logs.
I did find out that this happens on my ID as well if I am watching the video outside of my home network, i.e. on 5G, for example.
Thanks for responding.
And one of the thing I forgot to mention is that it actually does show the length of the movie as being three hours and 16 minutes, but still does not play past the two hour mark. The movie is Troy by the way with Brad Pitt.
Here are the results of my tests and the logs. I did do an Analyze on the movie to start.
Plex Media Server Logs_2024-10-30_09-49-45.zip (4.7 MB)
Actions taken:
This seems to only happen when playing movies using Plex app outside of my own network. Anything less than 2 hours plays fine.
Hope this helps and thanks in advance!
Outside the network, you are likely running up against each client’s own self-imposed limit on bit-rate for video. Check your clients “Remote” video speed, and set that to unlimited. If the video is too high of a bit-rate for the self-imposed limits, the server will decide to transcode the video, rather than sending it as-is. As of right now, the only thing I can think of to avoid the video stopping at the 2 hour mark is to avoid transcoding. If your home’s upload is capable of a high upload speed, then transcoding will only ever trigger if your client (a mobile phone, for example) cannot handle the original video.
I’m disappointed that the registry setting you set didn’t fix this. I have no idea why any server would self-impose a 2 hour transcode limit. My own server is Linux, and I have never had this happen to me. Maybe someone with more Windows server knowledge will know about this.
I can’t read logs myself, but hopefully someone else that can will come along and find out what in them is causing this.
Thanks for the feedback.
When you reference ‘Remote’ video speed, I am not sure which setting you mean. When I look at Setting for the client on my iPhone, Quality is the only one that possibly could have some bearing on the playback…as far as I can determine.
My settings are in the uploaded screenshot.
On the server side, I changed the internet upload speed to 4mbps, after doing a speedtest (I get 6, but options were 8 or 4).
I also changed a couple of network settings:
Preferred network interface, to Ethernet. I had ‘Any’ in there as I have 2 connections on this server for wi-fi and wired ethernet.
Remote streams allowed per user - from unlimited to ‘1’
Terminate Sessions Paused for Longer Than - from 0 to 30 (not sure if this is minutes or seconds).
I shutdown and restarted the Plex server, then used my client, on 5G on iPhone to play the movie, and it went past the 2 hour mark (see attached screenshots #2, #3).
I paused and fast forwarded to near the end, and it froze the picture but played the audio - I think this is a buffering issue. I suspect if you continued to play as normal it would not do this. Selecting chapters after the 2 hour mark had no problems and all played fine.
I am going to ask my remote client user to try playing the movie on the smart TV app and see what happens. If it plays OK, then it was one of the server settings I changed. If it does not then I am going to have to figure out how to change the quality settings in their smart TV app. I will report back as and when this is done.
Sorry, one other question…
How do we actually get a developer from Plex to look at issues like this. i.e. someone with intimate knowledge of the product and ale to read the logs?
I understand this is a ‘free’ download, but Plex Pass users pay either a monthly or lifetime subscription to make use of the client capabilities.
Just wondering…
Try to use a web browser to change server settings. Internet upload speeds is a text field for me:
“Preferred Network interface” is to set which interface to send the videos out on. If you have multiple, ethernet is vastly preferred over wi-fi. The point of the setting is for people with multiple networks on each interface, which I doubt you are using.
“Remote streams per user” is to prevent someone from loaning their account info to another person and watching two movies on two devices. This can hurt yourself, if you started watching on one device and started on another. If you didn’t properly stop the video, the old device may be “using” the connection and it will prevent you from starting the video back up on another device. This shouldn’t have any effect on your issue, I believe.
“Terminate Sessions Paused for Longer Than” setting is useful for the setting above. If someone pauses a video and walks away, Plex will close that connection after X minutes. The text below the setting on my server states that it is in “minutes”. I have mine at 0 (no limit).
Have you restarted the entire computer since you made changes to the registry? Windows needs to reboot to reflect these changes, and I don’t recall if you said you did so (just Plex itself), so I wonder if that is what caused your issue to get fixed (so far). Here’s hoping that it works fine, though the frozen video with audio seems a bit scary to me.
Plex Pass doesn’t include any guarantee of support, but they have been pretty good at chiming in if the users cannot fix another user’s issue for them. But it feels to me like browsing the forums is more of a hobby of theirs, not a job. So we can try a shameless poke to ask one for help such as @shark2k to check out the logs you provided, or if they know why remote connections might fail instantly at the 2-hour mark on any video.
Oh, I forgot to mention that when you have “Automatically Adjust Quality” enabled, you cannot adjust the remote data speed of a client. Turn that off, and see if the options I mention appear.
My apologies for not replying sooner! I made all the changes as noted in my Oct 31 reply, and my remote user only just got to trying it out. All worked fine! Thanks for the help!
This topic was automatically closed 90 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.
