Movies keep pausing and/or restarting

Plex Media Server Remote Access
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Server Version#: 1.21.1.3876
Player Version#:

Experience issues where movies that are streaming pause (buffer) often, most of the time making the movies unwatchable.

I notice that progress bar shows the transcoder progress would be ahead of the movie - and then for no reason the movie would pause, the transcoder dumps its buffer and the movie will restart from the beginning. Ive tried so many different settings to lower quality down, but nothing seems to make a difference.

I am not sure if my movies are just encoded wrong or in a format that is not good for streaming or if this is Plex issue. I do not believe it is an issue with my hardware - I have a 2020 iMac with 3.8GHz Core i7 and 32GB RAM – My internet speed (while not crazy fast) tests at around 85Mbps for both upload and download.

Any help to try and figure this out would be amazing ! Thanks

I have attached the latest log from this morning (1-25-21) - A couple of movies were played yesterday where pausing was noticed. Plex Media Server.log (3.6 MB)

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what WiFi band are you using 2.4 or 5G

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My iMac is hardwired to my router.

Remotely - the devices are either using wifi, hardwired or accessing cellular - they all experience issues however.

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Yes I understand that, are you using wifi for your iOS devices to communicate with your iMac server.

I have much the same server without issue

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No,

I have someone that uses my Plex from their house using an Apple TV 4K - they are connected wifi (but they have over 75Mbps download speed) - they have pausing issues.

And I usually use my Verizon cellular service to access my Plex - with good signal - and also having issues.

My movies are stored on an external drive - since the iMac internal storage is only 1TB - but its transfer speed is over 100MB/s usually closer to 160MB/s.

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Got it, your having a Plex affair from a far. Cool…

What needs to be considered here is bit rate of your Movies and Quality settings on your clients.

Original, should be fine with that sort of bandwidth.

Look at remote setting on server and make sure your up speed and stream bit rate are correct.

Forget pushing 4K up the pipe unless you have reduced the bit rate.

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I have tried limiting the remote stream bitrate to 3Mbps (didnt seem to make a difference)

And I did make sure that the Transcoder temporary directory is on the SSD of the iMac

Transcoder default throttle buffer is set at 60 seconds – although Ive tried even upto 3600 seconds with no differences.

I have the upload speed set to 85Mbps (does this setting actually influence anything?)

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Most of my movies are only 720p with a bit rate of around 3-5Mbps

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It should be greater than your media bit rate. Are these files mkv?

Are you using subs?

What audio variants are you sharing?

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Just did another speed test and the upload speed is 95Mbps - which is know is not real world, but still much higher then what I encode my movies at.

The movies are in an MP4 pr M4V container - and most are x264 but a few newer ones are in the x265 format - both have issues unfortunately.

All my movies have subs - but I dont usually display them, and I doubt anyone else does – but I do add them to movie files.

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most of the movies - have AAC or AC3

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Very odd, I share with a guy In Virginia and I’m in Australia without issue.

Those formats are fine and should not transcode.

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well since I have the bit rate set at a max of 3Mbps - they do transcode, and it does use hardware

One thing I did notice is that on my iPhone - if I watch a movie through the web app - it works much better – using the Plex App - it always pauses, and restarts the movie - making it unwatchable.

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I appreciate all your help thus far…

Unfortunately its back to work for me now… I will be back this afternoon to check on anymore posts. Hopefully, someone can review the PLEX log or give further suggestions

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