I bought the 3TB version as soon as it became available as I have been looking for a portable Plex Server for quite a while. I’ve been using Plex for over 3+ years now at home and love it, but wanted something for the kids when traveling. All my media was created by Handbrake with the intention of never needing to be Transcoded by Plex, so I figured a low-powered NAS solution (ARM v7 CPU running Linux) would be fine.
Everything started out well with the drive, easy setup and fast file transfer from my Home Plex Server. The media analysis was very slow, but i figured it was okay since I have 1500 movies for it to process. Initially I was having a lot of performance issues, just loading movie info was very, very slow. I was seeing a lot of SLOW QUERY messages in the logs and was getting a lot of Auto Scans kicking off. So, I optimized the Database, disabled Verbose and Debug logging, switched to daily scans and cleaned everything out I could. This made a big difference, and actually made Plex usable, so now I am down to my last issue: About 50% of my media is unplayable. The files are all MP4s, H.264 encoded, AAC Audio, 480p Video and play perfectly without transcoding on my Home Server. I have attached the log from one of the playback sessions, but I believe the main issue is this error:
Jul 11, 2016 12:48:39 [0xac7bf400] ERROR - Error seeking in file to offset 3021933280 - 0
When I play the same movie with the MyPassport iOS app it works fine, so the issue must be with PMS. Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Then stop Plex. Delete the log files entirely (do not delete the Plug-in Logs directory).
Start Plex.
Recreate the same seek error.
Stop Plex
Gather all the log(s) (zip if mulitple)
Attach to your next post
Not sure why it was trying to connect to that 0.36 machine, it’s a different PC on my local network that was sleeping. I shut it down and the HTTP error went away, but still can’t play the movie. I have attached the Debut level logs. Thanks again!
You definitely need to Optimize the database. Those slow queries are not good.
Jul 11, 2016 22:40:01 [0xaad0d400] WARN - SLOW QUERY: It took 310.000000 ms to retrieve 6 items.
Jul 11, 2016 22:40:02 [0xaad0d400] WARN - SLOW QUERY: It took 290.000000 ms to retrieve 6 items.
Jul 11, 2016 22:40:02 [0xaad0d400] WARN - SLOW QUERY: It took 280.000000 ms to retrieve 5 items.
Jul 11, 2016 22:40:02 [0xaad0d400] WARN - SLOW QUERY: It took 290.000000 ms to retrieve 4 items.
I’m still asking and learning about the WD Wireless Pro. I am NOT pleased with the seek & write errors. If I take them at face value and it’s writing to the disk, then there is a physical disk problem. If it’s writing to a socket, this is entirely a software issue.
While I research more, Please take care of the Database issues and see if PMS can come up cleaning, stay idle for a minute and then shut down cleanly, collecting the logs one more time after. What you were able to get so far looks truncated. A normal shutdown shows a ‘Signal 15 shutdown’
I ran the Optimize DB, Clean Bundles and Empty Trash, but still see the SLOW QUERY warning when loading the Movie Details / Metadata page. I did a clean start, test then shutdown of Plex to get updated logs for you. I have been using the MyPassport UI to start and stop Plex, not sure if that’s okay or if I should be manually running the Shell scripts on the actual box. I am familiar with Linux, but this is my first time running Plex on it (have existing OS X and Win 7 Plex Servers).
I ran CrystalDiskInfo on the drive, and the SMART info looks fine. I also tried the Windows Disk Error Check tool and it thinks the drive is error free. I can play the movie directly off the drive when it is attached to a PC or Man via USB, so the file and disc seem okay.
The slow query means the database is still running slow. I cannot answer why it is at this point so we will press on.
the seek error is from the lseek() system call. It is setting the absolute position where it wants to be in the file ( lseek(fd, offset, 0) ). Please check the size of the file and compare it to the seek offset (which is the absolute byte position). The OS will report ‘seek error’ if attempting to seek beyond EOF.
I would only check the drive using its internal tools since the drive has a processor.
If you’re willing to go into it at the shell level (command line), please do a normal PMS shutdown and rename / copy the PMS log file (you can ignore the scanner logs) elsewhere and make it accessible so you can then retrieve it.
I will be getting one of these in a few days (hopefully) and be able to learn more of how it actually works. In the mean time, I can only presume it’s a linux kernel and filesystem.
If you wish to try other things with this particular file, Analyzing it again in PMS will force it to rescan and force-update all PMS knows about it, including file length.
If you can think of any ‘linux tests’ you would perform on it, feel free to do so provided they are non-destructive
Here is the Movie I am trying to play:
3023722500 Oct 13 2014 /DataVolume/Movies/Action/Batman/The Dark Knight.mp4*
Here are the seeking errors:
Jul 11, 2016 23:52:33 [0xaeced400] ERROR - Error seeking in file to offset 3016949760 - 0
Jul 11, 2016 23:52:34 [0xb0659400] ERROR - Error seeking in file to offset 3019636736 - 0
Jul 11, 2016 23:52:34 [0xaeced400] ERROR - Error seeking in file to offset 3021406208 - 0
Jul 11, 2016 23:52:34 [0xb0659400] ERROR - Error seeking in file to offset 3017083208 - 0
Jul 11, 2016 23:52:35 [0xaeced400] ERROR - Error seeking in file to offset 3019770184 - 0
Jul 11, 2016 23:52:36 [0xaeced400] ERROR - Error seeking in file to offset 3019060424 - 0
Jul 11, 2016 23:52:37 [0xad965400] ERROR - Error seeking in file to offset 3021931944 - 0
It does seem like the file is larger then the seek offset to me. Also, ran fsck on the disk and other then the fact that the pre-installed WD materials have an invalid DATE, it looks fine. The FileSystem is exFAT.
I will play around with it some more and see if i can discover something. Thanks again for your help!
Thanks for your work on this, Bryan. I bought one of these WD drives recently (based on the Plex claim) and can only get about 30% of my movies to play thru Plex…all others just hang. But using Twonky and Infuse, they’re all fine! How crazy is that?
Cheers,
Steve
Thanks to Bryan and Joerg for their input. I’ve played around with this for a couple of hours today, without any clear results. Situation is:
All files in my Movies and TV Shows folders will play using Twonky and the Infuse PRO client. It’s somewhat clunky, nowhere near as good as Plex, but it works reliably.
Some files will play in Plex, but I can’t see anything in their naming or container/structure which would either cause them to fail or distinguish them from ones that will play!
I have tried using the Plex Optimise function without any success.
In my view, so far, this WD product has been rushed to market on the back of the success of Plex. The one consistent error I get when trying to get a file to play on either the Chrome (plex.tv) or Ipad app is “This Server is not powerful enough to convert video”. This seems to me (as a non-techie) to indicate that Plex is trying to transcode the file but failing. I’m wondering whether this is a Plex or a WD problem and I’m wondering whether both will blame the other for the failure. Until it’s fixed however, I believe it is up to WD to publish guidance to their customers.
With over 50 movies and well over 200 TV Shows on my device, I have yet to run into a video I can’t play.
I have used the Optimize function in Plex to convert every single video, using the 4Mbps/720P setting (even if they were already an mp4).
I Optimize, move to the WD and then test play each one. They have all worked so far.
Following last post, have had some success using Handbrake to convert files to IPad preset. Is much faster than the Plex Optimize, but looks like there’s a solution, if somewhat time consuming!
Using Infuse with Plex DLNA server gives me the same results as Plex with Plex client, some play, most don’t
Using Infuse with Twonkey plays everything.
WD MyCloud client plays everything as well and is extremely fast.
Infuse is a very nice product, but is kind of the reverse of what I want. I use Plex so I can manage and store all the meta data on the server, not on every single one of my clients.
All my media is encoded with the same exact handbrake settings, so I can only conclude its a PMS issue. I have tried re-copying the files that don’t play, tried re-analyzing them, but can’t get Plex to play them.
The not powerful enough message is documented when using a low power (ARM) NAS. I think that’s reasonable, I don’t expect an iPhone 4 to be able to do realtime H.264 transcoding.
@austar123 said:
Following last post, have had some success using Handbrake to convert files to IPad preset. Is much faster than the Plex Optimize, but looks like there’s a solution, if somewhat time consuming!
Thanks for that. I may try and use that also. Although, setting a few movies or a couple of TV seasons to run overnight/when Plex is not being used means I don’t even realize Plex is doing it (I work from home so during the day I can just set up a few to run periodically throughout the day also).
Well I did a factory restore on the WD Passport Pro tonight and started over. Re-installed Plex, setup a fresh library, copied 1 of the movies that Plex was refusing to stream properly and it worked. Will be moving over my media slowly and spot checking it as I go along. Will keep you all posted.
