No complaints here. I honestly appreciate your help.
Plex Client Logs_2021-11-04_22-17-54.txt (241.1 KB)
Plex Media Server Logs_2021-11-04_22-17-54.zip (3.8 MB)
Ok, I’m seeing that the Plex Web client is having issues communicating securely with your server. It’s odd that other clients work but some don’t. Do you have any special configuration in your network that may be interfering? Firewall, VPN, reverse proxy, etc. Or some special software on these 2 computers for added security?
I just disabled anything remotely similar to what you named, including booting into safe mode with networking. The behavior did not change. I’ve also tried it on 6 Windows machines and 3 different browsers (with and without extensions) with no change. I also upgraded my laptop to Windows 11 which did not change the behavior.
But in all of that, I did find 2 files that 5 out of 6 of the Windows machines could play.
Since even safe mode didn’t change anything, I even looked at my router (since everything goes through it.) But I haven’t touched those settings in months - before this issue became apparent.
This may or may not be related, but I also have a TCL Roku TV that has been 100% fine playing our Plex files - until a few days ago. Now it says that it cannot direct play the video because direct play has been disabled. But direct play is enabled and I haven’t changed anything with that configuration since I set it up years ago.
Again, I appreciate your efforts. What next?
Well, it does look like the 2 issues are related. All of the files that play on the Windows Web Client also play just fine on the TCL Roku TV and all the ones that fail on the Web Client fail on the Roku TV with a “Direct Play disabled” message, despite Direct Play being set to FORCED. That suggests that its something common to both clients. All of these files used to play just fine maybe two weeks ago.
Looks like something on your server is blocking transcodes from working.
That just means the app will prevent PMS from transcoding, but playback can still fail if something isn’t supported.
Lets try playing back something from Roku. The logging there is better and may provide more information on what’s preventing the playback/transcode.
- restart PMS
- wait 3 minutes for all the startup stuff to finish
- playback a video from Roku that you’ve seen fail
- wait 30s after the failure to make sure logs are written out
- grab Roku logs
- grab server logs
- send me both logs
As requested:
Plex Media Server Logs_2021-11-06_18-56-02.zip (4.5 MB)
Roku Logs_2021-11-06_18-56-02.txt (142.7 KB)
Ok, so I see you are trying to play an episode of Johnny Quest on your Roku. That file is 10-bit hevc which your Roku does not support, so this video will not play. I’m not sure what error should be shown, but it is expected that you will get an error message of some sort when trying to force direct play of an unsupported file.
That explains the Roku, but I don’t know why when using Plex Web your server won’t transcode the file. Are you sure you don’t have the transcoder disabled? Can you provide a screenshot of that setting like I had a few comment above.
No, I did have Transcoding disabled. After your message, I enabled it and the files work again. It is confusing that the error message says the server isn’t powerful enough to transcode, when it is really that the client requires transcoding. The Roku error message was closer to the truth.
The reason I had turned it off was that I couldn’t watch 4K material remotely on 4K TVs or my android devices. It seemed that the transcoding was killing the server. But I could watch them smoothly if I streamed them without transcoding. I guess I can have the PR4100 transcode for local viewing and the SHIELD not transcode video at all for remote viewing?
Thank you VERY much for helping me figure this out. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it.
This topic was automatically closed 90 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.
