Newly Installed Plex Worked! And then didn't... And now, does on some devices?

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I just installed Plex after finding out my Vizio TV has the ability to use it, and I was looking for a reason to move the Android TV box I have running on it if there was a way to use it elsewhere.

I’m no stranger to hardware/software and have been troubleshooting PC’s for over 25 years. This one, however, has me more than a bit stumped. Here’s the play-by-play of what’s happened in the past four hours.

  • Downloaded Plex Server to my Media Server (a PC) and added all of my media sources. Two subdirectories with movies, and three subdirectories with TV Shows across four different hard drives. Plex was super-simple to configure, and I thought, “wow, this looks amazing.”
  • Started the Plex Server’s identification of my movies and TV shows, and set aside time for it to search and identify my large number of files.
  • Installed the Plex app on my Vizio TV and it connected seamlessly to the server. Again, a “wow, this is great!” moment.
  • Tried to play a couple of videos as they appeared on the Vizio TV and aside for some pausing and restarting (due to the load on the server chunking through files) everything looked A-MAZING. The video quality on the player far surpasses that of Kodi, which I have used for the past six years, and long since it had been XBMC. So far, so good.
  • I tried playing the same videos on my Android Phone, and they worked as well. (Although, not being a Plex Pass purchaser - heh - I only got a full minute of play.) Still, they looked great.
  • As I realized that Plex was going to take a fair bit of time to finish, I set off to do other tasks. After a couple of hours, I returned and it was almost done with the identification. It had finished the movies, and was 99% through the TV shows.
  • I turned on the Vizio TV app and tried a couple of the videos that had worked fine at the start. No dice. Each one gave me a “codec error” or a “Plex transcoder failed to start up”. Hmm. I decided to let it finish the identification.
  • Once the server had completed, I tried again. I now always get the “Transcoder failed to start up” on the Vizio TV with any file.
  • When I try to run it from my Desktop PC, I get “Conversion failed. A required codec could not be found or failed to install.”
  • When I try the same videos on my phone, everything runs flawlessly. I don’t know what to say.

I am looking for some insight into what to do. I spent a number of hours on getting this up and running, and as my TV only seems to support Plex as an app, I’m at an impass. I would prefer to not have to go back to Kodi, or install a different app like Emby on the Android TV box to lighten the load.

Can anyone point me to some idea I can try? Thanks very much, in advance!

EDIT: I’m still troubleshooting, and did find out that I can stream MP4 files, however, MKV files seem to be failing everywhere. I’m not sure what that means, but I’m still looking. I’ll post all updates here, as well as the solution if I find it on my own. Thanks!

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Was in your same boat but I switched to Plex when xbmc became Kodi…

Read this especially the way bottom extra Vizio support.

https://support.plex.tv/articles/203810286-what-media-formats-are-supported/

I have a 55" Vizio but took it offline cause I preferred the Samsung’s but the Vizio did a great job.

Check your media info to make sure it is supported containers and codecs and audio.

Is your TV hardwired or on wifi? Get hardwired if you can…

Report back and we can check a few other things to make sure you get working.

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Is the server running Windows 7?

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Check your media info to make sure it is supported containers and codecs and audio. Is your TV hardwired or on wifi? Get hardwired if you can… Report back and we can check a few other things to make sure you get working.

Everything I have is an MKV, shy of maybe two MP4 files. (Both of those seem to work great.) I do find it odd that the files played on the TV while the libraries were building originally, and then, everything stopped working once complete. I’ve reviewed the Coles Notes on Plex and it looks like it should have support for MKV. My TV is wifi, sadly. I haven’t a cable long enough to reach the router.

The other item is, of course, that the files don’t even play anymore on my PC Browser, with the same error. I’m thinking it may be an issue with how the program installed on my server, so I’m considering doing a full uninstall and reinstall there… Before assigning ALL of my media files, however, I was going to copy a few MKV’s that I know worked into a separate subdirectory, and only assign that to Plex. This way, I can test if they work during the library update, and then soon after when the update completes.

Is the server running Windows 7?

No sir, it’s running Windows 10.

EDIT: Holy heck. While doing my uninstall processes, I am doing everything to clear out the original files/metadata/etc. I’ve removed the registry keys, and am in the process of deleting the %appdatalocal% subdirectory - that’s when I noticed, it’s currently at 54K files and 1GB of space! (And counting!) Now, I realize I have a lot of media stored here, and that’s why I wanted to move to a centralized server rather than having multiple media boxes storing all of this data, but this seems like a bit of overkill… Mama mia. (EDIT EDIT: Now deleting 80K plus files over 1.5GB in size. Crazy.)

EDIT EDIT EDIT: So, I’ve completed the reinstall, and added a single file to my new media library. No dice on playing it on my PC. I still get the “Conversion failed. A required codec could not be found or failed to install” error. I’ve started a conversion on the file to see if I can set it as “Optimize for Mobile” but when I check the status, I get this error: " There was a problem converting 1 item. Check the status in Optimized Versions Settings". Upon clicking the link, I notice that it’s stuck at 0% even after ten minutes. So, I’m guessing there’s some issue with the transcode/optimize function on the server.

If anyone has an idea, I’m willing to test anything. If I cannot come up with a solution, I think I’m just going to drop out of using Plex altogether. It’s a shame, as it looks like what I need for all of my devices.

Thanks again for all the help so far.

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Post your logs and then others can see what is going on.

%LOCALAPPDATA%\Plex Media Server\Logs

Are you using local storage or mounted storage and by chance did you put a directory location in the blank for Transcoder Directory?

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Thanks, Tiebierius. I’ll post up logs shortly, as I’m just testing something. (I’ll hold off on what that is for the moment, as it doesn’t involve Plex directly.)

I am using local storage - the system is Windows 10 with 17TB of internal hard drive space… As for the directory location for transcoder, that I did not do. I will test that as soon as my other tests are complete, and report back!

Thanks again!

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Plex downloads the codecs to transcode, if there is a problem in reading, writing or executing the codecs you will get your error message. I didn’t mean to imply that you needed something in the blanks only that if this was on a drive share it needs rwx. Is the storage managed through software or Windows Disk Management.

I’ll leave you to it, best to go slow and change one thing at a time.

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I’ll leave you to it, best to go slow and change one thing at a time.

I appreciate the quick reply, thank you. I guess I will share what I’m trying at the moment, prior to re-attempting Plex this afternoon.

I’ve installed Emby Server, and have tested with the single file as I had with Plex. It runs without a hiccup so far. I am now going to do what I had originally tried with Plex, which was to add my entire library of movies and tv shows, and see how it fares. If all goes well, I’m going to retry Plex again this afternoon, and see if I can get it up and running.

I will, of course, report back on all findings. (I seriously hate when people don’t come back to a forum and report back - or worse, post “Fixed it! Everything’s great now!” with no context as to how. (I’m an old fogey, and have been on the internet since before the internet existed.) :wink:

Most importantly, I appreciate the help, and want to throw out a huge thank you!

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Here are all of the logs I could find in the “Logs” subdirectory. Hopefully, someone can make sense of what’s here, and lead me in the right direction.

Plex Media Server Logs_2018-12-28_11-58-56.zip (157.0 KB)

So everybody is up to date, here’s the latest update:

  • I installed Emby, which was fast in scanning all of my media (under 10 minutes) and works perfectly on playback. (Seriously, after Plex took 3+ hours to scan all of my media, I was very pleasantly surprised that Emby was so quick.)
  • After completely removing it, I re-installed Plex once again. It exhibits the exact same issues.

Now, don’t get me wrong - I’m no shill for the competition. I seriously want Plex to work, as my Vizio TV won’t install anything else. I want to streamline and shrink my reliance on the hardware/software bloat, and a media streaming solution definitely helps. Perfect world: Plex works across all of my devices, I can install it directly to the TV and remove the Media Box I have on it. Semi-perfect world: Emby is installed on my Media Boxes and I get better performance and less bloat.

Thanks, once again. This community seems to be pretty good in helping out ‘the little guy.’ :smiley:

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Short answer, could be on the client side or the server or both. When your server attempts to download the codec for transcoding to the tv it is getting HTTP 429 (Too many attempts). The long answer you have a DNS issue, DNS Rebinding , you can change your connection type to insecure to see if it goes away.

If you have Remote Server enabled, disable it and change secure connection from preferred to insecure and restart the server, retry.

You had other errors that were permission related but don’t think they are you main issue.

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The long answer you have a DNS issue, DNS Rebinding , you can change your connection type to insecure to see if it goes away. If you have Remote Server enabled, disable it and change secure connection from preferred to insecure and restart the server, retry.

Ok, I took your advice, and did exactly that. I changed the Server to insecure, and restarted. When I attempted to connect via PC client, it notified me as such, and I selected to opt for a ‘this time’ connectivity through an insecure connection. It connected fine, and shows me the library.

When I try to play the movie now, I get “Conversion failed. The transcoder failed to start up.” A bit of a difference, now, so something has definitely changed.

Not quite sure where to go from here, though.

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Something is blocking Windows from downloading the codec, Windows Firewall, I don’t know I was hoping someone else would jump in.

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Something is blocking Windows from downloading the codec, Windows Firewall, I don’t know I was hoping someone else would jump in.

Ah, ok. Well, that gives me a place to start. I just checked the Server, and Windows Defender Firewall has both Private and Public permissions set for four Plex options: DLNA Server, Media Server, Scripting Host and Tuner Service. I’ll look at the router settings as well, and see if something may be blocking it there.

EDIT: Ok, I just disabled the Windows Firewall completely, and now, I’m back to getting the “Conversion failed. A required codec could not be found or failed to install.” error. Odd. Very odd.

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When this happens, it is futile to re-attempt immediately.
You must wait ~24 hours before trying again. Shut down Plex Server for a day.

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When this happens, it is futile to re-attempt immediately. You must wait ~24 hours before trying again. Shut down Plex Server for a day.

That’s good to know, and possibly the most ridiculously restrictive fail I’ve witnessed in a long time. This guarantees that you’ll have some new users who will install the software, encounter the issue, likely not troubleshoot as much as I have, and simply give up. That limits the revenue that could have been generated by a huge margin, depending on the number of people that get an issue like this.

I have the program disabled now, and will retry tomorrow. I’ll search through the logs I have to see if I can find the error, so I know what to look for once I retest.

Thanks for the information. While I stand by my opinion that this is a major flaw (if it is, as you say, an issue of waiting ~24 hours) I am not ready to quit just yet.

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Ok, so I was unable to successfully use Plex after performing a clean re-installation over 48 hours after an uninstall. During this time, my system has been cleanly rebooted a number of times, had the registry cleaned (both manually by me, as well as through CCleaner), and was completely wiped clean of the Plex program and any other programs I felt may have contributed to the issue.

Once reinstalled, I was still encountering the issue, so I think I’m done. I have successfully installed and used Emby without issue, and shy of a few speed issues that are caused by my internal network (I have almost 20 wireless signals in my home, which are competing for bandwidth) it seems to do what I was hoping for.

I’m sorry to say that, while Plex seemed to be the go-to I was looking for, these issues were consistently there regardless of what was tried. It’s extremely frustrating that it seemed to work once while scanning library files, only to die out once they were completely imported. As such, I hope that someone finds this thread useful in the future, and perhaps I will revisit this if someone finds a solution.

Thanks to all who have contributed to this thread! It is your assistance and guidance which has helped me to troubleshoot the issue.

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