I am all of a sudden getting this error as well and I have plenty of hard drive space. So annoying and I end up just playing the movie directly with VLC. I am not sure as to why this has just came up.
I just started getting this too.
Are you guys running plex in a virtual machine? I think it might be happening because my VM is thin provisioned and plex isnāt finding the available space itās looking for
I am getting it on 10GB+ movies.
I am also running Plex in a thin provisioned VM.
It seems Plex wants the size of the movie + a few gigs free on the install DIR before it will even direct playā¦ since the transcoder wants that space incase it needs itā¦
This seems daft since before this update it was working perfectly fine even with many streams direct or transcodeing at a time.
Now I will have to assign another virtual disk and set that as the transcoder temp directory in advanced settings just to play larger movies on the Web playerā¦ seems to not have that issue on mobile devices. I also found setting the web player to transcode instead of Original / Direct it will work fineā¦ how does that even make sense since that space is supposedly for the transcoder and it only complains when I am not using the transcoderā¦
Kinda really pointless since It wont even use that spaceā¦
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@egrimisu said:
Ok, I think that you are anwsering without really getting all the viez. I have lets say 30Gb of free space, because of one encode the remaining free space it is lets say 15GB but the user is at 90% of the movie. Meanwhile another user starts playing a 16gb file. Basicaly i can assume that the first user will finish playing the movie and the second one will have itās free space for the needed encode as the cache files will be freed as soon as the first user finish his play.Since i use a monitoring solution for info and statistics I can surely tell that my disc was never filled using the older plex version that did not have this limitation and sometime all the family members are on the server playing movies via encode and in rushhours I have around 5-6 simultaneous encodes. Never had and issue till upgrading to the latest version.
So letās say I would like to take the risk and ignore the free space. If plex is not desinged or atleast the āunder the hoodā options are locked to standard user may I know what function is using plex to get the free space of the partition where plex is doing his encodes under Linux? df, dfree? If it is using one of these I can manage to modidy them to report how much free space I would like
Maybe a delete encoding stream that have been allready played on the devides will be a good function in order to preserve free space.
100% agree. Same issue hereā¦ never had a issue before. Plus it only happens for me when its set to direct playā¦ so its not even using the transcoder lol.
@2E0PGS said:
I am getting it on 10GB+ movies.
I am also running Plex in a thin provisioned VM.It seems Plex wants the size of the movie + a few gigs free on the install DIR before it will even direct playā¦ since the transcoder wants that space incase it needs itā¦
This seems daft since before this update it was working perfectly fine even with many streams direct or transcodeing at a time.Now I will have to assign another virtual disk and set that as the transcoder temp directory in advanced settings just to play larger movies on the Web playerā¦ seems to not have that issue on mobile devices. I also found setting the web player to transcode instead of Original / Direct it will work fineā¦ how does that even make sense since that space is supposedly for the transcoder and it only complains when I am not using the transcoderā¦
Kinda really pointless since It wont even use that spaceā¦
Could you get the Plex Media Server logs for when the error arises ?
It should be only size of movie plus 100Mb or so
See
https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/201643703-Reporting-issues-with-Plex-Media-Server
https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/200250417-Plex-Media-Server-Log-Files
@2E0PGS said:
I am getting it on 10GB+ movies.
I am also running Plex in a thin provisioned VM.
OK, so I solved my issue ā¦ and it was indeed my VM not having enough space. Figured Iād post my solution in case it helps anyone (Iām using Ubuntu Server 16.04 in ESXi 6.5)
I allocated more space (40GB) to my Plex VM, but if I ran df -h in the VM, it still showed the original 16GB size. The newly added 24GB was still unallocated. I booted up a gparted live ISO in my Plex VM, and gave my LVM partition the rest of the unallocated space.
My LVM paritition was a child of an extended partition. First, had to rightclick->deactivate the LVM partition, then I could assign the unallocated space to the extended parent partition. After the parent partition had more space, I was able to grow my LVM partition.
After that, I spent another hour searching because my space still wasnāt showing up and plex was still erroring out. Ran across this post which fixed the remainder of my issues (the bits within the code tags). linux - Gparted cannot resize extended or LVM partition - Super User
Finally, after all is said and done, df -h reports the correct amount of space, and plex stopped yelling at me.
@arcooke said:
OK, so I solved my issue ā¦ and it was indeed my VM not having enough space. Figured Iād post my solution in case it helps anyone (Iām using Ubuntu Server 16.04)
CC @sa2000
I also fixed my issue now it seemed It was space but It was behaving odd when It looked like it had enough. I guess it not having quite enough was causing it to run only some movies but not others. I never had this issue before in previous Plex versions. I wonder if they re wrote the transcoder?
What I did to fix my lack of space on the VM without messing with LVM expansion:
-had to add a second virtual HDD to the Plex VM
-and then partition it
-and then format it
-and then mount it
-and then own the mount point as āplex:plexā user:group
-and set the custom transcoder dir under plex settings
I can bet it will never use that extra 20GB+ I added to itā¦ we shall see I am monitoring it with āwatch -d df -hā but I doubt it will ever use that space fully. Again it never complained in older Plex versions.
I will update if any further issues or complains about it never using that extra space muchā¦ 
Cheers,
-2E0PGS
Yes this is a bit frustrating. Plex never needed this much space before and it seems like a big waste. Iām running all my VMs off mirrored 256GB SSDs so space is at a premium.
Is there an announcement about this change?
I wish I would have gone with your solutionā¦ because I canāt shrink my virtual disk now that Iāve grown itā¦ if for some reason Plex reverses this change.
I did a test:
CC @arcooke @sa2000
Two hour long movie with a size of 16.0GB playing in the web player set to āOriginalā video type.
I monitored the disk usage with watch -d df -h which will run the command df -h every 2 seconds and marking any changes.
Below is a screenshot of the usage after 2 hour movie reaches just near the end before stopping.
The TranscoderHDD is 20GB total 13GB used and 6.2GB free.
I saw the drive slowly growing in usage as the movie played.
Now Plex has not come back to my questions; āI wonder if they re wrote the transcoder?ā
Others have also asked but not response just Plex avoiding a direct yes or no.
Now before I did have a few movies that would give me a generic error like āthis video could not be playedā in the web player. Generally those movies had HD Dolby 5.1 Audio which I thought was the cause.
I possibly suspect those movies may have been larger than my free space at the time and it caused that odd error but now Plex has added a specific error message for this error it seems like its a new issue when really it was causing that play back error which is their go to generic error for any web player problems.
However this may still not be the cause since others report it never needed that space before. I also found I never had issues with multiple people playing streams at a time. With this current usage of my TranscoderHDD it seems there could be issues if others run a stream and it needs more space? I shall try test that.
Other questions that remain unanswered is;
-why does it keep the entire video cached on the transcoder locationā¦ surely it would be -10mins and + 10mins for buffer and rewind speed.
-why is the transcoder location even being used when the video is set to āOriginalā quality and its not being ātranscodedā.
-does the transcoder location free up space when others start streaming and need space and your half way into a movie so surely the beginning of all that cache is not needed anymore.
Anyway I am wasting more than enough time asking questions that may not be answered since the last question I asked Plex was ignored.
Why is a more detailed report or update log not posted explaining changes to transcoder or error message addition. If not why is someone not simply stating what was changed so others can understand why these odd patterns are occurring.
Oh also I see nothing on their blog about updates. I only saw the change log via server side settingsā¦ the change log should be pubic. Even the server side one was brief and explains nothing about the changes to transcoder or that error for not enough space being added.
My suspicion is Plex rewrote the transcoder or changed a fair part of it.
Cheers,
-2E0PGS
@arcooke said:
Is there an announcement about this change?
The last mention of it from the server notes was to improve reliability in 2015
@2E0PGS said:
Now Plex has not come back to my questions; āI wonder if they re wrote the transcoder?ā
Itās hard to answer this question. The transcoder has been upgraded a number of times since this check was implemented.
-why does it keep the entire video cached on the transcoder locationā¦ surely it would be -10mins and + 10mins for buffer and rewind speed.
Since server version 9.17 it should be pruning old segments when disk space is low. Otherwise it keeps it until the user finishes watching the video.
-why is the transcoder location even being used when the video is set to āOriginalā quality and its not being ātranscodedā.
If the audio or container is being remuxed then the video still needs to run through the transcoder. Not only that but Original quality isnāt a do not transcode setting, it simply means donāt force a transcode down to ___. So even with Original quality selected items that require a transcoding (for things like h264 level, subtitles that need to be burned, bit rates too high, server bandwidth limits, etc) will still attempt to transcode.
-does the transcoder location free up space when others start streaming and need space and your half way into a movie so surely the beginning of all that cache is not needed anymore.
When otherās start the video if there isnāt enough space for the transcode to start, their video wonāt start. If both videos start around the same time as the disk space getās low the oldest segments should start getting pruned from both sessions to make room to finish the video, but they wonāt start pruning in order to start a brand new session.
Anyway I am wasting more than enough time asking questions that may not be answered since the last question I asked Plex was ignored.
Why is a more detailed report or update log not posted explaining changes to transcoder or error message addition. If not why is someone not simply stating what was changed so others can understand why these odd patterns are occurring.
Oh also I see nothing on their blog about updates. I only saw the change log via server side settingsā¦ the change log should be pubic. Even the server side one was brief and explains nothing about the changes to transcoder or that error for not enough space being added.
Everytime a server version is posted the change log is posted with it in the server release notes.
My suspicion is Plex rewrote the transcoder or changed a fair part of it.
This change was added over a year ago which is why you wonāt see any mentions of it being added recently.
@jmckee
Much appreciated for you addressing my questions. That does help alot with me figuring out why this behaviour occurs.
It does not mention still in that change note about this new error message. I am presuming itās a new message for a older issue. So before it just gave that generic cant play error but because they recently added this new error message it seems like new deeper changes?
but they wonāt start pruning in order to start a brand new session.
Thatās rather odd it wont prune to start a new session. Does the new session require the media size + 100MB - 200MB before it starts too? So if I am near end of that 16GB movie and 13GB is used in the transcoder drive then if I start playing a movie that is 12GB in size on another device it wont start?
Everytime a server version is posted the change log is posted with it in the server release notes.
Yes I just found that thread too. Itās not indexed by search engines easily I had to go and look around the forums more for that. It does lack a bit in detail but atleast it is publicly available which was my main concern.
Cheers,
-2E0PGS
@2E0PGS said:
It does not mention still in that change note about this new error message. I am presuming itās a new message for a older issue. So before it just gave that generic cant play error but because they recently added this new error message it seems like new deeper changes?
It may seem like deeper changes, but in actuality it is a more superficial change. What happened is originally when this change was implemented the only thing that new about the change was the transcoder and the server. So the various apps would only be able to tell that they werenāt getting their video stream so they would output the generic canāt play error. However, as various updates hit the different apps they were updated to know the difference between the transcoder not being able to start due to freespace versus just not getting their video stream.
Thatās rather odd it wont prune to start a new session. Does the new session require the media size + 100MB - 200MB before it starts too?
The new session requires media size + 100MB. So it will not be able to start.
So if I am near end of that 16GB movie and 13GB is used in the transcoder drive then if I start playing a movie that is 12GB in size on another device it wont start?
That is correct.
The big issue is that even with media size + 100 it is simply a rough guess. If your free space is media size + 100MB there is a very real chance that your transcoded file is going to exceed that, and it exceed it pretty easily. This is because when transcoding Plex uses settings for speed over file size. What this meant is that even with the free space available from the check that once the file hit the end it would simply error out as it ran out of free space.
I donāt know the exact reasons for it, but my assumption on the purpose was that the pruning itself wasnāt so much for reducing memory use, but to prevent the out of memory problems that could arise. While a transcode stopping due to out of memory isnāt that bad, the other possible outcomes would be the main reason for implementing some sort of check.
Ok great that clears all my questions up.
Thank you for taking your time to reply to each of my questions. Much appreciated.
It does not say āplex team memberā on your role but it does say āplex ninjaā does that mean your just a outsider who seems to know a fair bit about the core of plex? or are you a plex staff member? since it seems you know a fair bit about how the plex transcoder etc works.
Cheers,
-2E0PGS
@2E0PGS said:
Ok great that clears all my questions up.
Thank you for taking your time to reply to each of my questions. Much appreciated.
No worries at all.
It does not say āplex team memberā on your role but it does say āplex ninjaā does that mean your just a outsider who seems to know a fair bit about the core of plex? or are you a plex staff member? since it seems you know a fair bit about how the plex transcoder etc works.
Plex Ninjaās are volunteerās that typically have been around for quite awhile and normally have a really good understanding of the software and some of the back end of things. And while we are still outsiders we do have additional lines of communications with the employeeās in order to help try and facilitate questions/bugs etc to the individuals that would normally work on it. (IE if we know a problem is only affecting the android app we will try and forward it on to the developers working on that specific branch).
With that being I typically focus on the areas of Plex I use, so sometimes we can miss some questions in just the sheer number of them that get submitted. For example I use the Xbox One, a FireTV, PMP, (Formerly the DLNA server), and Ubuntu for my server so I will typically focus on those areas, but I also will try and go into unanswered questions first and then work around from there.
Soā¦ Long story short volunteers who typically focus on the main aspects we are most familiar with.
Ok thanks for fast reply. Yeah that is excellent. Itās great you have contact to staff/devs too otherwise some backend closed code would make it impossible for users to know how some of their systems are operating.
Sounds good ref Ubuntu server etc. Makes sense to help with stuff you run.
Keep up the great work. Much respect for helping the community.
Cheers,
-2E0PGS
Same issue here, Ubuntu 17, Plex 1.5.7.4016, 2TB disk, 500GB free, How could it not have enough space for a 350MB video?
@QuinDennis said:
Same issue here, Ubuntu 17, Plex 1.5.7.4016, 2TB disk, 500GB free, How could it not have enough space for a 350MB video?
Could be the path being used for transcoding is not the path that you think is being used.
Logs would show what path is being used - could be /tmp
See https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/201643703-Reporting-issues-with-Plex-Media-Server
https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/200250417-Plex-Media-Server-Log-Files
I never had this issue until the last update. I have a 10TB raid server. No mater what i give this it will not work.
This last update both mobile and server have treated me very very badly.
Where is your transcoder temp pointed to? Did it somehow get changed?
If the temp is over the network, try it locally. Network transcoder temp is fraught with issues due to the lack of file locking on some network protocols.
