Server Version#: 1.15.2.793
Player Version#: Multiple
I have a Plexpass Server that has been running perfectly for more than a year. It is in an iocage jail on a FreeNAS (FreeBSD) server. After a recent upgrade of the Underlying FreeNAS server, and an upgrade to Plexpass I am unable to play anything when on a WAN connection. All media play perfectly on LAN connection.
There is no error presented in the player when connecting via WAN, just endless buffering and the video never begins to play. I have tried multiple devices, and multiple players (Chrome, Safari, Plex client). I reviewed the logs and the transcoding speed is running between 15 and 17.
Frist thing I noticed in the log is this: 401 POST /video/:/transcode A lot of 401’s on this request which would mean the app sending this is not sending auth properly.
When you say plex client which one is it? Android iOS?
And on web if you open Chrome Web Tools, in the network tab can you check if you see similar (or other requests failing?
Ok I do see some odd 404s 404 GET /video/:/transcode/universal/session but it doesn’t make much sense that this only happens when trying to access it remotely.
Can you please stop PMS; start it again; play the exact same file from Local than remote and send new logs?
ok, PMS restarted. Played movie Guardians of the Galaxy from the ipad Plex client. 1st playback was on the LAN, with no issues. Shut off Wifi, switched to cellular, continued same movie and immediate buffering…
This log makes a bit more sense though, It was DirectPlaying then you switch to cellular and its now transcoding, but as you said “speed” doesn’t look that bad.
Can you DM me you’re Preferences.xml? Also whats the setting you have for remote quality? You could leave at max/original so you still get DirectPlay (of I wouldn’t advice using celular in that case)
The only relevant thing I see is WanTotalMaxUploadRate=“25000” which means you set max upload to 25 on remote access settings…
Although this is more than enough for say a 1080p stream depending on the bitrate we might fail to calculate if we would need to go over that and then fallback to transcode.
I.e. if the player thinks it would go over that it will should a quality setting bellow (this is on the PMS side, and depends if the client is set fro automatic quality)
Also the other setting is a manual override on the client which is say I always want a 2mpbs/720p stream, if the original file is higher than that, again it will force transcoding!
But that simply helps if you want to not use transcode in such cases (i.e web app remote source) in general on he web app you’d be using a Desktop/Laptop and a wifi connection so you might not want to limit it!
We made some fixes in the new beta (1.15.3.835) so I’m curious if they help you’re case.
The port is not updated yet though… I don’t suppose you’d be able to easily manually update to the new build right?
Not easily update as I have only used the port system, but if you had some relevant instructions, I am happy to give it a go.
I did upgrade the server to a point release that was pushed yesterday, and it is now 1.15.2.793 with a “_1” or something that was appended, but it has not changed any of the symptoms.
I will test making some of the setting changes you suggest and see if it changes anything.
I’m also having the same issue after the recent update. Everything is transcoding to a lower quality, despite no remote connection limits set or set. Direct play doesn’t seem to be working on multiple devices & clients (Android, iOS, PMP, or Web).
Updated to 1.15.3.835 and it still does the same issue. Always wants to encode “due to not enough bandwidth for direct play”. Stating required bandwidth (for a test file) is 6634kbps and only 6400kbps is available.
Remote access settings are set to 8mbps for the limit on the remote stream bitrate, which it’s definitely not hitting.
I have tested moving the WAN Max Upload speed to 50, and the client quality to Maximum. Neither/both of these changes had no effect. Playing media off of my local network still results in infinite buffering…
note: you might need ca_root_nss installed or use the fetch flag to skip ssl verification
Now the “tricky part”, the downloaded file should be something like PlexMediaServer-1.15.3.858-fbfb913f7-FreeBSD-amd64.tar.bz2
copy the version and hash part: 1.15.3.858-fbfb913f7
cd /usr/ports/multimedia/plexmediaserver-plexpass
Edit the Makefile (use ee or vi) and replace the version with 1.15.3.858 and revision with fbfb913f7
Next: make makesum (this should update the distinfo file) make package
this will put the ready to install pkg in work/pkg/XXXX
Now you would: pkg remove plexmediaserver-plexpass
and pkg install work/pkg/XXXXX (replace XXXX for the actually file name ofc )
Seems a lot of steps at first but it could actually be easily automated, IMHO updater scripts should actually be based in this rather then replace the binaries… as this uses ports/pkgng for the upgrade it self.
I actually posted a script a while ago that did this , but I can’t find it now… I might be able to create a new one this week and post it here.
Btw you’re jails are using VNET right? I would expect this issue do to that, but just to confirm!
Also @TheCWB might be worth sending me you’re logs too so I can check if its similar to @jerryjharrison
Sorry for the long delay in responding. I feel a bit foolish. I was NOT using Vnet, but once it was switched over, everything is working properly. Not sure how I missed that one…
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