Performance issues after migrating server to macOS

Plex Media Server
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I just migrated my (very simple) Plex server from my Windows 11 PC to an M4 Mac mini. Got it working, library synced, etc. but had some minor annoyances when watching a show last night. It would keep ‘buffering’ … very briefly cut to a black screen with the spinning ‘loading’ symbol. It was typically very brief - less than half a second, but happened about a dozen or so times during a 1 hour show. There were 2 or 3 incidents where it lasted longer, including once when I had to stop and resume playback.

Needless to say, I hadn’t had this issue on my Win11 setup, although I did tweak some client/server settings during the migration.

Current setup: Mac mini M4, local Plex server install (not docker) with migrated metadata. Mini is both hardwired and Wifi. Primary client is an AppleTV 4K, also hardwired (and WiFi).

ATV Video settings: Video set to 4K Dolby Vision, Match Content for HDR and Frame Rate. Client settings: Direct Play on and Local/Remote streaming maximum.

Server settings: Network, set LAN NIC to preferred, added subnet ranges for both wired and wireless to LAN Networks list, checked box to Treat WAN IPs as LAN. Enable Local network discovery is checked. HDR Tone mapping, hardware acceleration, hardware-accelerated encoding all enabled.

Any tips on likely settings, or other things to check? Can also provide more details/logs if needed.

2

Not a good idea. Hardwired only is better suited for servers.

Edit the power saving settings of the server. Prevent it from sleeping after just a few minutes idle time. Prolong that to a longer time. (I’d say at least half a movie play time)
Further prevent the Ethernet adapter from degrading the link speed away from GBit speed when it thinks it is idle.
Do also disable EEE (energy efficient Ethernet) on both the server and the ATV.

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Thank you, I think that got it! (Disabled EEE on the NIC and turned on ‘Prevent automatic sleeping when the display is off’ in ‘Energy’.) Halfway through a ‘problem’ show and no issues so far.