Lots of time I did experience the following: Playback of MKV content ends after 120min exactly - even with content that is much longer. This time I had a chance to get some details. Sorry for the blurred camera images, but I had to take them in a hurry.
Can please somebody explain the following:
I start a movie that has a length of 2:29 hours. Plex shows this correct length, but the slider shows 1:48:13 hours done and 11:46 min to go - giving 1:59:59 hours exactly (first picture). As you can see, the playback rest is wrong and ends at 1:59:59 exactly.
I stop the movie immediately. Plex thinks that I never played that movie and offers restart from the beginning only. So I start the movie from the beginning and fast forward to the last position. This time Plex shows 2:29 hours total, 1:48:23 hours done and the correct rest of 41:32 min.
One of the preferences shows the following explanation:
<Setting id="TranscoderDefaultDuration" label="Transcoder-Default-Duration" summary="The duration (in minutes), the transcoder will work ahead of the current playback." type="int" default="120" value="120" hidden="1" advanced="0" group="transcoder"/>
I was always looking were this 120 minute length comes from. Here it is.
This setting is not part of the GUI and it is not part of my Preferences.xml in the Plex folder.
How can I increase that value to, say, 180 minutes?
I got a different value in my prefs. Mine is for the duration for transcoding when the duration is unknown.
<Setting id="TranscoderDefaultDuration" label="Transcoder default duration" summary="Duration in minutes to use when transcoding something with an unknown duration." type="int" default="120" value="120" hidden="1" advanced="0" group="transcoder"/>
Interesting. I can’t find anywhere in my prefs that uses that exact term the transcoder will work ahead of the current playback
My server is in a docker in Ubuntu. Perhaps the server OS version matters for the text mis-match. if so, then it’s probably not an issue. But if it is truly a “unknown duration” issue, then maybe your server was unable to determine the video length (did you ANALYZE the video?) the first time, but completed it in time for the second play?
This is an Linuxserver.IO Docker Container running on Unraid. Latest release. Interesting that you get a different summary for this setting. I call my local server IP to get the prefs. How do you call?
I did triple check the MKVs that stop at 1:59:59 exactly. They are properly build with MakeMKV and duration is set correctly. Never found out what causes this behaviour. It’s only with Plex, other players don’t show this behaviour if using the same files.
Where did you find that hidden pref documentation ?
<Setting id="TranscoderDefaultDuration" label="Transcoder default duration" summary="Duration in minutes to use when transcoding something with an unknown duration." type="int" default="120" value="120" hidden="1" advanced="0" group="transcoder"/>
On my Plex server the german summary for this setting matches the english summary shown by @Divideby0. The summary for this setting shown on Plex pages differs.
This is the german summary I get: Spieldauer in Minuten, wenn ein Medium mit unbekannter Länge transkodiert wird
