Every title that I play starts in “original quality”. I have to manually set the quality to “automatic” to avoid the program skipping several seconds of the content every few moments. I have the playback settings check box for “Automatically adjust quality (Beta)” checked, and the Internet Streaming - Video quality Set to “Maximum”. I have tried different settings in the “Quality” menu and nothing seems to affect the default settings during playback. Any ideas?
Try turning that setting off. With it enabled, it will try to direct play the file if it can. Your description of the problem sounds like direct play is causing the issue. With that off, it should transcode and avoid the problem.
I did turn off the “Automatically Adjust Quality” box. The issue still persists unfortunately.
That’s not the setting I said to turn off. Turning off “Automatically Adjust Quality” won’t affect videos playing at original quality.
I also turned off the “Play smaller videos at original quality” setting. Currently, these are my settings under “Quality”
By having the Video Quality setting at “maximum” it will try to direct play the file first if the codecs support it.
I’m a bit confused on what you are trying to do. I thought you don’t want the file to play at it’s original quality. If so, set the quality lower.
The original quality is 17.3 Mbps. At that speed, the titles skip several seconds of the file at a time. If I manually set each title as they start playing to “Convert Automatically” they play at 25 Mbps and they are fine. I am trying to avoid having to change the quality setting everytime I start a new title. I notice it more with TV Shows than I do with movie titles. I hope this narrows down what I am trying to achieve. I do appreciate your time and effort.
I’m not sure what that means. The behavior you describe you want is to not direct play the file, but want PMS to transcode.
Turn these 2 settings off and you will always get a transcode.
What I mean by “the titles skip several seconds at a time” is: The file(title) will start playing at “original quality 17.3 Mbps”. After about 5 seconds of play time, the program will skip ahead between 2 and 5 seconds. Another 30 seconds of normal playtime and then it will skip ahead another 2 - 5 seconds of the program. In order for the program to play uninterrupted, I have to manually change the Playback Settings at the bottom of each program to “Convert Automatically”. This is a nuisance when watching several sequential TV programs in a row.
By unchecking the two settings you stated above, it seems to set the playback to “auto” now. So far, this is what I was looking for. Thank you for the assistance!
Does this happen with every video you have? I’ve seen things like this for files that have been created badly. The transcode process fixes these errors, which is why the file plays back properly. If you have a file that you always see this behavior with, I’d love to get a copy of that file. If you can upload it to a sharing site them PM me a link, that would be great.
sounds like you have either a server UPLOAD bandwidth problem or misconfigured setting, or client download bandwidth problem.
Either way, you are treating the symptoms and not solving the problem.
What is your server upload setting set for?
I think its under Plex > settings > remote access
(or network or transcoder)
if the upload bandwidth is set too high, then plex will try to direct play files which are too much bitrate.
Further, video files displayed bitrate is an AVERAGE, and can fluctuate greatly.
The upload setting box has nothing in it. The server is two feet away from the desktop I am playing the files on. Both machines are connected to the same switch with no QOS or rate limiting configured.
Ah ok, I assumed you were remotely streaming, I didn’t see it specified anywhere that you were streaming locally.
Web browsers are crappy plex clients.
You might want to check out windows plex media player instead.
The files of the program that I notice the issue on most were ripped from blue ray dvds I own using MakeMKV. I did nothing else to the files after the rip. I would prefer not to distribute the file since it is a rip, and the whole legality issues of privately owned DVD rip for personal use on Plex thing. It is quite possible that I have an incorrect setting on the rip, however, these same files have worked for years prior to an update about 6 months back. I just have not dedicated any time to looking into it.
Ok, can you create me a sample file about 1 minute long. See if that sample produces the same problem. Sharing the sample for diagnostic purposes should be fine legally.
I do not have a very good method for capturing a portion of an MKV file. I ended up just recording a small portion of one file, however, VLC saves those files as .ts files. I am sure the quality is worse than the original. I will say, however, that I watched the entire MKV file in VLC and it never hitched one time. I put the Plex settings back to what they were originally (direct play) and it started doing the skipping again. If I remove the direct play and allow it to auto convert, it plays fine. Is it odd that a higher bit rate plays better than the “original” rate?
Here is a support article we have for generating samples. https://support.plex.tv/articles/201035968-generating-sample-files-from-media/
I looked at the file you provided. It is missing a lot of information about the video. If your full file is like this, that could explain why the video doesn’t play well. Plex doesn’t know exactly how to handle the file since there is info missing. By transcoding the file, it adds new info to fill in the missing stuff.
I am fairly certain the missing info is from the conversion VLC did when i “recorded” it. It saved the file as a .ts, which i am not familiar with. The original file works flawlessly in VLC.
Are you using the VLC feature to record a video stream that is being played? if so, this is not the same as ripping a DVD. The resulting video using this method is not as clean a file you would get from actually ripped the disc.
VLC is more relaxed about playing back files since it is only doing it locally. PMS has to send the file to a client, so having missing info in a file can cause issues.
I only used VLC to grab the snippet to send to the forum here. There was not an option for the recording feature on my version to save the file as anything other than the .ts file. Which is why I am assuming is played so poorly for you.
I know of no other way to create a short piece of the full MKV file to send to you.