Posted on the Discord with no help…
I’ve been having this issue for a while, but it seems to have gotten worse in the past few updates. It applies to multiple media types (AVI, MKV), local and remote playback, and movies or tv shows.
Playback will stop at random times. Users will either be met with a throbber, will be dropped back to the plex home page, or will be given an error (usually something along the lines of a playback error). Refreshing and/or restarting the app usually allows playback to continue.
When in a watch together session, the playback will drop one and then the other person within a few seconds. Rejoining the watch together session will result in restarting the media from the beginning.
I’ve checked/monitored the VM Host logs, Storage logs, Network logs, Windows logs, as well as performed latency and packet drop tests with no clear cause for the drops.
Does anyone have anything I should look at or check or should I just try to open a support ticket with Plex?
Thanks in advance. Infra details below.
Plex Server:
WIndows 10 VM
Xeon 4114 - 20 Cores
32GB Memory
10GB NIC
Playing in Chrome via app.plex.tv. Laptop is on the same subnet as the Plex server and is connected via physical ethernet (1gb link). No dropped packets from laptop to Plex server or internet observed during drop.
New failure
I was watching via Chrome on local network. Playback stopped about 9 minutes in (throbber) for a few moments and then it went to the screen as though the episode had ended and it was queueing up the next episode. Clicked ‘previous’ and it went back to where it had stopped playback.
Plex Media Server Logs_2024-11-24_11-37-05.zip (4.5 MB)
New failure
Watching via Chrome on local network. Playback stopped at approx 4 min in (throbber) and just sat there. Clicked ‘stop’ and got back to Plex homepage. Clicked on same episode and it started from the beginning.
Another drop or a ‘watch together’
I’m watching via Chrome on local subnet. Friend is watching via Chrome remotely. Got about 4 minutes in. They got dropped back to Plex front page. I got stuck on Throbber. Stopped and got sent back to the front page. We rejoined the session and it started from the beginning.
Local playback (same subnet) via Chrome. Playback of movie stopped at 1:06:37 with throbber. Gave it a few minutes, but nothing changed. Hit stop; was sent to Plex main screen. Selected the movie to resume playback. Background came up with throbber again. Waited a minute with no change. Refreshed browser page. Selected movie to resume playback and it started at a previous timestamp. Logs attached
Also noticing that occasionally when I open ‘app.plex.tv’, it just shows the Plex logo and has to be refreshed to actually load the homepage. Flushed all browser cache and settings and all the usual basic troubleshooting; no improvement. Plex Media Server Logs_2024-12-01_17-40-33.zip (5.1 MB)
I’ve built out a new VM Host, moved everything to 10gb networking, built a new Plex server on WS 2025, double checked that JumboFrames is set on everything on both storage and vm sides.
Next thing is to try moving some test media to the PMS server and testing that. I’m still consistently getting the issue where it stops and a throbber comes up when playing locally. Also still consistently getting issue when watch-together sessions drop or just freeze.
Would be nice if Plex offered some sort of support other than ‘ask the community’.
