Playing files in Plex Web results in no playback

Plex Media Server Desktops & Laptops
1

Server Version#: 1.14.1.5488 (Docker)
Player Version#: 3.83.1 [Firefox - Plex Web, Original Quality]

Issue: Attempting to play files in Plex Web result in no playback and a endless spinning buffering screen. This only affects some files.

Now before you say it’s the file (!!!) about 90% of my files refuse to play in Plex Web but Plex Media Player has zero problems playing back any of them, even the affected files.

Console log says…

EAE timeout! EAE not running or wrong folder? Could not read /tmp/pms-etcetc
[Transcoder] Error while decoding stream #0:1: Input/output error

Permissions of /tmp (plex runs as my user, subfolders inside /tmp/pms-etc" are owned by my user)

-drwxrwxrwt 15 root root 4096 Jan 17 21:21 tmp

Any ideas?

2

EAE is the dolby decoder. Is only files with dolby audio affected?

can we see server logs after the failure

3

I tried another movie that contained a TrueHD track and the same error appears so no it is not just Dolby audio.

Can I PM them? I don’t want to share publically.

4

sure. no problem

5

TrueHD is dolby, it is their high quality one. Like DTS vs DTS-MA

6

Ah yeah sorry. I’ve just found one movie with AAC and it does play so it might just be Dolby. PMing now.

7

I’m getting the same errors on certain files with Dolby audio, multiple clients; Sheild, iOS, PlexWeb.

Error is:

ERROR   [Transcoder] [eac3_eae @ 0x2888f00] error reading output
ERROR	[Transcoder] Error while decoding stream #0:1: Input/output error
ERROR	[Transcoder] [eac3_eae @ 0x2888f00] EAE timeout! EAE not running, or wrong folder? Could not read '/tmp/pms-4298f458-6976-409f-a693-dedb2f9bb08e/EasyAudioEncoder/Convert to WAV (to 8ch or less)/cd7a200bf5a863d4-com-plexapp-android_7859-0-10.wav'

No system changes or security modifications to folders. Possibly just a docker Plex image update (can’t be certain)

========================================
Ubuntu 18.04 64bit / Linux 4.15.0-43-generic
Plex Version 3.83.1 (docker)

Practically same setup as OP

Symptom is whenever offending files are played the client just spins the hourglass (plex circle) and nothing happens. Logs fill with above error.
Direct-play works fine. Only happens on transcode.

Thanks

-=zdz=-

8

May I have the DEBUG log files ZIP?

  1. verify DEBUG only is enabled
  2. Start Playback
  3. Wait 30 seconds
  4. Stop Playback attempt
  5. Wait 30 more seconds (log files written to disk)
  6. Settings - Server - Troubleshooting - Download Logs
  7. Attach ZIP file it presents you here
9

I have fixed this issue by increasing the inotify value in Ubuntu.

I noticed that my inotify was maxed out (when -f tailing a file)

Current value was:

cat /proc/sys/fs/inotify/max_user_watches
8192

I increased this value to:

echo 16384 | sudo tee /proc/sys/fs/inotify/max_user_watches

Tested playback, success.

Made change permanent:

echo fs.inotify.max_user_watches=16384 | sudo tee -a /etc/sysctl.conf
sudo sysctl -p

Will have to monitor how long this lasts. At least initial issue is resolved.
Not sure what or why the pool was exhausted.

Hopefully this will help some people with the exact issue as me.

-=zdz=-

1 Like
10

Thanks.

Already posted it in 2017.

There are many other neat tips in

11

I have the same issue as OP. Anything Dobly does not play. The only way it would play is if I enable the experimental player on the iPhone. In our case the issue not related to max_user_watches as that was increased and did not solve the issue.

One other note is I moved Plex to another server which seemed to have triggered the issue. The files still play fine on the previous server. Both servers are playing the same identical file. The new server triggers the issue whereas the old server does not. Both servers are running v1.14.1.5488.

All directory permissions are the same. The only difference I see so far is (old) has ssd drives and (new) has nvme.

Edit: After doing some deeper looking. It seems like the /transcode dir was loosing permission somehow. /dev/shm was being used as the transcode dir. Not sure why that was happening but now know what was causing it.

12

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