Why is it every other video playing app I have seen works perfectly whether it’s on iOS, Android or Fire OS yes the plex app doesn’t?
All others I have tried play smoothly and are as perfect as any other OS but the plex app on Fire stutters, drops sound, blurred video ect…
Why??? I have looked everywhere online (that I can find) and asked in more than one place but nobody seems to know and the people it does effect are as perPLEXed (see what I did there 
) as I am. Also, no one seems to be working on a fix.
What’s going on?
My suggestion is to do what I do: Don’t use Plex on Amazon Fire devices. I have about ten or eleven different playback devices that support Plex. The Fire TV and Fire stick are at the very bottom of the list of the devices I use for Plex.
In fact if you consider my Plex devices as a building with my favorite being the top floor then my Fire devices are buried below the sub sub basement.
The Fire devices have there uses and they do Amazon Prime very well and they also are the only devices I have that can access Playstation Vue but they are hideously unsuited for my Plex access.
Having said all that when I have tested Plex on my File devices I see no playback problems. The playback is as smooth and glitch free as any other device I own. The Plex app is just too unstable and hard to use with the Fire devices for me.
@Elijah_Baley said:
My suggestion is to do what I do: Don’t use Plex on Amazon Fire devices. I have about ten or eleven different playback devices that support Plex. The Fire TV and Fire stick are at the very bottom of the list of the devices I use for Plex.
In fact if you consider my Plex devices as a building with my favorite being the top floor then my Fire devices are buried below the sub sub basement.
The Fire devices have there uses and they do Amazon Prime very well and they also are the only devices I have that can access Playstation Vue but they are hideously unsuited for my Plex access.
Having said all that when I have tested Plex on my File devices I see no playback problems. The playback is as smooth and glitch free as any other device I own. The Plex app is just too unstable and hard to use with the Fire devices for me.
But why is it? Is it Amazon’s fault? A hardware fault or Plex’s fault?
It could also be the administrator’s or user’s fault, depending on what you are trying to play and how you are playing it.
The reason I say that is because if you are trying to play something with too great of a bitrate and the Fire can’t support it, you are going to get some issues. And by not support it, I don’t mean natively support it in your app, but on your network.
For example, I love the app on my Vizio TV. I absolutely love it. but, it’s limited to a 10Mbps network connection for any media I play, even though the NIC says it supports 1Gb networking. So any video I play on it, while wired, is limited to a 10Mbps stream, or I have buffering problems. If I go to WiFi, this limit isn’t there, but it seems to drop the connection to the server about every 30-45 minutes or so.
So, inside the Vizio client app, I had to select 10Mbps as the highest bitrate in order to play any movies or videos on it. So, of course, the TV forces a transcode on any stream that has just a higher bitrate. This is about the only transcoding my system does any more, to support this damned TV. (Paid $100 for a 40" LED TV, so I guess I can’t complain too much…)
It may be worth looking into. Also, since you haven’t included any server logs to help narrow down a problem, it’s just a Wild A$$ed Guess what the real problem actually is…
If you can provide details and logs on the issues you are seeing, we can look into it. There can be issues if you are trying to direct play certain videos. Amazon says they support certain codecs, but sometimes, they don’t support it well so you may experience issues. In these cases, try getting PMS to transcode to a lower bitrate and see if that fixes the problem.
@MikeG6.5 said:
It could also be the administrator’s or user’s fault, depending on what you are trying to play and how you are playing it.
The reason I say that is because if you are trying to play something with too great of a bitrate and the Fire can’t support it, you are going to get some issues. And by not support it, I don’t mean natively support it in your app, but on your network.
For example, I love the app on my Vizio TV. I absolutely love it. but, it’s limited to a 10Mbps network connection for any media I play, even though the NIC says it supports 1Gb networking. So any video I play on it, while wired, is limited to a 10Mbps stream, or I have buffering problems. If I go to WiFi, this limit isn’t there, but it seems to drop the connection to the server about every 30-45 minutes or so.
So, inside the Vizio client app, I had to select 10Mbps as the highest bitrate in order to play any movies or videos on it. So, of course, the TV forces a transcode on any stream that has just a higher bitrate. This is about the only transcoding my system does any more, to support this damned TV. (Paid $100 for a 40" LED TV, so I guess I can’t complain too much…)
It may be worth looking into. Also, since you haven’t included any server logs to help narrow down a problem, it’s just a Wild A$$ed Guess what the real problem actually is…
The files are all of them. It could be a 480p copy of the simpsons or a 1080p film. It still stutters.
@MovieFan.Plex said:
If you can provide details and logs on the issues you are seeing, we can look into it. There can be issues if you are trying to direct play certain videos. Amazon says they support certain codecs, but sometimes, they don’t support it well so you may experience issues. In these cases, try getting PMS to transcode to a lower bitrate and see if that fixes the problem.
How do I get logs from the tablets?
@MovieFan.Plex said:
If you can provide details and logs on the issues you are seeing, we can look into it. There can be issues if you are trying to direct play certain videos. Amazon says they support certain codecs, but sometimes, they don’t support it well so you may experience issues. In these cases, try getting PMS to transcode to a lower bitrate and see if that fixes the problem.
I have also tried everything I can think of. Every option I could find to change I have tried it. Still the same thing… start, stop, start, stop ect…
If I swapped it out to cyanogenmod do you think that would fix it?
To get logs, go to settings / privacy / email logs. You email them to yourself, grab the attachment, post it here.
Is your tablet using fire OS5? If so make sure the setting in the Plex app to use the Android media player is turned off. If on older os, make sure it is on.
Yes all the settings are correct for the OS. What is odd is the plex app reacts the same whether it’s from the play store or the Amazon app store.
I’ll get the app to do stuff and then grab the log and post it later today. Thanks.
How did you get the play store on there? Is your device rooted? That would explain the cyanogen question. Plex cannot guarantee that the app will work properly on rooted devices.
Okay so changing quality to 720p 2mbps and disabling the android player seems to have stopped the stuttering but now the audio is about 0.25-0.5 second behind video. Is there any settings I can change to correct this?
@MovieFan.Plex said:
How did you get the play store on there? Is your device rooted? That would explain the cyanogen question. Plex cannot guarantee that the app will work properly on rooted devices.
No it’s not rooted. The Cyanogen question was just question. Getting the play store onto the fire is a relatively easy process of loading it onto an SD card and installing it, that’s not the issue. The plex app I use is from the Amazon app store.
There is currently a bug with transcoded video. I’ve already reported it to the devs.
@MovieFan.Plex said:
There is currently a bug with transcoded video. I’ve already reported it to the devs.
So does this mean they are working on the audio being out of sync???
@richardhanney said:
@MovieFan.Plex said:
There is currently a bug with transcoded video. I’ve already reported it to the devs.
So does this mean they are working on the audio being out of sync???
I thought they had already solved that. 
Is not the audio successfully out of sync? Or have I been misreading the reports thereof?
This is a bug specific to the Amazon tablets.
@richardhanney said:
Why is it every other video playing app I have seen works perfectly whether it’s on iOS, Android or Fire OS yes the plex app doesn’t?
Comparing the Plex app to the other apps that are available from the channel or app store on your device is like comparing apples to oranges.
EDIT: In case this needs clarification - Comparing the Plex app or channel on your device (Roku, AppleTV, FireTV, etc) to the other apps or channels on that same device (meaning apps/channels like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, etc ) is like comparing apples to oranges.
Almost every other app is just accessing a very specific online database. It is one type of media in only one format that the online content provider created or at least re-formatted for optimal play from their server. They completely control every aspect of that media, the server that hosts it, and your access to it.
Plex is accessing multiple types of media (videos, music, photos) that may be in a multitude of formats, resolutions, etc, since each user’s content is unique. And with Plex you are accessing content from multiple sources (local, online, and remote). So it is dependent on your local Plex Media Server computer, your local area network, your Internet connection, as well as the speed of the various servers you may be accessing for online (Plex channels) or remote (other users shared Plex libraries) content. Which again will be different for each user. Plex also allows for more customization for each user by offering more settings and view options.
@shopgirl284 said:
@richardhanney said:
Why is it every other video playing app I have seen works perfectly whether it’s on iOS, Android or Fire OS yes the plex app doesn’t?
Comparing the Plex app to the other apps that are available from the channel or app store on your device is like comparing apples to oranges.
Almost every other app is just accessing a very specific online database. It is one type of media in only one format that the online content provider created or at least re-formatted for optimal play from their server. They completely control every aspect of that media, the server that hosts it, and your access to it.
Plex is accessing multiple types of media (videos, music, photos) that may be in a multitude of formats, resolutions, etc, since each user’s content is unique. And with Plex you are accessing content from multiple sources (local, online, and remote). So it is dependent on your local Plex Media Server computer, your local area network, your Internet connection, as well as the speed of the various servers you may be accessing for online (Plex channels) or remote (other users shared Plex libraries) content. Which again will be different for each user. Plex also allows for more customization for each user by offering more settings and view options.
Comparing Plex android app to the Plex Fire OS app is like comparing varieties of apples that are almost exactly the same.
I can take the android app and install it on the Fire tablet and get the same result as the Fire OS app. Both are out of sync when I play video files.
Whether it’s a HD MKV movie being transcoded to work on the tablet or it’s a 480p AVI of the simpsons, it still gets out of sync.
I can’t tell you how annoying this is.
