So I am kind of new to Plex so bear with me if my post isn’t as “technical” as one might expect. For years, I stored my movies on a WD basic NAS, attached to my router, and would have no real issues streaming the video to my DLNA enabled TV. I decided I wanted to make use of Plex so I invested in a QNAP TS-251+ drive with (2) WD Red, 4TB drives. I then moved all of my movies to those drives and installed Plex on it.
My concern is now over the buffering (3 little dots always appearing on the screen) when I go to play a movie. The QNAP is obviously plugged directly into my router and the TV is “hard connected” to my router via a CAT6 cable. All of my movies are in MKV format.
My concern is that I made this investment into a better system to run Plex and house my media and I am getting this buffering and sometimes a complete freeze of the movie being played. Are there any tweaks I should be making to the router or QNAP? I do have hardware acceleration enabled and I checked into this NAS prior to buying it to make sure it was PLEX compatible. It just seems odd that the buffering occurs when I use the PLEX app on my TV, with PLEX running on the QNAP, but if I use the DLNA feature on my TV there is no buffering.
Would increasing the amount of RAM on the server do anything? I believe it came with 2 gigs installed.
What about changing the "Background transcoding x264 preset to a lower value (currently at VERY FAST)?
Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Hardware transcoding is operating here.
Mar 24, 2019 13:18:36.812 [0x7f5246e6b700] DEBUG - TPU: hardware transcoding: using hardware decode accelerator vaapi
Mar 24, 2019 13:18:36.812 [0x7f5246e6b700] DEBUG - [Universal] Using local file path instead of URL: /share/CACHEDEV1_DATA/Multimedia/Movies/Deadpool (2016).mkv
Mar 24, 2019 13:18:36.812 [0x7f5246e6b700] DEBUG - TPU: hardware transcoding: zero-copy support present
Mar 24, 2019 13:18:36.812 [0x7f5246e6b700] DEBUG - TPU: hardware transcoding: using zero-copy transcoding
Mar 24, 2019 13:18:36.813 [0x7f5246e6b700] DEBUG - TPU: hardware transcoding: final decoder: vaapi, final encoder: vaapi
Mar 24, 2019 13:18:36.815 [0x7f5246e6b700] DEBUG - Job running: EAE_ROOT='/share/CACHEDEV1_DATA/.qpkg/PlexMediaServer/Library/tmp/pms-6cddd892-5f75-43ca-969d-50cdc09bf77f/EasyAudioEncoder' FFMPEG_EXTERNAL_LIBS='/share/CACHEDEV1_DATA/.qpkg/PlexMediaServer/Library/Plex\ Media\ Server/Codecs/a22632d-2132-linux-x86_64/' XDG_CACHE_HOME='/share/CACHEDEV1_DATA/.qpkg/PlexMediaServer/Library/Plex Media Server/Cache' XDG_DATA_HOME='/share/CACHEDEV1_DATA/.qpkg/PlexMediaServer/Resources' X_PLEX_TOKEN='xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx' '/share/CACHEDEV1_DATA/.qpkg/PlexMediaServer/Plex Transcoder' '-codec:0' 'mpeg2video' '-hwaccel:0' 'vaapi' '-hwaccel_fallback_threshold:0' '10' '-hwaccel_output_format:0' 'vaapi' '-codec:1' 'ac3' '-analyzeduration' '20000000' '-probesize' '20000000' '-i' '/share/CACHEDEV1_DATA/Multimedia/Movies/Deadpool (2016).mkv' '-filter_complex' '[0:0]hwupload[0];[0]scale_vaapi=w=854:h=480:format=nv12[1];[1]hwupload[2]' '-filter_complex' '[0:1] aresample=async=1:ocl='\''5.1'\'':osr=48000[3]' '-map' '[2]' '-metadata:s:0' 'language=eng' '-codec:0' 'h264_vaapi' '-b:0' '7060k' '-maxrate:0' '9414k' '-bufsize:0' '18828k' '-r:0' '29.969999999999999' '-force_key_frames:0' 'expr:gte(t,0+n_forced*7)' '-map' '[3]' '-metadata:s:1' 'language=eng' '-codec:1' 'aac' '-strict:1' 'experimental' '-aac_coder:1' 'fast' '-q:1' '0' '-f' 'dash' '-min_seg_duration' '7000000' '-skip_to_segment' '1' '-time_delta' '0.0625' '-manifest_name' 'http://127.0.0.1:32400/video/:/transcode/session/oeoy3t7wq3lqhadbnxmchntn/81653492-0c0d-4474-ab5e-3da338d4ffa1/manifest' '-avoid_negative_ts' 'disabled' '-map_metadata' '-1' '-map_chapters' '-1' 'dash' '-start_at_zero' '-copyts' '-vsync' 'cfr' '-y' '-vaapi_device' '/dev/dri/renderD128' '-nostats' '-loglevel' 'quiet' '-loglevel_plex' 'error' '-progressurl' 'http://127.0.0.1:32400/video/:/transcode/session/oeoy3t7wq3lqhadbnxmchntn/81653492-0c0d-4474-ab5e-3da338d4ffa1/progress'
Mar 24, 2019 13:18:36.831 [0
Wasn’t the XML file in the logs or do I cut and past the contents of the XML here? Sorry…new to this.
The problem isn’t the NAS. It is elsewhere. I will look deeper
Did you, at any point, use subtitles?
May I now have the XML for the movie?
Copy/paste it here and put 3 back-ticks (```) on the line above it and line following it.
```
XML
```
posts as:
XML
I tried to upload the web page of the xml file but the site is saying xml is not an allowable format.
copy/paste the XML text from the browser, then bracket as I show above
<MediaContainer size="1" allowSync="1" identifier="com.plexapp.plugins.library" librarySectionID="1" librarySectionTitle="Movies" librarySectionUUID="2fd1f431-456f-403a-a26d-8795b205c964" mediaTagPrefix="/system/bundle/media/flags/" mediaTagVersion="1552487975"><Video ratingKey="159" key="/library/metadata/159" guid="com.plexapp.agents.imdb://tt1431045?lang=en" librarySectionTitle="Movies" librarySectionID="1" librarySectionKey="/library/sections/1" studio="20th Century Fox" type="movie" title="Deadpool" titleSort="Deadpool 01" contentRating="R" summary="Deadpool tells the origin story of former Special Forces operative turned mercenary Wade Wilson, who after being subjected to a rogue experiment that leaves him with accelerated healing powers, adopts the alter ego Deadpool. Armed with his new abilities and a dark, twisted sense of humor, Deadpool hunts down the man who nearly destroyed his life." rating="8.4" audienceRating="9.0" viewOffset="61361" lastViewedAt="1553453153" year="2016" tagline="Witness the beginning of a happy ending" thumb="/library/metadata/159/thumb/1552668688" art="/library/metadata/159/art/1552668688" duration="6486656" originallyAvailableAt="2016-02-09" addedAt="1519587320" updatedAt="1552668688" audienceRatingImage="rottentomatoes://image.rating.upright" chapterSource="media" primaryExtraKey="/library/metadata/2242" ratingImage="rottentomatoes://image.rating.ripe"><Media id="159" duration="6486656" bitrate="6724" width="720" height="480" aspectRatio="1.78" audioChannels="6" audioCodec="ac3" videoCodec="mpeg2video" videoResolution="480" container="mkv" videoFrameRate="NTSC" videoProfile="main"><Part accessible="1" exists="1" id="159" key="/library/parts/159/1519587320/file.mkv" duration="6486656" file="/share/CACHEDEV1_DATA/Multimedia/Movies/Deadpool (2016).mkv" size="5452192173" container="mkv" deepAnalysisVersion="2" requiredBandwidths="7419,7009,6827,6827,6827,6827,6827,6827" videoProfile="main"><Stream id="38787" streamType="1" codec="mpeg2video" index="0" bitrate="6276" language="English" languageCode="eng" anamorphic="1" bitDepth="8" chromaLocation="left" chromaSubsampling="4:2:0" colorRange="tv" frameRate="29.970" height="480" level="8" pixelAspectRatio="186:157" profile="main" refFrames="1" requiredBandwidths="6971,6561,6387,6387,6387,6387,6387,6387" scanType="progressive" width="720" displayTitle="480p (MPEG2VIDEO)"/><Stream id="38788" streamType="2" selected="1" default="1" codec="ac3" index="1" channels="6" bitrate="448" language="English" languageCode="eng" audioChannelLayout="5.1(side)" requiredBandwidths="448,448,448,448,448,448,448,448" samplingRate="48000" title="Surround 5.1" displayTitle="English (AC3 5.1)"/></Part></Media><Genre id="118" filter="genre=118" tag="Action"/><Genre id="559" filter="genre=559" tag="Adventure"/><Genre id="531" filter="genre=531" tag="Comedy"/><Genre id="19" filter="genre=19" tag="Sci-Fi"/><Director id="8966" filter="director=8966" tag="Tim Miller"/><Writer id="8968" filter="writer=8968" tag="Rhett Reese"/>
Moderator Edit: Making XML more readable
When I burn a movie onto the server, I always enable English subtitles. I didn’t always used to do that until we were watching THE MARTIAN and I realized that when the Chinese people were talking, we had no idea what was being said because I hadn’t burned it with subtitles.
As I suspected, the issue is with the content itself you’re using.
If you have to burn subtitles, that CPU (subtitle burning is a CPU-only task) isn’t strong enough and you will need to burn the subtitles in permanently if you wish to keep them.
The other choice is to filter out those subtitles you don’t want by Remux (mkvtoolnix). It strips the unwanted items without reducing quality as HandBrake typically does
Would you recommend NOT having subtitles included when I burn the movies?
If you need them, it is best to burn them in before giving the media file to Plex.
This way, Plex will only need concern itself with HW transcoding the entire image or the audio. Subtitles will no longer be part of that problem.
I guess I’ll have to look into that further because I use MakeMKV and burn the entire movie before moving it to the Plex server. I thought I was doing it right, using MakeMKV, to bundle the video, audio and subtitles together as one MKV file and then moving it over to my NAS.
MakeMKV is only the media remux / ripper (just as mkvtoolnix is). You still must merge (burn) the subtitles into the video stream.
And all this time, I thought I was merging the subtitles into the entire MKV file, or at least MakeMKV was doing it for me 
No… All you are doing is selecting which streams to copy.
Is there another program you would recommend for burning DVD’s into MKV? Ny the way, thanks for all of your help today.
