I’m not one to complain about free software, but I’ve been living with this issue for months and have tried almost everything. If someone that really knows the in’s and out’s of plex and could help me with this issue, I’ll give you my 3rd born.
Here’s the issues, and how I temporarily resolve them.
- I use the roku platform on a TCL 55" 4k smart tv to connect to Plex via the Plex app/channel.
- Plex never has any issues starting, and loads my libraries just fine every time.
- I queue up a movie, and the movie loads no problem…no real delays or anything that I’ve noticed that would signal an issue.
- When the sound starts, it cuts in and out repeatedly…it’ll play for about a second, then goes off for a second, then play for a second, then goes off for a second…and it’ll continue until you cut off the movie.
- I come to my home server, start up task manager, end task on 3 plex related programs - plex media server, plex dlna service, and i think the plex updater or tuner service?
- I find the plex program with a quick search from the start menu, right click and run the program as administrator, go back and restart the movie and it works fine - regardless if it’s resuming an unfinished movie or starting a movie from scratch. I believe most files are .mkv files…which are really just shell files (if I understand them correctly). A lot use the AC3 encoding (which I thought was just another shell for audio files) and the base audio file is .mp3?
Restarting the plex media server is the only thing I’ve found that fixes the problem. I’ve never had to restart my server (which I maybe restart 1 time a week). I’ve never had to uninstall/reinstall the plex app on roku, or power off/on the tv. My TV (TCLRoku TV - 5.1.1.4433…-Plex) shows up in the devices menu along with the Plex Media Server, Plex Web (Chrome), iPadPro.
A few of the things I’ve tried:
- Updating plex to the latest version (multiple times - though i did just update to 1.10.1.4602 - it shows there is another update available after 1.10.1.4602, but when I install it, it shows an error )
- Uninstalling & reinstalling plex
- I’ve optimized versions of the movies for the TV, but it hasn’t helped.
- There’s a red exclamation point next to remote access in the settings…but I don’t think it’s relevant - I access everything from a wired ethernet connection on my home network.
- I’ve turned Direct Play and Direct Stream both on and off
- I just enabled the debug log so hopefully that might help. I’ll post the log if that offers add’l help.
- I’ve enabled IPv6 support and disabled secure connections. I’ve also enabled HTTP pipelining and webhooks, but nothing works.
- There’s no boost to the volume when audio is converted.
- I’ve set my transcoder quality settings to make my cpu hurt with no noticeable improvement (just incase it the audio issues were caused by plex trying to transcode the video while it was playing and not being able to keep up) Background transcoding for x264 is also set to Fast and 2 max.
- DLNA server is enabled, and timeline reporting is enabled.
I’ve read that other’s have had similar issues and it has to do w/ Plex transcoding the audio or a secure connection issue, but I’ve tried every setting I can think of, and still haven’t had any luck resolving the issue. The app works if I end task on the plex media server and restart the server, but I think it may have to do with closing the roku app and restarting it (without restarting the server), that changes some audio setting that breaks the audio?
Any help or ideas anyone has are greatly appreciated, because this is a nut I haven’t been able to crack!