Plex for IOS infinite loop download problem (Feb 27 feedback problem, many users have confirmed the same problem, we paid for it, but it can't be used normally for a few months, please PLEX respond to this problem.)

[s4j4]

Server Version#: 1.25.6.5577
Player Version#: iOS 7.29

Problem description

Download a TV play to IOS mobile phone by using the attached figure. The following problems are found:

• After the download starts, the same episode is downloaded in an infinite loop. Even if it has been downloaded to the mobile phone, it is still downloaded in an infinite loop.
• When the infinite cyclic download occurs, even if the download item is cancelled from the mobile client, the mobile client will still download from the server endlessly. The cyclic download can only be stopped by forcibly ending the mobile client.
  
  

I use Chinese - English translation. If I don’t describe it clearly, please forgive me Please also find friends with similar problems to help supplement. thank you

---

May 18 supplementary update

I reported on 2022-2-27 that there is a loop download problem when PLEX downloads multiple items. In addition to this problem, even if the music album has been downloaded, the downloaded content will be automatically deleted after a period of time, that is It is said that the paid download function has serious bugs and cannot be used at all.
Many users have confirmed the same problem, We have waited patiently for several months and have not solved it, and we have not given a solution time.
After the user pays, Plex is responsible for ensuring that the function is available, which is the most basic business contract.
I want a detailed response from plex, why hasn’t it been resolved for so long?

A lot of user feedback, they encountered the same problem.

@CallumWatkins

I also have this issue. I reported it in another thread here: Update on new Downloads feature - #194 by CallumWatkins

Neither my server nor media contain any Chinese characters.

@maball5

Has any progress been made on this issue? While I’m not seeing a true infinite loop in downloads - I am constantly seeing downloads repeatedly repeat themselves if I queue more than one thing to download.

Just tried this a few times where I started from nothing to be downloaded and then queued 4 items to download - then watched the download status in the app and dashboard simultaneously. In both attempts the first item I queued downloaded just once, the 2nd downloaded 2 times, the 3rd 4 times, and the 4th 5 times (not sure why it skipped 3 times).

Oddly, if I had a bunch already queued and force killed and restarted the app (say because you don’t want it to download the same bloody thing yet again) it seemed to follow the same pattern - just starting at the downloading 2 step (so download the first thing still in the queue twice, then next 4 times, next 5 times).

@blackzwe

@MovieFan.Plex this customer is doing everything right to get help from the forum. Please assist.

@dlw1

Any progress on this?

I have the same issue with my Music library where it’s constantly removing previously downloaded items and re-downloads them. This makes the Downloads feature completely unusable since it is entirely random which Albums have finished downloading when I leave my home. The Sync feature worked for me for many years and I’d really just like to go back to that, is that possible?

@Massaguana

Hello,

here are looks like the same issue with “Audiobooks”… It Download it again an again

Having an Audiobook with 376 files for one Book. When i start Download i see that something is downloading…

• but it is really slow, one file… 30sec nothing, next file. i need more than 24h turn on my iPhone to download it complete…
• sometimes some parts are failing, download egain.
• when download is finished it starts again by file 1

The iOS App are closing itself after a couple of hours… must restart it

Here are some logs:
PlexDebugInfo-Massaguana-7.29-2010 (2022-03-15 20.38.02 +0100).zip (11.4 MB)

@ApexAftermath

Just found my way to this thread because my dad told me that for the last week he has been getting “too many streams in use” error. He isn’t actually playing anything, but it occurred to me he is the only user I allow downloads for, and he has been using the feature lately.

He just called me finally after a week saying this was going on and I have absolutely not a single person streaming right now even though he was getting the error. There is NO REASON why he should be seeing “too many streams in use” I saw Plex had an update so I let it apply which restarted my server and it’s working for him again now. I disabled his downloads.

My guess is that this bug, whatever it is, was causing a traffic jam with the downloads feature for his user account. Whatever gets locked up probably reporting to the server and causing the max stream amounts to read over limit.

Not grabbing any logs because I can already tell Plex is in IDGAF mode for this one. Hopefully my post here serves as helpful for someone else having this issue and going WTF?

Looks like everyone should be disabling and not using downloads going forward because they seem to be driving it into the same ditch they drove Plex Sync into.

@omnishambles

I think I’m seeing this infinite download on iOS with a regular library that just uses ASCII characters for the particular items I’m transferring, nothing fancy in the show/episode titles at all. My iPad has been downloading from my Plex server at 40MB/s for about 3.5 hours now. I think this works out to around 500GB transferred, while the total size of the show I’m trying to transfer is 66GB. Definitely feels like something in Plex is off here.

@omnishambles

I’ve just been playing around a bit while trying to download this series to my iPad. I cancelled the 500GB+ transfer from earlier (which I’d tried to download by downloading the entire series) and queued up items from the series to download individually instead. I also watched the transfer progress via the “Activity” widget on the PMS web frontend.

Watching this, the queue seemed to transfer as follows:

• Item 1 in the queue transferred once and was complete on iOS
• Item 2 transferred a first time, then iOS stopped showing download progress and said “Episode” (like it does when an episode is complete), but according to the server it proceeded to transfer the episode a second time before moving on
• Item 3 this item transferred 5 times before I gave up and cancelled the remaining items in the queue, and killed the Plex iOS app to stop it transferring anything more, even removing Item 3 from the queue didn’t stop it repeating its download of it from the server.

This looks like a bug in the iOS queuing code, and probably explains why Plex had earlier transferred over 500GB of data for 66GB of content.

After observing this, I started to transfer single items at a time, ie. never letting there be more than a single item in the queue at once. This seems to work perfectly, Plex iOS transfers the single item and is done. I then trigger another download of a single item, again, it works perfectly. This is incredibly slow when you have multiple items, but at least it works.

I hope this observation helps you locate the issue here.

@scaryramm

I can confirm that multiple downloads at once == mess.
In the app logs it says, that it couldn’t verify the download, after the logs on the server report 100% was downloaded. And it starts over. Over and over. Over and over again.

Downloading one episode at a time — works most of the time.

Happy to provide any logs nescessary, if @MovieFan.Plex is still around.

@scaryramm

oh, come on, seriuosly? :*(

the feature has been awfully broken since release, it’s one of the main attractions to buy plex pass and you cant even talk about it on the forums?

@angel060

I noticed that the problem comes especially if you launch several downloads at the same time.
I don’t know why Plex will download the first file without worries and the last one it will download it up to 6 times at the maximum speed of my connection.
It is more efficient to download the series one by one, it is faster

@angel060

I think it would be good for Plex to tell us if he is working on the problem, if so who can we identify?
And let’s be crazy when we will have an update that will solve the problem.
I bought a product that had a function removed from it so I think it would be ok for Plex to let us know how the solution is progressing

@kidvelvet

This is a problem I have had since the beginning. With sync, I would sync my albums once and it was done. Now I try to use the downloads function, and it downloads everything. Great. Then the next day, I see that it is redownloading everything. This is especially frustrating given that I use plex when I travel on planes and do not have access to streaming. If this function isn’t working, I may need to look into a different option. I have been raving about plex for years to friends, but right now I am not recommending the setup with this feature being broken and no one responding to anyone on these threads.

@oschaeffer

I confirm the same problem (on iOS platform).
Download works fine if selecting a single item (1 movie at a time).
However when trying to download a full season of a TV serie or a full music album (click download on the season or album itself), the first few items are downloaded correctly and then it slows down and retries continuously.

It’s not random, it happens every time, so it should be easy to reproduce by Plex engineers.
This needs to be resolved as offline watching is one of the main features used by plex users.

@Plex, at least please acknowledge and confirm this is being investigated.

Thanks.

@Becray16

Help also please I can’t get iso to download anything no matter what settings also can’t get it to download on anything other then Wi-Fi otherwise it comes up with 400 error or a 404 error

@dlw1

@elan @MovieFan.Plex,

Paying customers have been more than patient with this issue, providing logs and repro steps to help Plex engineers diagnose the problem. I’m not sure how others are feeling, but for me the lack of feedback is starting to become very frustrating.

I paid money for this service/app only to have a functioning feature replaced by one that simply does not work, for a lot of people. I know that sync didn’t work for some people, but it worked for me (and many others) for years. I don’t think it’s too much to ask that we be given the option to choose between Sync and Downloads

@Madr_Aess

Tons of logs have been provided. Admins & devs have been tagged and drawn to this post, unless they ignored it. Your customers basically figured out the issue for you, now all you have to do is say “We’ve heard you, we’re working on it and we’ll keep you posted.” and then have that not be a lie.

Customer service isn’t hard, people manage to do a good job of it while making $10/hr. Weird how a bunch of admins and devs who undoubtedly make more than that can’t even manage the simplest form of customer service for their paying customers. Makes me wonder how much profit I could make just stealing Plex’s idea, doing it better, and then actually communicating with customers…

@angel060

I admit to having a hard time understanding, the problem appeared following an update reverting to the old version or putting the old download system.
The maximum compatibility function does not work on certain files.
And especially even in original download the file is downloaded proportionally to the number of files that you put after:
The 1 file will be downloaded 1 time
The 2 times 2 times
And it can go up to 6 times.
And you tell us that you still haven’t determined the cause in 2 months?
Many of us have concerns so it should not be complicated to analyze the concern.

@cutcutcut

I’m having a similar problem on Android, I try to download something and it just keeps downloading over and over filling up all the space until I cancel it.

@angel060

I had time to test and the problem is the same on Plex IOS under download on Plex mac intel with rosetta 2 no worries so the problem comes from the IOS client
A person was talking about DNS concerns that the downloads in addition went to a DNS.
But I changed the DNS of my IPAD still the same problem
But it would have been nice for Plex to answer us, it’s the least respect to give news of the progress for a problem that has been going on for months.

[s4j4]

Logs of mobile client and server, hoping to help solve the problem.

PlexDebugInfo-7.29-2010 (2022-02-27 21.45.17 +0800).zip (1.4 MB)

Plex Media Server Logs_2022-02-27_21-38-08.zip (901.0 KB)

[hawkinsb]

I was having this issue in another thread, and we figured out that it was because I have the Seasons option set to “hide” for my TV library.

If you change this to “Show,” you have to do the following:

• Make sure the library is set to “Show”

• Make sure the individual shows within the library are set to “Show” (changing the library does NOT change all the shows – You have to edit the show and the option is under “Advanced”)
  

• Delete all your downloads and start clean

When I did all of this, my shows stopped the infinite cycling. Apparently this was a bug in the past that they thought they had fixed, so they’re readdressing it.

[s4j4]

Today, I found that the problem of infinite loop download also occurred in the music albums that have been downloaded before.

Attach today’s plex log and screenshots：

• PlexDebugInfo-7.29-2010 (2022-03-01 09.21.11 +0800).zip (1.8 MB)
• 

[anon18523487]

@s4j4

After the download starts, the same episode is downloaded in an infinite loop

I’m not seeing this looping in your logs. I do see where it is having trouble accessing your server. The app does check for changes to the watched status so it’s possible it’s having issues with your server so it’s in a loop doing this check. Check your server, does it show it’s downloading the file?

I found that the problem of infinite loop download also occurred in the music albums

Your logs show it is getting back a 404 error from your server when it tries to get the metadata for that album and tracks to save locally. Can you get me the XML info for the first track in that album?

[s4j4]

@anon18523487

Check your server, does it show it’s downloading the file?

Yes, the server panel shows that it is downloading Meanwhile, mobile traffic statistics show that mobile phones have been downloading data

@anon18523487

Can you get me the XML info for the first track in that album?

This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it. The document tree is shown below.
<MediaContainer size="1" allowSync="1" identifier="com.plexapp.plugins.library" librarySectionID="18" librarySectionTitle="音乐" librarySectionUUID="7631a354-0947-4ee6-8da9-64aff3e9e6d0" mediaTagPrefix="/system/bundle/media/flags/" mediaTagVersion="1645197512">
<Track ratingKey="81597" key="/library/metadata/81597" parentRatingKey="81596" grandparentRatingKey="81595" guid="plex://track/5d07dcce403c640290080408" parentGuid="plex://album/5d07c5fc403c640290ad2ca8" grandparentGuid="plex://artist/5d07bc1b403c6402904bc43e" parentStudio="19 Recordings" type="track" title="Mr. Know It All" grandparentKey="/library/metadata/81595" parentKey="/library/metadata/81596" librarySectionTitle="音乐" librarySectionID="18" librarySectionKey="/library/sections/18" grandparentTitle="Kelly Clarkson" parentTitle="Stronger" summary="" index="1" parentIndex="1" viewCount="3" lastViewedAt="1645867792" parentYear="2011" thumb="/library/metadata/81596/thumb/1645689558" art="/library/metadata/81595/art/1645689737" parentThumb="/library/metadata/81596/thumb/1645689558" grandparentThumb="/library/metadata/81595/thumb/1645689737" grandparentArt="/library/metadata/81595/art/1645689737" duration="232519" addedAt="1645689558" musicAnalysisVersion="1">
<Media id="83521" duration="232519" bitrate="1038" audioChannels="2" audioCodec="flac" container="flac">
<Part accessible="1" exists="1" id="127183" key="/library/parts/127183/1645687974/file.flac" duration="232519" file="/share/CACHEDEV5_DATA/Music/s4j4_Music/Kelly Clarkson/Stronger (deluxe edition)/01 - Mr. Know It All.flac" size="30189591" container="flac" deepAnalysisVersion="6" requiredBandwidths="1033,1033,1033,1033,1033,1033,1033,1033">
<Stream id="168197" streamType="2" selected="1" codec="flac" index="0" channels="2" bitrate="1038" albumGain="-12.01" albumPeak="0.999268" albumRange="7.688246" audioChannelLayout="stereo" bitDepth="16" endRamp="-51.00 0.12;-38.50 2.82;-29.31 3.22;-22.71 3.52;-19.90 3.62;-17.85 3.72;-10.91 3.82;-5.06 3.92;-1.92 4.02;0.12 4.12;3.22 4.32;6.05 5.32;" gain="-12.01" loudness="-8.37" lra="2.51" peak="0.999237" requiredBandwidths="1033,1033,1033,1033,1033,1033,1033,1033" samplingRate="44100" startRamp="-51.00 0.00;-12.70 0.30;-6.64 0.40;-4.77 0.50;-2.22 0.70;0.10 8.40;3.40 9.00;6.71 11.00;" displayTitle="FLAC (Stereo)" extendedDisplayTitle="FLAC (Stereo)"></Stream>
</Part>
</Media>
<Extras size="0"></Extras>
<Related></Related>
</Track>
</MediaContainer>

[s4j4]

video 1

• In the first half of the movie, the client download media library shows that 18 episodes have been downloaded, but the server panel shows that 18 episodes are still being downloaded repeatedly
• In the second half of the movie, the progress bar on the server panel shows that after 20 episodes are downloaded, another 20 episodes are downloaded circularly
  2022-03-01 20.54.14.mp4.zip (16.1 MB)

video 2

• After the problem of cyclic download occurs, the download item is manually cancelled. At this time, there is no item downloading on the client, but it can be seen from the video that the client is still downloading, and the download speed is 8MB / s. After the forced end of the client, open it again, and the previously cancelled item is automatically restored, and the download is still continuing
  2022-03-01 20.58.50.mp4.zip (6.8 MB)

log

log.zip (2.3 MB)

[anon18523487]

Could you PM me your PMS database? I think it might have something to do with the Chinese characters. I’d like to check how these are being saved in your database to make sure they are using the correct encoding.

[s4j4]

@anon18523487

Could you PM me your PMS database?

There are more than 100 megabytes of files. Please visit the link to download and check the private letter for your password.

https://sjqn.myqnapcloud.com:7001/share.cgi?ssid=14cb8288edee4deab1c2c61b6ae6916b

[anon18523487]

Got the file. Next time, please zip the file first. That will save a lot of space and time to download.

[CallumWatkins]

I also have this issue. I reported it in another thread here: Update on new Downloads feature - #194 by CallumWatkins

Neither my server nor media contain any Chinese characters.

[maball5]

Has any progress been made on this issue? While I’m not seeing a true infinite loop in downloads - I am constantly seeing downloads repeatedly repeat themselves if I queue more than one thing to download.

Just tried this a few times where I started from nothing to be downloaded and then queued 4 items to download - then watched the download status in the app and dashboard simultaneously. In both attempts the first item I queued downloaded just once, the 2nd downloaded 2 times, the 3rd 4 times, and the 4th 5 times (not sure why it skipped 3 times).

Oddly, if I had a bunch already queued and force killed and restarted the app (say because you don’t want it to download the same bloody thing yet again) it seemed to follow the same pattern - just starting at the downloading 2 step (so download the first thing still in the queue twice, then next 4 times, next 5 times).

[s4j4]

Thank you for your voice.
If you have the same problem, please send out our voice. I hope the official will take your actions to respond to users’ concerns and solve this terrible download problem as soon as possible. @anon18523487

[blackzwe]

@anon18523487 this customer is doing everything right to get help from the forum. Please assist.

[dlw1]

Any progress on this?

I have the same issue with my Music library where it’s constantly removing previously downloaded items and re-downloads them. This makes the Downloads feature completely unusable since it is entirely random which Albums have finished downloading when I leave my home. The Sync feature worked for me for many years and I’d really just like to go back to that, is that possible?

[Massaguana]

Hello,

here are looks like the same issue with “Audiobooks”… It Download it again an again

Having an Audiobook with 376 files for one Book. When i start Download i see that something is downloading…

• but it is really slow, one file… 30sec nothing, next file. i need more than 24h turn on my iPhone to download it complete…
• sometimes some parts are failing, download egain.
• when download is finished it starts again by file 1

The iOS App are closing itself after a couple of hours… must restart it

Here are some logs:
PlexDebugInfo-Massaguana-7.29-2010 (2022-03-15 20.38.02 +0100).zip (11.4 MB)

[s4j4]

There is a serious problem with the download function and it cannot be used. I reported this problem on the forum, but more than ten days have passed. Although I ask the situation on the forum every day, I have not received a response.

There is really no way, please help to wake up the sleeping administrator together, and ask them to respond to the problems encountered by users. Thank you for your help.

Plex for IOS infinite loop download problem (Feb 27 feedback problem, many users have confirmed the same problem, we paid for it, but it can't be used normally for a few months, please PLEX respond to this problem.)

Hello, here are looks like the same issue with “Audiobooks”… It Download it again an again Having an Audiobook with 376 files for one Book. When i start Download i see that something is downloading… but it is really slow, one file… 30sec nothing, next file. i need more than 24h turn on my iPhone to download it complete… sometimes some parts are failing, download egain. when download is finished it starts again by file 1 The iOS App are closing itself after a couple of hours… must restart it …

[Massaguana]

Here are some logs…

[ApexAftermath]

Just found my way to this thread because my dad told me that for the last week he has been getting “too many streams in use” error. He isn’t actually playing anything, but it occurred to me he is the only user I allow downloads for, and he has been using the feature lately.

He just called me finally after a week saying this was going on and I have absolutely not a single person streaming right now even though he was getting the error. There is NO REASON why he should be seeing “too many streams in use” I saw Plex had an update so I let it apply which restarted my server and it’s working for him again now. I disabled his downloads.

My guess is that this bug, whatever it is, was causing a traffic jam with the downloads feature for his user account. Whatever gets locked up probably reporting to the server and causing the max stream amounts to read over limit.

Not grabbing any logs because I can already tell Plex is in IDGAF mode for this one. Hopefully my post here serves as helpful for someone else having this issue and going WTF?

Looks like everyone should be disabling and not using downloads going forward because they seem to be driving it into the same ditch they drove Plex Sync into.

[s4j4]

Download a 325MB music album with an average download speed of 3MB +. The download that should be completed in less than two minutes actually took more than an hour
Why download so long? Not that the Internet speed is not fast enough, but that it is constantly downloading the same music This problem can be seen in the following video.

Download the same music repeatedly.mov.zip (2.7 MB)

ver

server: 1.25.8.5621
plex for ios: 7.29

logs

Plex Media Server Logs_2022-03-17_09-02-47.zip (1.6 MB)
PlexDebugInfo-7.29-2010 (2022-03-17 09.03.00 +0800).zip (2.7 MB)