Plex for Mac not able to play any videos

[TheMighty007]

Server Version#:
Player Version#: 1.44.0.2981-e2d72ac2

My MacBook Pro 2019 was recently updated from MacOS 12.3.0 to 12.3.1. Around at the same time Plex App was also updated to latest version. Since then I’m unable to play any videos via app on Mac. I’m able to play just fine via Plex Players on my Android or on Nvidia Shield. It even plays fine in a browser in my Mac.

At start the error was something like: “server not powerful enough” and now it is showing this proper error message since past few days:
If I play from Server:

Playback Error
A codec required for playback could not be downloaded. Make sure you are connected to the Internet and try again.

Error code: 1008

And if I try to play locally downloaded content:

Playback Error:
Conversion failed. A required codec could not be found or failed to install.

In the verbose logs I see these which might be of interest:

tail -f ~/Library/Logs/Plex/Plex.log
...
May 01, 2022 17:28:40.875 [0x70000f35b000] INFO - [MPVEngine] Checking codecs.
May 01, 2022 17:28:40.875 [0x70000f35b000] INFO - [MPVEngine] Updating cached decoders.
May 01, 2022 17:28:40.875 [0x70000f35b000] DEBUG - [MPVEngine] Updating cached decoders.
May 01, 2022 17:28:40.876 [0x70000f35b000] INFO - [MPVEngine] Determining required decoders.
May 01, 2022 17:28:40.876 [0x70000f35b000] INFO - [MPVEngine/CodecManager] Finding a suitable decoder for h264.
May 01, 2022 17:28:40.876 [0x70000f35b000] DEBUG - [MPVEngine/CodecManager]   Non-system decoder h264 is NOT present.
May 01, 2022 17:28:40.876 [0x70000f35b000] INFO - [MPVEngine/CodecManager]   Best decoder is h264 (score=5).
May 01, 2022 17:28:40.876 [0x70000f35b000] INFO - [MPVEngine/CodecManager] Finding a suitable decoder for eac3.
May 01, 2022 17:28:40.876 [0x70000f35b000] DEBUG - [MPVEngine/CodecManager]   System decoder eac3_at is whitelisted.
May 01, 2022 17:28:40.876 [0x70000f35b000] DEBUG - [MPVEngine/CodecManager]   eac3_eae is a supported EAE decoder.
May 01, 2022 17:28:40.876 [0x70000f35b000] INFO - [MPVEngine/CodecManager]   Best decoder is eac3_at (score=10).
May 01, 2022 17:28:40.876 [0x70000f35b000] DEBUG - [MPVEngine/CodecManager] Ignoring subtitle stream srt.
May 01, 2022 17:28:40.876 [0x70000f35b000] INFO - [MPVEngine] Starting to fetch codecs.
May 01, 2022 17:28:40.876 [0x70000f35b000] DEBUG - [MPVEngine/CodecFetcher] Enqueuing h264
May 01, 2022 17:28:40.876 [0x70000f35b000] DEBUG - [MPVEngine/CodecFetcher] Codec eac3_at already exists.
May 01, 2022 17:28:40.876 [0x70000f35b000] DEBUG - [MPVEngine/CodecFetcher] Not enqueuing eac3_at
May 01, 2022 17:28:40.876 [0x70000f35b000] DEBUG - [MPVEngine/CodecFetcher] Fetching h264
May 01, 2022 17:28:41.480 [0x70000f35b000] ERROR - [MPVEngine/CodecFetcher] Codec unavailable
May 01, 2022 17:28:41.480 [0x70000f35b000] INFO - [MPVEngine/CodecFetcher] Done fetching codecs. Result: 1
May 01, 2022 17:28:41.552 [0x70000f35b000] INFO - [MPVEngine/CodecFetcher] Error fetching required codecs.
...

% ls /Applications/Plex.app/Contents/Frameworks/lib*
/Applications/Plex.app/Contents/Frameworks/libavcodec.58.dylib
/Applications/Plex.app/Contents/Frameworks/libavfilter.7.dylib
/Applications/Plex.app/Contents/Frameworks/libmpv.1.dylib
/Applications/Plex.app/Contents/Frameworks/libavformat.58.dylib
/Applications/Plex.app/Contents/Frameworks/libssl.1.1.dylib
/Applications/Plex.app/Contents/Frameworks/libavutil.56.dylib
/Applications/Plex.app/Contents/Frameworks/libswresample.3.dylib
/Applications/Plex.app/Contents/Frameworks/libcrypto.1.1.dylib
/Applications/Plex.app/Contents/Frameworks/libswscale.5.dylib

Not sure if it matters or not but there is no mpv.conf here:

% ls /Applications/Plex.app/Contents/Resources
Desktop.icns	inputmaps	mpv.conf.md	qml		qt.conf		updater		web-client

Any help in getting this Mac app working again would be helpful.

[TheMighty007]

Looking at https://github.com/plexinc/plex-media-player/blob/master/src/player/CodecsComponent.cpp
I tried to form a URL:

https://plex.tv/api/codecs/h264_decoder?deviceId=cc3087ba-03a3-4899-9f39-3d9d73bb1e6a&version=994f4ee-4297&build=darwin-x86_64

and/or

https://plex.tv/api/codecs/h264_decoder?deviceId=cc3087ba-03a3-4899-9f39-3d9d73bb1e6a&version=994f4ee-4297&build=darwin-x86_64&oldestPreviousVersion=1.44.0.2981-e2d72ac2

Both result in:

% curl "https://plex.tv/api/codecs/h264_decoder?deviceId=cc3087ba-03a3-4899-9f39-3d9d73bb1e6a&version=994f4ee-4297&build=darwin-x86_64&oldestPreviousVersion=1.44.0.2981-e2d72ac2"
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<MediaContainer friendlyName="myPlex" identifier="com.plexapp.plugins.myplex" title="Codec Downloads" codec="h264_decoder" version="994f4ee-4297" size="0">
</MediaContainer>

Codec entry is missing in it. Not sure if I’m doing it right but seems codec is missing?
Also I was expecting at least this basic h264 would be pre-packaged in ffmpeg libraries which come bundled within Plex?

I read deviceID from:

% cat ~/Library/Application\ Support/Plex/Plex\ Media\ Server/Codecs/.device-id
cc3087ba-03a3-4899-9f39-3d9d73bb1e6a%

and ffmpeg version is dumped in Plex.log file at app init:

May 02, 2022 23:27:07.020 [0x118827600] DEBUG - [CodecManager] Codec manifest:
May 02, 2022 23:27:07.020 [0x118827600] DEBUG - [CodecManager]   Version: 994f4ee-4297
...
...
May 02, 2022 23:27:07.026 [0x118827600] INFO - [Player] Initialized mpv 0.33.0-UNKNOWN, ffmpeg 994f4ee-4297

I manually went ahead and tried to form final URL directly looking at other forum posts:

https://downloads.plex.tv/codecs/994f4ee-4297/darwin-x86_64/libh264_decoder.dylib

Seems this decoder is not present for this ffmpeg version?
Not sure if others are facing the same issue but strange why it is happening with me.

================

Another update:
So I still had the download Plex-1.40.1.2823-6f60f3a7-x86_64.zip with me for older version of Plex for Mac. It seems to have ffmpeg version 62cc2bc-4226. However I’m still getting the same error with older Plex version i.e. no able to play any media file due to missing h264 decoder.

[TheMighty007]

Lol. Restarted MacBook and tried again:

May 03, 2022 12:08:24.214 [0x700002587000] DEBUG - [MPVEngine/CodecFetcher] Fetching h264
May 03, 2022 12:08:24.533 [0x700002587000] DEBUG - [MPVEngine/CodecFetcher] Codec downloaded.
May 03, 2022 12:08:24.533 [0x700002587000] DEBUG - [MPVEngine/CodecFetcher] There are no more codecs to fetch.
May 03, 2022 12:08:24.533 [0x700002587000] DEBUG - [MPVEngine/CodecFetcher] Telling FFmpeg that codecs folder needs to be re-scanned.

woah…

Weird it worked. Videos play again now. I’m still not sure what URL it attempted but it worked after system restart.

Topic can be closed I guess.