Plex for Windows has constant buffering with one specific file, Web and iOS have no issues

[benschm2]

Server Version#: 1.41.9.9961
Player Version#: 1.109.0.329-ea562b95

This one movie Sleep Has Her House won’t play without constant buffering but only on the Plex for Windows client. I’ve checked the logs and when attempting to stream there’s constant “Failed to stream media” errors. This doesn’t happen on any other client I’ve tested including my iPhone where the original quality stream plays fine with no errors in the console. Both Windows PCs I’ve tried this on have modern Intel CPUs and dedicated NVIDIA graphics cards with hardware acceleration enabled. It also streams fine on the Web player on both machines. What gives?

Media info of file below:

[OttoKerner]

Quite likely: Capcut videos playback issues with plex - #2 by OttoKerner

[benschm2]

Sure enough remuxing to mkv did the trick! Playing flawlessly now, not sure what was the problem with the mp4, it was sourced directly from the director’s website but maybe it was a weird encode. I realized it was by far the biggest mp4 file I had and everything in the same neighborhood bitrate wise was an mkv.

[OttoKerner]

@benschm2

not sure what was the problem with the mp4

Missing interleaving of audio and video data. Such files are easier to make, and usually play fine on a desktop computer from a local hard drive.
BUT if you put such a fle onto the internet or a streaming server (which Plex is), then the faeces hit the fan.