Plex is running from a synology Nas
I have two Sony android TVs. 2018 and 2021 models (x900f and x900h)
On 2021 tv movies/shows loads instantly.
On 2018 tv it is stuck on buffering……
I tried reboot tv and Nas and nothing changed.
I just found that the issue has to do with external subtitles.
If before starting the tv show i select subtitles it sticks on buffering. If i start the tv show without NONE subtitle leave it play for 2-3 seconds and then select the external subtitle then it continued flawlessly.
Ah, might be related to an issue I had. Seems subtitles can cause transcoding for some setups. I have a Synology NAS myself, and had a long discussion recently about it. Seems external subtitles (subtitles stored next to a video, but not inside it in an MKV package) can sometimes cause a transcode to happen. The Plex NASs are already sort of weak to begin with, but a full CPU transcode can usually be handled by the NAS just fine.
But subtitles often have to be burned into the video since some players cannot handle taking the subtitle and displaying it themselves. So if this happens, the server will transcode the video before sending it, and then transcode AGAIN to put the subtitle into the video. In some cases, this second transcode will be single-threaded, so it performs slower than normal and often fails to run the video faster than real-time.
You can try to embed the subtitle in the file to see if that can avoid a transcode. If it still does transcode, then change the subtitle to a basic SRT type, which is plain text and can be handled by most players. Anything more advanced such as SSA or PGS might be burned in, which should be avoided on Synology hardware.
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The external subtitles I use are always simple files .srt
Here is the forum I (admittedly) hijacked with my own issue. The OP had a problem getting external subtitles to run at all.
My issue was in the use of most subtitles at all, and the oddity of using hardware acceleration made a video perform worse than if you did software from the get-go. Well, since you don’t appear to be a pass owner/subscriber, my posts may not be relevant since you cannot use HW transcoding, but take note of the posts by MagaZine. After some back and forth, they mentioned using external VOBSUB subtitles, which should have been direct-played by the person’s player but somehow was causing a transcode. Ultimately, they muxed the subtitle into the file, which helped avoid the transcode.
I’m not sure what your issue is, but it really sounds like external subtitles are just to be avoided. I’m sorry to say that I’m not a fan of them myself, I prefer my video files to be self-contained, so I love the MKV container. If muxing the sub into the file is not acceptable, then I’ll step aside and hope some Plex wizard might know more about external subs - even SRTs - and why it causes buffering.
***Keep in mind that Synology NAS models have weak CPU’s. Even the best option CPU-wise involves a Celeron. Any kind of transcoding will consume the entire CPU. If you are using that for other tasks, then it’s possible your older Sony TV might need a transcode to play a file, which might not be strong enough.
Edit: What model NAS do you have, what is the bitrate of the video, and what is the server version number?
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