Plex High LAN Bandwidth When Transcoding Causing Roku TV to Buffer Frequently

Plex Media Server
,
1

Server Version#: 1.25.6.5577

Hopefully I posted this in the right place. I keep getting buffering issues with my TCL Roku TV and it appears to be the massive increase in bandwidth I get while transcoding HEVC 1080p and HE-AAC 5.1 to AC3.

Screenshot

Screenshot (1)

The bitrate is supposed to be 1.1 Mbps for the file and when it transcodes it I’m getting spikes up to 36Mbps and I don’t think my TV can handle it over WiFi.

Is there any way to decrease the amount of bandwidth being used or am I going to be forced to upgrade my TV to handle HEVC files?

Is this even normal that transcoding eats up so much bandwidth?

2

More likely your server doesn’t have enough processing power to real time convert HEVC to H264.

3

The CPU is barely affected by the transcoding. I also have plex pass to take off some of the load. The RAM and CPU are not an issue at all.

It seems more like the files are heavily compressed than decompressed after transcoding.

4

What CPU and GPU?

From your dashboard picture you can see that the decode is being done by the CPU and then GPU is encoding. Audio will be done by the CPU but only by one core so easy to get thread bound here.

So another way to look at this you are taking a highly compressed file, decompressing it and then recompressing it only not so much to send to the tv. Sure the wifi could be slow and 36 Mbps could be an issue but more likely the server is bottle necking on one core.

5

This is what I am seeing:

Screenshot (2)

Capture

6

Optimize the media for TV and then play back the optimized version to see if you get buffering. Take note of the conversion speed, if it doesn’t stay >1 then transcoding speed is insufficient.

7

I’ve never had to optimize media for TV before so I’m not sure what you’re asking.

I also followed the instructions for verbose logging then downloaded the logs and I don’t see any speed section for transcoding.

8

First, you don’t want verbose. Secondly, can you post your logs here once verbose is turned off?

9

Here’s the log. Do you need more than that one?
Plex Media Server.log (750.2 KB)

10

Optimizing the file is for troubleshooting. If the file is pre-transcoded and still buffers then you know you have a network problem.

11

I didn’t have much of a chance to look at the log, but I did see you have directplay disabled. Have you tried enabling it? And which model is your TV?

12

I may have been playing around with the settings to see if it made any difference and forgot to re-enable direct play. It’s typically enabled.

TCL ROKU TV: 55FS3750

13

This topic was automatically closed 90 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.