Plex Media Server on Windows won't read files fast enough for Direct Play

Plex Media Server Desktops & Laptops
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I’ve been running a Plex Media Server on Windows 10 64 bit for awhile now and all was well. Recently, however, it appears Plex Media Server isn’t actually reading media files fast enough for proper Direct Play. The files are on RAID 0 SSDs and on a local gigabit network. I’ve tried the Plex client on Nvidia Shield, the Plex addon for Kodi, Plex Media Player on Windows, the web client etc. all wired gigabit and I can watch on the Plex server that Plex only reads the media files at around 1 MB/s. I have verified that I am Direct Playing (using Tautulli as well as the clients themselves) as well and I’ve used a handful of different media files (4K, 1080p, h264, HEVC etc.)

If I play those exact same files over SMB they play fine and I can see on the Plex machine that the disk access will spike up to 10 MB/s or whatever the bitrate of the file is without issue. The Plex server is quite beefy with 20 cores and 25 GB of RAM. It’s almost as if the Plex web server isn’t serving the files fast enough so it doesn’t try to read them any faster.

I just upgraded to Version 1.13.3.5208 and the issue still exists.

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Anything else with handles on the files that would slow down the file transfer? Anti-virus?

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I have exclusions for the media drives, the AppData Local Plex Media Server folder, as well as “Plex Media Scanner.exe” and “Plex Media Server.exe”

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nothing…? https://piplong.run/plxdwnld/ even allows me to download the media files at full speed, so its not the Plex web server that has an issue. for whatever reason the Transcoder (or whatever actually spits out the video data with Direct Play) has trouble keeping up to the speed needed.

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Think I’m having the same problem. Start playing a TV show, and if I don’t pause it for a few seconds to exits to the next episode. Pausing seems to allow Plex to buffer the video.

I’m running PMS on a i7 Mac Mini. Media was stored on a Synology NAS, so I’ve moved it back to a USB drive, but same thing keeps happening.

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