Here is another problem with Downloads. Are you aware of this yet?
Attached are my logs files from the server and the Android device.
Plex Media Server Logs_2023-03-03_13-50-40.zip (5.8 MB)
plex-log-Android.zip (2.3 MB)
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Opening Plex IOS app results in near instant crash, but not until app has queued up downloads to IOS; when app restarts downloads are queued for download one more time. Despite both downloads finishing additional downloads are also being done when looking at consumed bandwidth. Removing downloads from queue in Plex or uninstalling Plex has no effect on downloads queued to IOS when app crashed.
This has been an issue for over a year - you have been unable to resolve the issue and you seem unable to provide uninstallation instructions to remove Plex and its offloaded downloads and temporary files.
If either one isnāt resolved within reasonable time Iāll just start pestering Apple to remove Plex from the App store as its effectively holding my device and home network hostage for large parts of the day, or longer, when this happens. If the iPad multitasks or sleeps downloads fails and additional duplicates are scheduled for download and there is no option to throttle or pause the download so my rather slow connection is saturated by meaningless duplicate downloads.
I can block the iPad in my firewall but thats the equivalent of peeing my pants to stay warm as whenever I unblock it additional duplicate downloads are scheduled, and my device and network is being held hostage for even longer.
MacBook Air has the same problems, but in the unlikely event a download succeeds Macbook is unable to playback the content, it just hangs, showing playback controls but no audio or video.
logs.zip (13.7 MB)
iPad and server logs attached. DM for zip password.
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Sorry, but this doesnāt quite make sense. Can you provide specific steps you are doing to recreate this crash?
you seem unable to provide uninstallation instructions to remove Plex and its offloaded downloads and temporary files.
Just uninstall the app. That should remove all Plex related files. You may need to restart your device due to files being cached.
iPad and server logs attached
Please DM me your logs without the password.
Unlock device, tap plex icon - app briefly renders and crashes.
From previous correspondence you know this is not the case, not a year ago, and not today. Neither uninstall or reboots will clear out all temporary files and āphantomā or āorphanedā downloads.
If the app is constantly crashing, how are you able to test downloading?
I guess is it as they say - even a blind squirrel will find the occasional nut. As to any pattern on why it crashes, lets say roughly 10% of every attempt at opening it - idk.
Tried the new client version for Macbook; just keeps downloading the same file over and over (seemingly succesfully, 100% according to log) doesnāt even show an error in the client. After fist fail I enabled verbose logging, after 3rd fail I just uninstalled plexā¦
Who wants the log files?
edit: One more chance, plex reinstalled, left running over night - 18 partial attempts at downloading the same file ā¦ but there has been some progress, at least the downloads that failed arent left to run until completed.
-rw-------@ 1 user staff 339M Mar 13 03:10 CFNetworkDownload_PjovKX.tmp
-rw-------@ 1 user staff 131M Mar 13 03:16 CFNetworkDownload_BJOZYN.tmp
-rw-------@ 1 user staff 115M Mar 13 03:22 CFNetworkDownload_7FijGP.tmp
-rw-------@ 1 user staff 1.3G Mar 13 03:44 CFNetworkDownload_AYy907.tmp
-rw-------@ 1 user staff 2.6G Mar 13 04:38 CFNetworkDownload_fGj79L.tmp
-rw-------@ 1 user staff 318M Mar 13 04:43 CFNetworkDownload_h342qZ.tmp
-rw-------@ 1 user staff 323M Mar 13 04:49 CFNetworkDownload_ncyg93.tmp
-rw-------@ 1 user staff 651M Mar 13 05:00 CFNetworkDownload_mbNg8D.tmp
-rw-------@ 1 user staff 325M Mar 13 05:22 CFNetworkDownload_um0l2x.tmp
-rw-------@ 1 user staff 326M Mar 13 05:28 CFNetworkDownload_SF5omH.tmp
-rw-------@ 1 user staff 294M Mar 13 05:38 CFNetworkDownload_ZwWtW4.tmp
-rw-------@ 1 user staff 634M Mar 13 05:50 CFNetworkDownload_qnkvEk.tmp
-rw-------@ 1 user staff 325M Mar 13 06:12 CFNetworkDownload_nGEBek.tmp
-rw-------@ 1 user staff 674M Mar 13 06:40 CFNetworkDownload_Uy5DAM.tmp
-rw-------@ 1 user staff 326M Mar 13 07:03 CFNetworkDownload_2mDzp4.tmp
-rw-------@ 1 user staff 333M Mar 13 07:26 CFNetworkDownload_OU1J8Z.tmp
-rw-------@ 1 user staff 650M Mar 13 08:13 CFNetworkDownload_416DLN.tmp
-rw-------@ 1 user staff 2.8M Mar 13 08:45 CFNetworkDownload_LpYpW1.tmp
edit2: hm, seems the unfinished downloads correlate to network having switched to using my phoneās 4g connection instead of the dedicated 4g router. Both connections are for the same service, same carrier, same subscription etc - but using the phones 4g neither Macbook or iPad were able to complete a download - despite wget get running a http download whiteout issues in parallell.
Iām on Android and when I select a show to download it shows itās d/l just fine. Itās in the download tab on my device but every time I try to select one of them to watch it gives me an error box that says, āAn error occured while attempting to play this video. Please check your connection and try againā. Every title I try gives this error. Any advice on this one?
I should add that Iāve tried deleting the shows and re downloading them as well as deleting the app and reinstalling that too. No change.
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You might want to check the codec of your files. I did have a similar issue with some specific files. Once I ran them through handbrake and changed them, they worked just fine.
If Plex could only provide a meaningful error message, then it would be easy to troubleshoot. But welā¦
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Iām having multiple issues with downloads now. First off, itās so slow it takes over an hour to download a 15 track album, and thatās if I can keep it going the whole time. Itāll normally shut off after doing 4 or 5 tracks and the app restarts itself. Secondly, my downloads seem to still require some sort of Internet connection. I ran out of data this month, and every time I would try to play something offline, I would get an error message about no connection. Why would my downloads even require internet in the first place?
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How do I do that? Sorry, still pretty new to plex. I travel a ton for work so the download feature was a plusā¦ Hasnāt worked once yet.
Search for Handbreak. Itās a software to re-encode video files into different codecs/sizes. Thereās plenty of information out there. And there are a lot of pre-defined formats from which you can select. I could shrink some videos I downloaded from TV websites from 2GB to around 500MB by going from H.264 to H.265. So it also saves some space, depending on what you already have.
Once you got the new file (and are happy with the quality), you can replace the Plex file and start the download again.
Iām getting the following error with certain files:
Encountered lack of permission on the remote while grabbing media
The file seems to be Dolby Vision, I also notice in my logs
Mar 16, 2023 10:53:41.420 [0x7ff50b491b38] ERROR - [Req#5d7d/Transcode] Streaming Resource: Cannot make a decision because either the file is unplayable or the client provided bad data
I wonder if my iPad Air M1 is providing a wrong client profile and causing downloads not to work?
Either way, downloads is surprisingly flakelyā¦ Sync, Download, etc. itās a wonder after so many years Plex still hasnāt fixed this issue.
Going to need to see more than than 1 line to see what failed. That error means PMS could not decide if a file needed to be transcoded or not. This could either be PMS canāt read the file (i.e. itās damaged) or the client told PMS to do something it didnāt understand. Iāll need both sets of logs to check whatās going on.
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New server version installedā¦
PlexMediaServer install: PlexMediaServer-1.31.3.6819-2ef591a4c - Installation successful.
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Haha, should have waited for April 1st - then I could have said everything works now:joy:
Shame bumping the server didnt fix downloads for the Macbook though, would have been nice to document some of the issues with subtitles and audio tracks that differ between downloaded and streamed contentā¦
I can download video files over the cell phone network, but not jpg pictures from my photo library. They always fail. work fine over wifi. That has to be a glitch?
Downloaded content are getting different options and (default) settings depending on whether it is viewed from the Home screen, or navigated to via the detour of going through the downloads screen Downloads.
They look identical, apart from the <Home/<Download text top left (and the displayed title of the subtitles, despite being the same subtitles).
However when playback is started the difference can be seen; not only are the settings removed - they are also assuming default values that arenāt corresponding with my language preferences, resulting in the wrong audio track being played (with no means of changing it) and no subtitles for the foreign language, and no means of adding subtitles.
<Home:
<Downloads:
Looking closer at the available options additional differences are visible, with the twist that the screen shown when navigating from Home has the option to delete the download - while that option is not available if viewed from the download screen.
<Home:
<Downloads:
I was just trying to grab the screenshots while preparing for posting this is also different for different platforms when noticing the behaviour is different on the same platform as well.
Interestingly when I initially started playback and the language was foreign with no options to change it, I tried downloading the subtitles but after downloading the subtitles the setting was still set to off with no option to select the downloaded subtitles, or even choose the subtitles that it turns out are already present in the file. When later, by chance, starting the playback from the Downloads screen it turns out the subtitles were successfully downloaded and available, together with the subtitles from the file.
<Home:
<Downloads:
I was quite pleased when at some point the āPrefer Downloaded Contentā option actually started working, not giving loss of features a second thought as services in general have been deteriorating since becoming and Apple user. Hopefully you can track down the root cause and resolve this. This is an issue for any and all files with multiple audio tracks as far as I can tell.
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Photos are not supported with Downloads. Do you mean the āSaveā option? Thatās not Downloads. Please make a new post.
This is sort of expected. This looks like when you downloaded that file, it was not a direct download. It was either direct streamed or fully transcoded. When this happens only 1 of each stream is saved for the Download. When you then enable the āPrefer Downloaded Contentā it uses what was downloaded so the tracks may not match what you see from the library and there are no other tracks to select from. That setting does not verify what tracks you want, it automatically uses the Downloaded version. If you want to be able to select different tracks than what youāve downloaded, you need to turn off that setting so it will play from the library instead of the local copy.
