Server Version#: 1.23.3.4707
Player Version#: 4.57.4
Plex Media Server.log (8.5 MB)
So, this is a bizarre one.
I’ve been using Plex for a long time. No issues. Yesterday, I used it to watch some MKV files (as usual). No problem.
Today, they absolutely refuse to play (the first frame of the video would appear, and then… nothing).
I tried to play these files through VLC on my PC, and they played with sound but no video - so I assumed they were corrupt. But changing the VLC video renderer settings to use OpenGL and disabling hardware acceleration fixed the issue. Not ideal, but I assume it’s because I have an AMD CPU and GPU, from reading other posts.
I then assumed, from reading a similar topic, that a Windows update had changed some security/access parameters and I’d see “access denied” in the logs. Nope.
An uninstall / reinstall didn’t help - I even uninstalled the latest version of Plex Server and went back to a version from three months ago. Same problem!
Finally, after almost giving up hope… I found out that, in the player, if I FORCE quality from “original quality” (5mbps 1080p HD) to “auto” (8mbps 1080p), the files all play.
Does anyone have any ideas as to why this is suddenly happening? Especially when (if I understand this correctly) Plex provides its own codecs, and it was working as recently as yesterday, with the exact same files that suddenly don’t work without being “force” transcoded.
The log files look normal, except for showing content total as -1 frame…
Thank you for any help you can offer!
