Server Version#:1.42.2.10156
Player Version#:2025.270
Hello,
I’ve started having a problem with Plex playback working for a couple of minutes, then it starts to pause for a couple of seconds (with a spinning icon) and then play for a few seconds, then pause again, then play again. If I close the app and restart playback, it will again work for a couple of minutes (it’s not consistent how long) and then go back into the pause-play cycle.
I can’t pin down exactly when this started because I don’t watch Plex content frequently. I’d say within the last 1-3 months is the last time I’ve successfully watched something without issue.
I am playing back 4K full bitrate movies and the ones I’’ve tried have DoVi profile encoded into them (encoded with MakeMKV from UHD ISO rips that I make myself)
I have not tried any standard HD movies yet. Most of what I watch is 4K content, either with or without DoVi profile.
This may have started with the refreshed Android app - I don’t know that I’ve successfully watched anything since I received the updated app experience.
I keep my apps and server updated when the updates come out.
First I noticed this with my Galaxy Tab S7+ which I’ve used for several years to watch Plex without issues. When the problem started, I tested my Wifi speed and it was plenty fast enough to receive the full bitrate stream. I checked the server settings, and there was no video transcoding. There was audio transcoding so the playback was Direct Stream, not Direct Play. I switched to a different audio stream so there was no transcoding at all, and then I had Direct Play but the same problem still happened. CPU usage on the server was flat at the bottom, no visible CPU usage (it’s an Intel 11900K desktop processor, bare metal Linux server). Just to make sure there was no disk access issue, I tried copying the movie file off of the server via an SMB share to a Windows system, and the entire movie file copied without any slowdown. I have a 10gigabit network and I was getting about 7 gigabit copy speed from the server which is the expected speed I usually get.
Next I tried a newer playback tablet which I thought might have more horsepower, as I thought maybe my Tab S7+ might have a slowdown issue. So I tried a Tab S9, with the exact same issue.
I connected a USB C ethernet adapter to the tablets to eliminate the network, and had the same issue. I also use the Plex “download” option to download the movie(s) to the tablet and I played back the downloads directly within the Plex app from the download list, and had the same problem.
Thinking this might be a bug in the Android app, as I can use an iPad to play back the same content over the same network without issue. However, since I haven’t seen any other reports of this kind of thing from others, I assume it is something unique to my situation. I don’t know what that would be,
One thing that I do different than everyone else I know is I rip my movies to MKV from the discs and I do not compress or lessen their quality in any way. I rip all of the video and audio streams directly into the MKV files, thus having some fairly large files for 4K movies. Although I’ve been doing this for years and my network and server have been able to handle these files without issue.
One other final thing to note - I have Tautulli installed on the same server as my Plex media server. I don’t know if that would possibly have anything to do with my issue - but I have installed Tautulli within the past 1-2 months.
What else can I do to try and narrow down my problem? Are there specific logs I should look at and anything specific to look for in them?
I feel that this is a player issue, not a server issue - especially because I have the same problem when playing a downloaded file.
Thank you.
- Bob
