Plex refusing to stream/transcode certain files to ipad/iphone

Plex Media Server Desktops & Laptops
1

Server Version#: 1.14.0.5470
Player Version#:5.0.3

Hi guys,

I recently just moved from a Syonolgy NAS running PMS to a new gen 8 i5 Intel NUC so to use hardware acceleration.

For the most part it is great, and really snappy. However, over the last few days I have found an issue (which I think is a bug) in which certain files will not transcode & stream to ios devices such as ipad & iphone (transcoding and playing the same files on apple tv seems to be fine)

Trying to find similarities in these files to try and figure out what the problem is, hasn’t helped much other than the fact I have found all the ones that are affected are all H264 (and so far have all been AC3 stereo). The file behaves like the going to play, however it never starts, and it absolutely maxes out the CPU, and never throws up an error message of any sort, just continues crunching the CPU. The majority of H264 files play fine though, so it is only a certain few that are being a headache.

The problem only occurs when transcoding and while hardware acceleration is enabled (and evidently only on when PMS is running on Windows which I’ll get to below). To test this I disabled hardware acceleration and played the exact same files, all now played fine, without a hitch (except for the fact I am not able to utilize HW). Turn hardware acceleration back on, and the issue returns.

To further test a few things, I run a PMS server through the nvidia shield, enabled hardware acceleration, played the problematic files to my ipad & iphone, and all played/transcoded no problem, which points toward it being isolated to my windows 10 NUC

Is there anything I have to install on the windows machine in addition to PMS (codecs etc) to assist with hardware acceleration? I’m guessing not as the files play without a problem on the windows machine.

I know I am likely going to have to send through some logs, so if this is the case, can anyone guide me on what I have to do here as I have never had to do that before, so am unfamiliar with the exact process.

If anyone could help with this issue it would be greatly appreciated as I am not sure what the issue could be.

Thanks guys.

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Ok so upon looking into this further I have found that it isn’t limited to H264 files, but also mp4, xvid, or just AC3 stereo etc. I have now found a heap of files that suffer from the same issue.

The problem actually seems to be from the audio side of things rather than the video. What I have found that consistent along all the files that are having issues is that they are ALL AC3 (both stereo and 5.1) and all show the audio stream/language as “unknown” rather than “English”.

If I play a file with MP3 or AAC audio that is “Unknown” it plays fine. If I play an AC3 file that is “english” that is also fine. But any file that has both AC3 and Unknown, it just will not transcode. Direct stream is fine, but the transcoding side of PMS seems to have a melt down with the AC3 and Unknown parameters. Again, this only affects the sistem when hardware acceleration is enabled. Untick that box and it transcodes fine.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how I can fix this please?

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