Same here. Playback on Chrome Web Player v4.40.1 via PMS v1.19.5.3112 skips quite often.
Only seems to happen on raw MKV rips of DVD’s and BD’s, similar to others on this thread. Hasn’t happened to things that I’ve compressed using my Handbrake Presets, or with other content on the server.
I’ve done some experimenting and have found that the issues start appearing at around 23Mbps and up.
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Hi Matt, I can confirm this is the case on Firefox as well. It’s how I found this thread. I can reproduce the skips on the same video. Strangely it’s always seems to be old-ish TV series… Let me know if you still need the samples, this has been open for a while, to note, I’m on the latest PMS release running on a Ubuntu server.
The workaround still has the bug where it crashes 2 seconds before the clip is over. Even in 4.41 3+ month later.
Thanks, this was driving me crazy until I found this thread. The Debug menu option fixed my skipping issue in Edge browser.
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From Settings Menu,
Enable Advanced Settings
Debug ->
“Use alternate streaming protocol for video playback”
This solved my problem, thank you.
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I have the same issue using Plexweb on Firefox. Direct play. PMS version 1.20.1.3252
I’ve tried the Debug menu work around, testing all combinations of direct play and alt protocol settings, with the same consistent skip in the test video I used.
The test video I used is 4874 kbps, 1080p in mp4 format. The skip occurs consistently about 25 seconds in and skips ahead about 10 seconds. When I seek or skip backward in the video, the skip still occurs consistently in the same place for the same duration.
Those tests were done with the quality setting defaulted to Convert Automatically. I watched the quality setting as the playback went, and it appears the skip occurs a few seconds after the automatic bit rate changes. Under the automatic setting, my test video consistently starts at 2Mbps, switches to 4Mbps at 0:24 and skips at 0:26.
When I set the quality to not adjust automatically, no matter what level I set it to (down res, up res, or original quality) the skipping does not occur.
The skipping happens on every video I’ve tried to watch in my library if the setting is left to Convert Automatically, though the timing varies and is less frequent and less consistent with SD videos.
I first started having the problem sometime in 2019. I found the latest version of PMS that does not result in skipping is 1.16.6.1592. I’ve periodically tried to test with the latest server update, but have consistently had the problem across all the versions later than 1.16.6.1592 that I’ve tried
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I suspect that the problem you are having might just be with that video file. It’s a much lower bitrate than the type of videos that typically have the skipping problem.
The skipping or gap jumping occurs for a few reasons
The web player issue described here appears to now be happening for me on my Shield. Shield is version 8.2.0 (32.6.435.1) and Plex is 8.6.0.20351. It was not happening with the previous player.
Uninstalling updates fixes it but there’s no option to prevent automatic updates (which pisses me off by the way) and no way to downgrade without side loading as far as I know.
Conicaw - I have over 16,000 videos in my library and it skips forward in some form on every one. If I play the files directly through windows media player or iTunes, I have no issue. If I play the files at a constant conversion rate, I have no issue. If I play the files on PMS 1.16.6.1592 I have no issue.
If it is a problem I have with 16,000 files that play normally through multiple other methods, then it is a problem with the software, not the file
I also I having this issue on Firefox 81.0.1. I just enabled the workaround. I don’t know if it fixes the issue yet or not. Testing it now. It did the skips with MPEG-2 recorded from OTA. Convert was set to Auto and it was Transcoding.
Same problem with 1.20.3.3437 even with ram cached movies on my server. So this can’t be a latency problem. It must be only related to the way how Plex plays the movie.
I was able to play the movie without judder with an usual HTML5 player by pasting this code into my Unraid WebGUI source code (chrome dev tools):
<video id="video1" style="width:600px;max-width:100%;" controls="">
<source src="http://thoth/mnt/disk1/Movie/AB/The%20Boss%20Baby%20(2017)/The%20Boss%20Baby%20(2017)%20FSK6%20DE%20EN%20IMDB6.3.mkv" type="video/mp4">
</video>
But it had not audio (I guess, the codec is not supported by HTML5):
Maybe this is the point (video stream + audio stream syncing) which causes these gap jumps.
I have noticed there is now an option in the settings. Under Debug you will find an option for Use alternate streaming protocol for video playback. This is designed to help create a workaround for Chrome, Edge, and other Chromium based browsers which may avoid unexpected skipping during video playback. Hopefully that will help with some of these issues.
Having skipping issues though only on one file that I have noticed as of yet.
Running webplayer (4.45.0) (PMS 1.20.3.3483) in latest Edge version (86.0.622.51).
File works fine in VLC and when forcing transcode in Plex but direct play (original) is broken.
File has not been analyzed/matched for metadata download.
File:
#### Media
* Duration 45:30
* Bitrate 5520 kbps
* Width 1920
* Height 1080
* Aspect Ratio 1.78
* Video Resolution 1080p
* Container MKV
* Video Frame Rate PAL
* Audio Profile lc
* Video Profile high
* Overlay
#### Part
* Duration 45:30
* File ---.mkv
* Size 1.75 GB
* Audio Profile lc
* Container MKV
* Video Profile high
* Codec H264
* Bitrate 5520 kbps
* Language English
* Bit Depth 8
* Chroma Location left
* Chroma Subsampling 4:2:0
* Coded Height 1088
* Coded Width 1920
* Color Primaries bt709
* Color Range tv
* Color Space bt709
* Color Trc bt709
* Frame Rate 25 fps
* Has Scaling Matrix true
* Height 1080
* Level 4.0
* Profile high
* Ref Frames 4
* Scan Type progressive
* Width 1920
* Display Title 1080p (H.264)
* Extended Display Title 1080p (H.264)
* Codec AAC
* Channels 2
* Language English
* Audio Channel Layout stereo
* Profile lc
* Sampling Rate 48000 Hz
* Display Title English (AAC Stereo)
* Extended Display Title English (AAC Stereo)
* Codec SRT
* Language English
* Display Title English (SRT)
* Extended Display Title English (SRT)
I have the same issue using Nvidia Shield (pro) with some videos.
Using the “new” player.
Yesterday I was playing a video in direct play with audio transcoding and it kept happening.
Unfortunately the debug option does not exist in the Shield settings.
same happening here on shield tv, sometimes skipping 20 + min, but most of the times , few seconds. Didn’t happened on previous released
I tried the Debug option which did fix the stuttering issue but seems to break AC3 audio in MS Edge - I get no sound at all on AC3 sources.
This is definitely an issue for me on all my files right now using Plex Web App on Chrome and Edge. Plex Web is 4.46.2 and my server is on 1.20.4.3517. I have enabled the option under Debug to use alternate streaming protocol but that did not help.
I feel like it’s gotten much worse recently and now when I am using the Plex Store App on Windows to play videos (which previously worked) I have problems with the video simply skipping to the next video.
As others have said a work around is to Transcode the video to a lower bit rate and that seems to have resolved the issue. I just noticed an issue in Debug for Direct Play and Direct Stream and I am thinking of simply disabling those as my server has plenty of power to transcode all video files. Hopefully that will at least temporarily resolve this issue.
I have a Fire TV Pendant that has not experienced any of these issues after downgrading one of the codecs from 5.2 to 5.1 - I forget what the exact name was. But I was having problems with skipping when still set to 5.2.
Any ETA on a permanent fix for this? I am still experiencing this exact issue… The “Use alternate streaming protocol for video playback” unfortunately did not work for me.
same porblem here, always up2date but i’m experiencing this problem since a while and now its even worse. especially with tv-shows like family guy or something. please fix this asap…
