Plex Transcoding h264 (throttled)

General Discussions
1

Can anyone please enlighten me why this H264 encoded MPEG-4 AVC will not direct play to the Vizio smart tv? Audio seems to directly stream fine, and it’ll play without issue from a usb flash drive in the side of the television. What or where am i doing/going wrong??

Video Codec: H264 - MPEG-4 AVC (part 10) (avc1)
Resolution: 1920x802
Frame rate: 23,976000
Decoded format: Planar 4:2:0 YUV

Here’s screenshots:

600×512 105 KB

PMS: Version 1.3.3.3148
Linux Mint 18.1 (Cinnamon 3.2.7) 64-bit
Dell Vostro 200, Pentium Dual-Core E5700 @ 3.0GHz (x2)
4GB RAM, 160GB 10,000rpm WD Velociraptor
streaming media from a mounted Windows (cifs) network share

Thank you, in advance, for assistance or any light you may be able to shed on my current situation, due to lack of expertise. Happy New Year.

2

What are you using for a Plex Client?

3

Just doubled checked to make sure it wasn’t burning in subtitles, or something to potentially cause the transcoding, but no dice. Subtitles are off.

4

Plex for Vizio (Vizio MTK)
an hour ago
2.12.1
Plex TV
Vizio (Vizio MTK)

5

If you had one of the subtitles active, these need to be ‘burned in’ because no smart tv I know of does suppport pixel-based subtitles.

You can glean the actual reason for the transcopding decision if you

  • activate ‘debug logging’ on the server (but not verbose)
  • start playback
  • let it play for ~ 1 minute
  • take a look at the Plex Media Server.log

Seek for the timestamps from around playback start. Log lines with [MDE: will tell you in detail why transcoding was activated.

6

I’m not really certain what i’m looking for. Log files were already enabled, i JUST rebuild this Linux Mint on a 10k Velociraptor two nights ago. Trying to work out the kinks and get my media displaying properly. This is from Plex Media Server.log – a lot are errors parsing my allowedNetworks.

DEBUG - HLS segment range: 0 - 4268; average bitrate: 4.25 Mbps (segment size min/avg/max: 0.0/0.5/1.0)
Dec 30, 2016 18:40:50.739 [0x7f5700] DEBUG - We want 60 segments ahead, last returned was 4207 and max is 4268.
Dec 30, 2016 18:40:50.739 [0x7f5700] DEBUG - Session _ (2) is throttling
Dec 30, 2016 18:40:50.739 [0x7f5700] DEBUG - It took 0.0 sec to serialize a list with 0 elements.
Dec 30, 2016 18:40:50.739 [0x7fe700] DEBUG - Completed: [127.0.0.1:35596] 206 PUT /video/:/transcode/session/_/progress?progress=51.5&size=-22&speed=1.2&remaining=13726 (14 live) 1ms 342 bytes
Dec 30, 2016 18:40:50.740 [0x7ff700]

DEBUG - Asked for segment 4208 from session.
Dec 30, 2016 18:40:51.127 [0x7fb700] DEBUG - HLS segment range: 0 - 4268; average bitrate: 4.25 Mbps (segment size min/avg/max: 0.0/0.5/1.0)
Dec 30, 2016 18:40:51.128 [0x7fb700] DEBUG - Returning segment 4208 from session:
PMS/Cache/Transcode/Session/plex-transcode-/

7

This small snippet of log won’t help.
Seek for log lines with MDE: in them.

8

I did a find in the entire file for MDE: (no results) then just “MDE” and pasted some of that above. I can paste the entire log file, or is there a way i could send it directly to you, sir? Is there anything in the logs i shouldn’t share openly??

9

If you don’t have verbose logging enabled, and you don’t have tokens enabled (both are settings in Plex Server), then there’s nothing in the logs that you have to worry about. If you can’t attach the log to your post, upload it to a file sharing service and post the link.

10

Here’s my attached log. Thank you for your assistance.

11

While I’m looking in the log, your log is full of errors for allowednetworks. I believe this is referring to the Plex Server setting: List of IP addresses and networks that are allowed without auth. The correct way to use this is to enter a local IP address on your local network (not a remote computer from the internet) followed by the netmask. For example, if I want the computer that’s running Plex Server to not worry about authentication, I enter 10.45.19.50/255.255.255.255 in that field.

12

Do you have debug logging enabled?

13

Enabling verbose logging now. And thank you, i changed the auth to read – 192.168.0.XX/255.255.255.0

14

@peatrick said:
Enabling verbose logging now.

No, not verbose logging. That can be turned off. Debug logging should be enabled. There’s not much in your log, debug logging usually puts a lot more in there.

Close the Plex Server, wait one minute, start it, wait two minutes, play a file that causes the issue, after it happens wait one minute, close Plex Server, then upload that log.

15

Enable Plex Media Server debug logging
Enable Plex Media Server verbose logging

These two options are both now checked. “debug logging” has been selected since i rebuilt the PMS two nights ago.

16

Disable verbose logging, then see my previous post.

17

Disabled verbose, stopped the service. Restarted the machine. I had recently added plex to my repositories and now after reboot i notice an update to v1.3.3.3165 (i was on 3148) so allowing that update to run through first, then i’ll report the results of your suggested test. Thank you for the time and assistance, @kegobeer-plex …and great screenname.

18

I keep reading your signature. I’m really curious how other people are making all this work for them. I hope i don’t regret NOT getting an nVidia Shield – just finally upgraded from the Kindle Fire HD to a ZenPad S 8.0, but i seriously considered the Shield, long and hard. Installing package now.

19

I don’t have a Shield, I have a Shield TV. I have no idea how the Shield tablet performs.

20

Now it appears to be even worse (at least while it’s catching up)… both cores of the cpu are pegged to 100%, and it says
Video: Transcode (h264)
Audio: Direct Stream

Here’s new log file… about to look at it myself. Okay, it says “Direct Play is disabled” uhhh.