last week I set up my Plex Server and linked my media to it. Almost everything works fine except my beloved FLAC files. At least some of them. When I’m playing them on my mobile devices (iPhone & iPad) they’re playing perfectly fine as a direct stream (as it should be imho). But when accessing FLAC files through the Plex Web App some of the FLAC files are transcoded to AAC. I have no clue why certain files are transcoded and some not. The difference between the used browser (Firefox & Chrome) is that there are super annoying popping sounds when playing via Firefox.
Does anyone have an idea what it could be?
The FLAC files are all generated with EAC and I never had problems with them.
Please post the Plex XML info of a song that plays directly and one that doesn’t.
The Plex Media Server.log may contain additional clues as to why the decision to transcode was made. (You need to have ‘debug’ logging activated, prior to starting the playback.)
Hm, I see no discernible difference in the mediainfo xml.
The clue must be in the server log.
Side note: if you want to use all Plex features (particularly the new ‘library’ and ‘artist’ radio), you should make sure that your content is ‘matched’ to an online metadata source. Currently, it is not (guid="local://41341)
You enabled ‘Verbose’ logging.
That doesn’t help. It makes it harder to see the real issue inbetween all the chatter.
For some reason, it is assuming that it has to use the mp4 container.
Sep 17, 2018 16:01:20.952 [0x80d033100] DEBUG - MDE: Selected protocol dash; container: mp4
Sep 17, 2018 16:01:20.952 [0x80d033100] DEBUG - MDE: analyzing media item 54740
Sep 17, 2018 16:01:20.952 [0x80d033100] DEBUG - MDE: Do I Wanna Know?: Direct Play is disabled
Sep 17, 2018 16:01:20.952 [0x80d033100] DEBUG - MDE: Do I Wanna Know?: media must be transcoded in order to use the dash protocol
Sep 17, 2018 16:01:20.952 [0x80d033100] DEBUG - MDE: Do I Wanna Know?: no direct play music profile exists for http/flac/flac
Sep 17, 2018 16:01:20.952 [0x80d033100] DEBUG - MDE: Cannot direct stream audio stream due to codec flac when profile only allows aac
Sep 17, 2018 16:01:20.952 [0x80d033100] DEBUG - MDE: Do I Wanna Know?: selected media 0 / 54740
Sep 17, 2018 16:01:20.952 [0x80d033100] DEBUG - Streaming Resource: Reached Decision id=57631 codes=(General=1001,Direct play not available; Conversion OK. Direct Play=3000,App cannot direct play this item. Direct play is disabled. Transcode=1001,Direct play not available; Conversion OK.) media=(id=54740 part=(id=59726 decision=transcode protocol=dash streams=(Audio=(id=59253 decision=transcode bitrate=258 encoder=aac channels=2 rate=44100))))
Are these real flac files or did you convert them from alac or something?
Did you manipulate Plex’s hardware profiles or created own profiles?
Are there any web browser add-ons installed?
Have you tried to use the hosted web app from https://app.plex.tv/desktop ?
The one you are using is relatively outdated.
Side note:
your logs are full of messages like these
Sep 14, 2018 14:22:48.016 [0x80b32be00] WARN - Waited one whole second for a busy database.
Sep 14, 2018 14:22:48.569 [0x80d138900] WARN - Held transaction for too long (../Library/Scanner/SectionLocation.cpp:58): 17.250000 seconds
They indicate a massive performance issue with accessing the storage.
I am no expert for FreeBSD, so I cannot assist further.
Sorry for that. I didn’t know what exactly ‘verbose’ mean.
Do you want me to upload another log?
95% of my FLAC files are ‘self made’ which means that I ripped them using EAC. They should be absolutely fine.
I guess that I didn’t change any hardware settings or profiles, at least not on purpose.
There is NoScript installed. Therefore I tried to access the FLACs with NoScript disabled. Unfortunately it didn’t change anything.
Another interesting thing: I’m not able to access the Plex server with/through the given link. There is always the same error message appearing (The server ‘XX…’ is unavailable’)
Maybe the perfomance issues are caused by my power saving settings I made last week. To safe power and especially life time of the hard disks, they are supposed to switch to standby after 60 minutes idling.
I just tested that with different browsers. The interesting thing is: Firefox, Chrome & Opera are transcoding to AAC while Microsoft Edge & the iOS Plex App are playing via Direct Play.
I have tried many flac files and I cannot reproduce the issue.
Even high-resolution and multi-channel flacs play all directly here.
In both FF and Chrome.
Do you have any web browser add-ons installed or do you have an unusual network configuration (proxies etc)?
A real pity! I have really no clue why this is happening and why only these certain files (which never change) cause problems. It only occurs when using Firefox, Chrome or Opera.
I tried starting Firefox in safe mode, disabled every add-on and started Firefox with different settings regarding hardware acceleration.
Furthermore I double checked the files. They are all made with the same drive, with the same program (same version). The pictures used for the covers are all jpegs and not larger than 1000x1000pixels.
The settings of my router (Fritz!Box 6490) are still on default and nowhere else I changed any network settings.
Maybe you want to try one of my FLAC files?
Another interesting thing is that everytime the playback starts as a direct play but after a few seconds it is changing to ‘converting (throttled)’.
Just tried it. It seems that the cover size is not that important. At first I resized the picture to 600x600pixels after that I removed the cover at all. Still not working.
This problem is driving me crazy!
My guess is that the FreeBSD version has some problems with Firefox and Chrome. Even Safari is working.
