Windows 10 1909, plex 1.19.05.3035. I can play movies and tv episodes that have a bitrate lower than 150000kpbs. When I try to play video files above that rate I see the spinning ball and then plex crashes
as an example the get info on a movie that won’t play
Codec H264
Bitrate 34997 kbps
Language English
Bit Depth 8
New log zip
Plex Media Server Logs_2020-07-19_09-57-17.zip (1.3 MB)
Is that 15 kbps or 150,000 kbps (=150 Mbps)?
Your logs are showing some transcoding due to a 40 Mbps bandwidth limit (probably linked to some remote streaming). However I cannot find any hints of otherwise limited playback.
Could you give me a hint where you experienced that restriction?
PS: please disabled verbose logging before providing logs (unless specifically asked to provide verbose logs). Debug level logging is better suited to get to the a grasp on most issues – with verbose logging on the other hand the logs are flooded with tons of details… so it’s like searching a needle in a haystack.
Sorry, here are non-verbose logs, after I tried to play “Pavarotti (2019)” the get info on this video is;
Codec H264
Bitrate 34997 kbps
Language English
Bit Depth 8
I see many “we’re going to try” records before the crash. Example below
Jul 19, 2020 10:22:26.629 [4860] DEBUG - We’re going to try to auto-select an audio stream for account 21886734.
Jul 19, 2020 10:22:26.629 [4860] DEBUG - Selecting best audio stream for part ID 44461 (autoselect: 1 language: en)
Jul 19, 2020 10:22:26.629 [4860] DEBUG - We’re going to try to auto-select a subtitle.
Jul 19, 2020 10:22:26.629 [4860] DEBUG - Selected a foreign audio track: fre
Jul 19, 2020 10:22:26.629 [4860] DEBUG - Subtitles: Found a candidate subtitle language [eng] for a foreign film
Jul 19, 2020 10:22:26.629 [4860] DEBUG - Audio Stream: 38162, Subtitle Stream: 38165
Jul 19, 2020 10:22:26.633 [4860] DEBUG - Codecs: testing h264_qsv (encoder)
Jul 19, 2020 10:22:26.633 [4860] DEBUG - Codecs: hardware transcoding: testing API qsv
Jul 19, 2020 10:22:26.805 [15112] DEBUG - Job running: C:\Program Files (x86)\Plex\Plex Media Server\CrashUploader.exe “–directory=C:\Users\lists\AppData\Local\Plex Media Server\Crash Reports\1.19.5.3035-864bbcbb7” --version=1.19.5.3035-864bbcbb7 --platform=Windows “–platformVersion=10.0 (Build 18363)” --serverUuid=ac3f944f4ed462dbf3a572201fb27456b47bab3d --userId=lists@grimesplace.com --sentryUrl=https://sentry.io/api/1233455/minidump --sentryKey=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx --vendor=Microsoft --model=x64 --device=PC
Jul 19, 2020 10:22:26.807 [16292] DEBUG - Auth: authenticated user 21886734 as Steve home
Jul 19, 2020 10:22:26.807 [9168] DEBUG - Request: [10.0.0.24:49336 (Allowed Network (Subnet))] GET /photo/:/transcode?upscale=1&background=000000&width=1024&format=jpg&blur=80&opacity=70&url=http%3A%2F%2F127.0.0.1%3A32400%2Flibrary%2Fmetadata%2F37992%2Fthumb%2F1595114288&height=1024&quality=0 (17 live) TLS GZIP Signed-in Token (Steve home)
Jul 19, 2020 10:22:26.807 [9168] DEBUG - Photo transcoder: Request for url [http://127.0.0.1:32400/library/metadata/37992/thumb/1595114288] (is local: 1 upscaled: 1)
Jul 19, 2020 10:22:26.808 [9168] DEBUG - The cache file did not exist, but the original did [C:\Users\lists\AppData\Local\Plex Media Server\Cache\PhotoTranscoder\72\72dff9bc2a485450da575e1e345b01fd17694fb0.jpg].
Jul 19, 2020 10:22:26.812 [15112] DEBUG - Jobs: Starting child process with pid 5788
Those lines only document how Plex determines what audio/subtitle streams of your file are being used. If there’s multiple streams of that type, Plex will try to find the best suited one matching your audio & subtitle preferences
https://app.plex.tv/desktop#!/settings/account
As for the playback… the logs show no bitrate restriction. The video stream had been copied without modification. Plex did however transcode the audio as your client does not support TrueHD / 8 channel audio.
Not sure if you actually played the video… according to the logs the playback never progressed beyond 61 minutes into the almost 2 hour movie. That’s when the logs document the playback got terminated/stopped within the client.
All I saw was the spinning symbol, I terminated the play after about one minute
Ok… so back to square 1 
The actual issue is your file isn’t playing.
Do you get the same issue when playing this video through another Plex Client (e.g. using the desktop client instead of Plex Web) or a different browser?
As for the playback via Chrome – could you please provide some logs from the web player?
Debug Level to Enabled
Very odd. I used the plex desktop client and was able to play that video. I enabled debug, then went back to the desktop client, started the same video again, the spinning symbol stayed for about 15 seconds and then I saw an error message. Logs below.
The other issue I’m now seeing is that I have to start plex as admin. I copied the server.log from when I started it normally, I’m looking through startupErrors.txt
Plex Media Server Logs_2020-07-19_11-12-09.zip (987.9 KB)
startupErrors.txt (57.7 KB)
The last thing PMS appears to be doing before the crash uploader runs is initializing hardware transcoding (using Intel Quick Sync Video). There were some known Intel driver compatibility issues several months ago which could cause PMS to crash when attempting to use hardware transcoding with QSV. There’s some additional information in this thread:
In the meantime, you could try disabling hardware accelerated transcoding on your system to see if that is indeed the issue; the thread above has a table of known “crashing”/“non-crashing” driver versions you could test as well.
It working with the desktop client makes sense, as it would likely not need to be transcoded when using it.
Thanks! I updated my video driver and then disabled hardware acceleration. I’m now able to play videos direct play and transcoded. I’ll see if I continue to see the server crashes I saw this morning and report tomorrow,
Plex hasn’t crashed since yesterday morning and I’m playing video at all bitrates!! The only change I made was to disable hardware acceleration. Thanks very much to Tom and PhilipSW!
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